On 8/23/99 I posted an article from STEREO REVIEW'S SOUND AND VISION
about a new "scheme" to make CDs copy-proof. Here's another article
from POPULAR SCIENCE along the same lines.
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Copy-Proof CDs
By this time next year, new coding on music CDs might prevent them
from being copied on CD recorders -- both those in PCs and in
stand-alone audio CD recorders. And because of this same coding,
audiophiles whose high-end components send a digital signal from their
CD players to a receiver or amplifier for better digital-to-analog
conversion might find their systems reduced to the level of regular
players with analog outputs.
These potential limitations are part of the AudioLok Red
copy-protection technology being developed by U.K.-based C-Dilla, a
subsidiary of Macrovision whose anti-copy system currently prevents
videotapes, DVDs, and pay-per-view movies from being recorded on VCRs.
AudioLok blocks a PC's CD-ROM drive from playing music CDs, thereby
foiling attempts to copy them or post them on the Internet.
AudioLok tricks CD-ROM drives into treating the disc as faulty by
writing intentional errors on the CD. Audio CD players ignore these
and play the disc as normal. But CD-ROM drives, with more stringent
error detection for PC data, reject the CD as unreadable.
C-Dilla also claims that it can prevent AudioLok discs played in
regular CD players from being copied on audio CD recorders -- although
the company doesn't say how. But since audio and CD recorders lack the
availability to copy CD-ROMs, passing the signal directly through the
CD player's digital outputs with the decoy errors intact would foil
recording. But this AudioLok application is likely to infuriate
consumers, since the price of their audio CD recorders and blank audio
CD discs include a royalty payment for the privilege of making digital
recordings of copyrighted works.
Meanwhile, other AudioLok errors transmitted in the digital signal
from a CD player's optical or coaxial output jacks prevent the signal
from being decoded by the high-end digital-to-analog converters that
are integrated into top-shelf audio receivers and amplifiers. The fact
that AudioLok can render these products inoperable will likely elicit
a challenge from the electronics industry, which regularly opposes any
technology that would defeat product functions consumers have paid
for.
-- Stephen A. Booth (POPULAR SCIENCE, October 1999. p. 59)
|"I have always imagined that
[EMAIL PROTECTED] | paradise will be a kind of
| library."
| --Jorge Luis Borges
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