"Macrovision has now renamed AudioLock as SafeAudio. The discs will play on a ROM drive and copy or 'rip' onto the PC's hard drive as compressed code, such as MP3. However the MP3 copy must then meet the SDMI's requirements and not copy through further digital generations."
"According to Macrovision SafeAudio will also be able to block straight digital dubbing from CD to blank CD--if the record industry dares ask for this and so alienate the millions of people who now own a CD recorder."
"Macrovision took part in the recent SDMI meeting in Paris and is planning extensive field trials in the US around May-June ahead of formal proposals to the record industry and music publishers June-July."
"Macrovision has a good track-record on ensuring compatibility with legacy equipment, born from a decade of copy-protecting VHS and DVD movies. But even it works I suspect AudioSafe will quickly become just another challenge for hackers to crack."
Europe: Is it safe?
A victim of its own success, a good security system often becomes sport for hackers writes Barry Fox
FOR AS LONG AS I CAN REMEMBER the music industry has been dreaming of copy protection. It began 30 years ago when the Beatles' Apple Corp (no relation to Apple computers) promised a spoiler to stop people copying Sergeant Pepper onto tape. An inaudibly high frequency signal on the disc would beat with the HF bias in a recorder and put an audible whistle on the tape. Of course it did not work. The HF signal was lost in the disc cutter, or groove, and filtered by the pickup. But the same system was re-invented over and over again. There were also plans to protect FM broadcasts in the same way, even though they cannot carry anything above 15kHz. A French station promised to scare off mosquitoes with ultrasound by radio.
Then we had CopyCode, the CBS system of sucking a notch out of the mid range to trigger a circuit in the recorder and stop it recording. This spoiled the music, and the RIAA and IFPI are still trying to win back cred lost by backing the daft idea.
Then came SCMS, which adds flags to the CD bitstream that tell a compliant digital recorder it can only copy an original disc. Copies will not copy digitally, but there is nothing to stop someone making endless copies of the same original, or using an analogue connection. The Philips dual-well CD Recorder switches automatically to analogue recording mode as soon as it is asked to copy a copy CD.
More recently we have had watermarking, with the SDMI and DVD Audio camps backing a method of altering a wide spread of waveform so that recorders switch off. So the first thing the industry wants to do with its new super-fi toy is compromise the 'fi'. Sony and Philips have already rejected the idea for Super Audio CD.
The SDMI is now finalising controls on the distribution and copying of MP3 music on the Internet. The scheme is so mind-bendingly complex that the first people to understand it may well be the hackers who find a way round it.
Last year the British company CDilla, that specialises in CD-ROM encryption, came up with a copy-killer called AudioLock. CDilla engineers added not-quite CD-ROM codes to a music CD so that it played on a music CD player but not on a PC ROM drive. So there would be no chance of using a PC to copy a CD onto a blank disc, without SCMS. I tested a test pressing and it worked as claimed.
CDilla also reckoned it could doctor the sub-codes to disable the digital output of a music CD player to stop digital dubbing.
Immediately there was outcry from all those who quite legitimately listen to music CDs while working at a PC. And Philips was not pleased to see the prospect of all its CD Recorders put out of action.
Macrovision, the company which specialises in video copy protection, bought CDilla and rethought the idea. Doubtless they were influenced by BMG's unhappy experience in Germany.
Sonopress in Guetersloh pressed two CDs (Razorblade Romance by HIM and My Private War by Philip Boa and the Voodoo Club) using a system called Cactus Data Shield developed by Midbar, of Tel Aviv, Israel. Cactus plays with the Table of Contents and some players, with anti-shock memory, were unable to play the discs, while others could only start from one track.
Sonopress had tested the system by giving discs to employees. No-one had a Philips player and it was only when the discs had been sold that BMG found they would not play on Philips players. BMG had to re-press to keep customers happy. The trade dubbed Cactus a 'Wild West' fiasco.
This mistake was doubly surprising because it came soon after the Sonopress goof on DVD-Plus, a bonded disc made from one CD and half a DVD. This was too thick to play on some decks.
Macrovision has now renamed AudioLock as SafeAudio. The discs will play on a ROM drive and copy or 'rip' onto the PC's hard drive as compressed code, such as MP3. However the MP3 copy must then meet the SDMI's requirements and not copy through further digital generations.
According to Macrovision SafeAudio will also be able to block straight digital dubbing from CD to blank CD--if the record industry dares ask for this and so alienate the millions of people who now own a CD recorder.
Macrovision took part in the recent SDMI meeting in Paris and is planning extensive field trials in the US around May-June ahead of formal proposals to the record industry and music publishers June-July.
Macrovision has a good track-record on ensuring compatibility with legacy equipment, born from a decade of copy-protecting VHS and DVD movies. But even it works I suspect AudioSafe will quickly become just another challenge for hackers to crack.
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