From William Tango
The major record companies appear once again to be trotting out the old
canard of copy protection to justify the encryption of CDs
(This Week, 20 March, p 10).
It is manifestly impossible to prevent copying. At some point the digital
information must be converted to the analogue electrical signal, or line output,
that drives your amplifier and speakers. This signal can be directly recorded in
analogue format—this is what you do when you tape a friend’s record or CD.
The line output can also be connected to a sound card in a computer. If you
have a writable CD-ROM and good quality sound card, you can then make a CD which
is essentially indistinguishable from the original.
In both cases you are infringing copyright, but in practice it is
unenforceable unless you start distributing your pirate copies.
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Record companies argue that recording from the analogue signal degrades the
sound. If you have a good quality system the analogue audio signal will be
excellent and you would be unlikely to detect any audible difference between the
original and your pirate copy.
A similar argument applies to Microsoft’s attempts to use Reciprocal’s
encryption system to protect music downloaded from the Net
(p 11, same issue).
The data stream must be sent to your sound card or computer screen in
unencrypted format. Capturing this unencrypted data stream may be difficult but
it is not impossible and I don’t doubt that there are dozens of pony-tailed
computer nerds already devising algorithms to do just that.
Sydney
