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Scotch Tape Stymies Sony Copy Protection

BillGates

BillGates

Diamond Member

Scotch Tape Stymies Sony Copy Protection
Nov. 21, 2005

With a small bit of tape on the outer edge of the CD, the PC then treats the disc as an ordinary single-session music CD and the commonly used music 'rip' programs continue to work as usual.

By Gregg Keizer
TechWeb News



Sony BMG Music's controversial copy-protection scheme can be defeated with a small piece of tape, a research firm said Monday in a demonstration of the futility of digital rights management (DRM).

According to Gartner analysts Martin Reynolds and Mike McGuire, Sony's XCP technology is stymied by sticking a fingernail-size piece of opaque tape on the outer edge of the CD.

That, the pair said in a brief posted online, renders "session 2 -- which contains the self-loading DRM software ? unreadable. The PC then treats the CD as an ordinary single-session music CD, and the commonly used CD 'rip' programs continue to work as usual."

Such simple work-arounds, said Reynolds and McGuire, make Sony's decision to copy protect is music CDs an even bigger mistake. "Sony BMG's DRM technology will prevent neither informed casual copiers nor high-volume 'pirates' from doing whatever they like with the content the disc," the analysts continued. "It does, however, load 'stealth' software ? software that has been demonstrated to have suspect effects ? on uninformed users' machines.

"The bottom line: Sony BMG has created serious public-relations and legal issues for itself, and for no good reason."

Only after 10 days of mounting criticism about its surreptitious installation of a hacker-style "rootkit" to users' PCs did Sony announce that it would end the copy-protection; a week later it said it would recall all unsold CDs and exchange those already in consumers' hands with unprotected discs.

Sony's exchange program also gives buyers of the 52 in-question CDs the option of receiving unprotected MP3 files of the album's tracks, in large part because the disc exchange process takes three to six weeks.

Those users will receive an e-mail directing them to a site where they can download the MP3 files, Sony said on its exchange program Web page.

This isn't the first time that simple methods have defeated a Sony copy-protection plan. An earlier technology that Sony used could be circumvented by using a black marker to draw a line near the edge of the disc.

"After more than five years of trying, the recording industry has not yet demonstrated a workable DRM scheme for music CDs," concluded the Gartner analysts. "It will never achieve this goal as long as CDs must be playable by stand-alone CD players."


http://informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=174400748
 
wasn't something like this out earlier? (I mean almost a year!) Except you had to use a marker on the outer edge or something???
 
Originally posted by: UlricT
wasn't something like this out earlier? (I mean almost a year!) Except you had to use a marker on the outer edge or something???
Click to expand...

Same concept, but scotch tape is a lot less permanent (though it does run the risk of exploding discs).

Viper GTS
 
Originally posted by: Mickey Eye
That would be the aforementioned sharpie technique. Plus sharpie is less of a risk to your reader.
Click to expand...

i gotta imagine a piece of tape, even a small one, on the outer edge of a disc spinning at 10,000 rpm could do some damage.

i bet the marker trick works on this again.

of course, so does disabling autoplay.
 
Wait, so Sony's infamous copy protection can ALSO be circumvented by a Sharpie? They didn't learn from the other label's copy protection scheme a few years ago?
 
Originally posted by: mercanucaribe
Wait, so Sony's infamous copy protection can ALSO be circumvented by a Sharpie? They didn't learn from the other label's copy protection scheme a few years ago?
Click to expand...

no, it was always sony with the sharpie trick.

i'm just guessing that the sharpie can interrupt the reading of the second track just as well as the tape can, for this most recent DRM scheme.
 
Originally posted by: ElFenix
Originally posted by: Mickey Eye
That would be the aforementioned sharpie technique. Plus sharpie is less of a risk to your reader.
Click to expand...

i gotta imagine a piece of tape, even a small one, on the outer edge of a disc spinning at 10,000 rpm could do some damage.

i bet the marker trick works on this again.

of course, so does disabling autoplay.
Click to expand...

Yep - I don't really want chunks of tape floating around in my cd drive. I'm betting the marker trick will work here also. Or disabling autoplay. Or telling MS to go fsck off. Your choice 😀
 
"Original":

Created On: 11/22/2005 05:08 AM

This one:

Created On: 11/21/2005 01:53 PM

The original was created after this one?
 
Sony is getting better. Their first multi-million dollar copy protection scheme was defeated with a Sharpie and their latest efforts have been defeated with Scotch Tape. Maybe they can go back to the drawing board, spend a few million more and come up with something that can only be defeated with a paper clip.
 
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