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Encryption Security

Macrovision CD Protection Bypassed 301

Posted by timothy from the as-if-it-wouldn't-be dept.
LoPan writes: "The defective CDs that have recently arrived on the market have already had their copy protection broken according to The Register. What I'd like to know is if the discs do not conform to the Red Book standard, and if so, can they actually be sold as audio CD's, with the logo? Are they marked, warning consumers that they're buying a defective product?" The cdfreaks article referenced by the Register article tells you all you need to know. It's Windows-centric, but give it a few weeks and I bet cross-platform answers will show up.
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Macrovision CD Protection Bypassed More

Macrovision CD Protection Bypassed

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  • Has anyone tried cdparanoia? I would think that it would work on this intentional read corruption. Does that put the author of cdparanoia in violation of the DMCA? Shit, so I can intentionally scratch some cd's of mine and call it copyprotection while sueing that guy for writing cdparanoia?
  • This software shows all of the ".cda" files on the CD as ".wav" files.

    Question: Is there any loss of quality in converting from the CD native ".cda" files to the ".wav" format?

    • Question: Is there any loss of quality in converting from the CD native ".cda" files to the ".wav" format?

      .cda files are shortcuts to raw data stored in a Red Book track. This data is 16-bit stereo linear PCM at 44,100 samples per second. The most common version of the RIFF WAVE (.wav) format can encode (8*D)-bit C-channel linear PCM at F Hz, of which 16-bit stereo linear PCM at 44,100 Hz is a special case. (There are extensions to RIFF WAVE to handle MPEG layer 3 audio, but I'll skip those.) A Red Book extractor such as CDex or cdparanoia converts the raw data to the wav data by simply reading each 2,352-byte Red Book sector, changing the order of the bytes to fit RIFF WAVE's little-endian channel-interleaved data encoding, and writing the sector to a file.

  • I was originally going to post this as a response-to-a-response, but i got enough replies with similar content to reply outside the thread.

    I think my big problem here is that I don't fully understand what the DMCA actually -says-... so i looked up some key passages, let's read along:

    "Contracting parties shall provide adaquate legal protectiona nd effective legal remedies against the circumvention of effective technological measures that are used by authors in connection with the exercise of their rights under this treaty or the Berna convention and that restricts acts, in respect of their works, which are not authorized by the authors concerned or permitted by law."

    Now, since the electronic reproduction of digital media for archival purposes is legal, how can the creation of a tool that enables this practice be illegal (i apologize for posting this sentiment twice, but im going somewhere different with it)?

    Also an interesting little gem:

    [paragraph pointing out that circumventing copyright controls to -accessing- information is illegal, but not copying it. and then...]

    "This distinction was employed to assure that the public will have the continued ability to make fair use of copyrighted works. Since copying of a work may be a fair use under appropriate circumstanses, section 1201 does not prohibit the act of circumventing a technological measure that prevents copying. by contrast, since the fair use doctrine is not a defense to the act of gaining unauthorised access to a work, the act of circumventing a technological measure in order to gain access is prohibited."

    Sounds pretty clear-cut to me. By those guidelines, the DeCSS boys should have been clean as a whistle, same with the CDFreaks crew.

    Oh, and check out the footnote to that page:

    "'Copying' is used in this context as a short-hand for the exersise of any of the exclusive rights of an author ... a technological measure that prevents unauthorized distribution or public performance of a work would fall into this second category"

    Further down is a list of exceptions, section 1201(f), very interesting:

    "Reverse engineering. This exception permits circumvention and the development of technological means for such circumvention, by a person who has lawfully obtained a right to use a copy of a computer program for the sole purpose of identifying and analyzing elements of the program neccessary to achieve interoperability with other programs, to the extend that such acts are permitted under copyright law."

    "Encryption research (section 1201(g). An exception for encryption research permits the circumvention of access control measures, and the development of the technological means to do so, in order to identify flaws and vulnerabilities of encryption technologies."

    Now, it was mentioned earlier that CDfreaks could still be presented with a civil suit, but lets take a look at "remedies".

    "Any person injured by a violation of section 1201 or 1202 may bring a civil action in Federal court..." Since, according to said sections, no injury took place, no civil suit can be brought to court.

    Also interesting was the mention that nonprofit orginizations, archives, and educational institutions are excempt from liability.

    If you check out the new section in table two, section 512, "System Caching" is also excempt from liability. Since the CDFreaks software caches the audio track into RAM, wouldnt it be excempt?

    For all the DMCA bashing that goes on, actually reading it, it looks pretty fair and reasonable.

    The only possability then, is that the Powers that Be are all either unintelligent or receiving large bribes from the media industry.
      • Congress passes legislation that is vague and/or contradictory.
      • Somebody takes it to court
      • The court "interprets" the law. (Rinse and repeat for appeal process...)
      • If Congress is not sufficiently pleased with the outcome, new legislation is written...

      This crap happens all the time. "Let the courts hash it out." If constituents aren't happy with the law (as interpreted), the congress can claim they didn't mean for it to be interpreted the way it was... and then proceed to "fix" it.

  • I haven't bought a CD in over a year. Don't plan to either. I'm bypassing their protection... by not buying any more of their shit. I can find other places to spend my money (And no, I don't download illegal MP3s either.)

    I suppose in a while they'll make voting with your feet illegal too. It's a logical next step.

    • Well, I just can't afford NEW CD's, copy-protected or not. Especially now that I can't "preview" them on Napster. I spend $10 and buy second-hand at the used music store or even pawn shop. It's not like there isn't a vast back-catalogue of music to pick from, and with enough patience, you can find almost anything semi-mainstream... And I don't mind paying $17 to Righteous Babe [righteousbabe.com] or some other smaller label for truly innovative, fresh music - once in a while as a treat.

  • Beatles One (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This is one of the protected CDs...I bought this CD and wanted to rip it to play on my MP3 player.

    CDDA paranoia ripped this CD fine...here's how... You can't turn on the "accept no less than perfect" option...you will see errors during the read (V), but the end result is fine. You can only rip at 1x...I belive this is the key...most CD-Rippers will try to read at the fastest drive speed. I belive there are some portable CD players that read at faster than 1x (to fill their anti-skip buffers faster?)...obviously these CDs won't play correctly in these drives. And yes, there is no apparent CD-Audio icon on this disk.

  • Retroactive "circumvention device" status? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Jeremi ( 14640 ) on Wednesday August 01, 2001 @01:44PM (#6279) Homepage
    According to the CDFreaks article,

    Reported is that all software that is able to rip at Burst Copy Mode .... is able to rip SafeAudio protected CD's.

    So does this mean that these Burst Copy Mode programs, while previously legal, are now "circumvention devices" under the DMCA?

    If so, can I make a "protected" file format that Microsoft Office just happens to be able to read, and get Bill Gates arrested?

  • Maybe I'm a total ninny, but it seems like SafeDisc was doomed from the start.

    Think about it... they rely upon the data-correction system within RedBook CD Players to cancel out their intentional twiddling with the data. They're counting on computer players in raw data mode to send these errors, without correction, onto the software.

    Problem is, when you read in raw mode, you also get the correction data. So it's a simple matter of taking the data you got and correcting it in software. Thus, you end up with the corrected data stream.

    Am I missing something here? Seems like MacroVision was really grasping at straws with this.

  • CD Freaks Got It Wrong. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by chefmonkey ( 140671 ) on Wednesday August 01, 2001 @03:16PM (#10237)
    In reading the CD Freaks article, I'm fairly certain that they haven't figured out a way to rip the tracks; at least, not correctly.

    The earlier article sited on /. (I can't seem to find the damn thing right now) didn't say that attempting to rip protected disks would result in an error; it said that you'd end up with bursts of static. This technology works by placing bursts of static in the audio stream and marking them with a wildly wrong checksum. Audio CD players will interpolate over these bursts. Data CD readers will read the static in and (except for some models running at 1x) ignore the checksum altogether.

    The driver that CD Freaks points out is kind of cool; it means you don't need a dedicated ripper any more. The article, though doesn't indicate how it gets around the problem with the ECC codes being missing.

    Given this, and given knowledge of the way that CD-ROM drives work, I'd bet anyone here dimes to dollars that the CD Freaks "solution" won't be any more effective at circumventing the copy protection than any other CD ripper.

  • Titles please? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by sdo1 ( 213835 ) on Wednesday August 01, 2001 @01:21PM (#19128) Journal
    I have yet to see any titles of these so-called protected CDs. Until I see a title, I don't believe any of it.

    -S

    • Re:Titles please? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by volsung ( 378 )
      I want to second this request. I'm seeing way to much ranting on this topic, and not enough hard data. How can anyone evaluate this system or claim to have broken it without a CD using SafeAudio to test it on? Therefore, identifying such a CD should be our first priority, not talking out our posterior.

      And to all of you people who replied sarcastically to this poster: You're all idiots. If the only evidence for the earth's roundness or the Holocaust was press releases, fluffy news articles, and Slashdot posts, I'd have a hard time drawing any conclusions too.

      So let me repeat my plea:

      DOES ANYONE HAVE ANY FIRST-HAND INFORMATION ON THESE DISKS?

      I don't care about how this makes you feel, or what your friend told you. Thanks.

    • >>I have yet to see any titles of these so-called protected CDs. Until I see a title, I don't believe any of it.

      Be careful you dont sail off the edge of the world either..

    • Re:Titles please? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by sdo1 ( 213835 ) on Wednesday August 01, 2001 @02:51PM (#36336) Journal
      Troll? Oh, come on. First we read that they've released THOUSANDS of CDs with this Macrovision technology on them... yet still not one title documented.

      Then we read "Oh joy! The protection has been broken!" Broken on WHAT? Until someone can produce a title and say what was done, I don't believe that there's really any "protected" CDs out there, and I don't believe that there's any protection that has been broken. Is that so hard to figure out. I'll change my tune as soon as someone identifies a CD that this has been done to.

      Every single time this has come up on /. I've asked if anyone has a title... just one. NO ONE HAS ANY IDEA what titles this was used on. The people here have an incredible ability to dig up bits of relevant data on a variety of subjects. But not this one. Not a single title verified. Without that data, I'm highly skeptical that the copy protection, if there is any, has been broken.

      Has anyone considered the possibility that these news stories are just being floated to gauge public response?

      -S
  • I know this may seem strange, but think about it. The only tech issue the public at large understands to any degree is napster. napster napster napster. Now there may be legal action against DeCSS stuff, and Sklyarov may be in jail, but no one seems to know about that. What most people do know, though, is that mp3s exist and have some sort of controversy associated with them.

    So what happens if people get prosecuted for this particular violation of the DMCA? it makes the news. People hear about how they can't even rip their own cds and play them on that $200 rio they just bought. People might have wasted their money. Now of course, if people are prosecuted for violation of the DMCA, which incidently they did break, they will be convicted. The next thing to do is appeal up to the supreme court on the grounds that the law is unconstitutional for all the various reasons that we /. folks are so familiar with.

    If the Court has any sense, they'll agree, and the DMCA will be out of our lives.

    If the people prosecuted as violating the DMCA win it is possible that the law is never appealed and eventually we all get screwed when the US completes its deterioration into a corporate republic.
  • Since the article on CDFreaks has been slashdotted (imagine?) and even if you do get through, the links to the workaround don't lead to the required file, here is a quick summary.

    The workaround is simple, just replace the file cdfs.vxd on your Win9x machine, then when you go into explorer and open up a music CD, you will see a list of WAV files in various formats. Simply drag them onto your HD, then use whatever software you want to convert from WAV to MP3.

    The author's site isn't responding, but you can download the file from Dave Central [davecentral.com] fairly reliably.

    • Here is a more complete summary of the workaround taken from the readme that comes with the cdfs.vxd driver replacement.

      Use this alternate CDFS.VXD cd driver on Win9x to show Audio CD's as WAV files IN THE FILE SYSTEM! This replacement driver shows WAV files in a variety of qualities. It works on any CD drive that Windows can support.

      Then you can use your favorite Wave Editor program to read directly from the CD.

      Put it in your \Windows\System\IOSubSys directory, and reboot. You can rename the old CDFS.VXD to CDFS.old for archive purposes.

  • Here's what I'm trying to say and ask. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by AtariDatacenter ( 31657 ) on Wednesday August 01, 2001 @01:52PM (#21594)
    I don't think my last post did an elegant job on it. We all know that the code that allows you to bypass the Macrovision CD copy protection is a DMCA violation. That should be obvious.

    But isn't it just as much of a violation to bypass the Macrovision copy protection via sampling an audio stream, or recording the analog stream to another device?

    By doing so, you are bypassing their mechanism to prevent the CD from being copied. And nothing in the DMCA says that it has to be 100% effective against all means of copying.

    So does that make analog copying a violation because you are bypassing the digital protection?

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday August 01, 2001 @01:44PM (#23024)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • reminds me.... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by rixdaffy ( 138224 )

    of the good old days when commercial pc games were "protected" by putting bad sectors on the diskettes (yes when they still fitted on a few disks and were twice as fun as modern games) ... to prevent regular diskcopy to work... of course it didn't take long before we had programs that were able to copy the bad sectors too :-)

  • Already announced at CD Media World (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Stavr0 ( 35032 ) on Wednesday August 01, 2001 @04:23PM (#23931) Homepage Journal
    This news item came out a week ago:
    http://www.cdmediaworld.com/hardware/cdrom/cd_prot ections_safeaudio.shtml [cdmediaworld.com]

  • Question about the DMCA (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Fat Rat Bastard ( 170520 ) on Wednesday August 01, 2001 @01:30PM (#24213) Homepage
    This article has gotten me thinking again about the DMCA's "no circumvention device" clause again. How does one define a copyright protecting system? (I know this is a rhetorical question, something the courts will have to decide). At first glance I thought "Oh no, these guys are going to get a nasty lawyergram from Macrovision, RIAA, etc." But the more I thought about it the more I realized that this could be a quagmire. For instance, if I found a way to rip a Macrovision'ed disc that de-mungs the munged error correcting data I could see how that might run afoul of the DMCA. But what if someone simply pipes the music through the analog inputs of a soundcard, or rips the CD from a cd player with a digital audio out? Since no "circumvention" took place in these cases we now have a situation where, while the destination is the same, one "journey" is legal and the other is illegal.

    Yet another reason the law should punish "conduct" and not code.

    • How does one define a copyright protecting system?

      Answer: badly.

      It's not really a rhetorical question. The DMCA defines a technological protections measure, basically, as a process that applies information in order to gain access to the work in question. It is indeed THAT broad.

      Not only is it ridiculously broad, it is of course a bad definition. Note: the Macrovision CD protection is the same type of "copy prevention technology" that CSS is: it does not in fact prevent copying, or even access to the work. It makes it difficult to read the work when it is used in a strictly controlled tech environment (ie, read in the environment of the copyright holder's choice). Both tpms do this, though, with "application of information in a process", so they count as tpms. But of course this isn't copy or access prevention, but access adulteration.

      Only because the copyright holder is able to control the tech with which you read the work you have purchased or otherwise legally stolen, is - so far - any post-purchase access-adulteration "copy protection measure" even remotely conceivable.

      You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

    • Re:Question about the DMCA (Score:4, Informative)

      by _xeno_ ( 155264 ) on Wednesday August 01, 2001 @02:05PM (#14047) Homepage Journal
      How does one define a copyright protecting system?

      Well, they'll have to decide exactly what it means, but the DMCA itself [eff.org] (from the EFF [eff.org]) says in Section 1201, subsection (a)(3):

      `(3) As used in this subsection--
      `(A) to `circumvent a technological measure' means to descramble a scrambled work, to decrypt an encrypted work, or otherwise to avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate, or impair a technological measure, without the authority of the copyright owner; and

      `(B) a technological measure `effectively controls access to a work' if the measure, in the ordinary course of its operation, requires the application of information, or a process or a treatment, with the authority of the copyright owner, to gain access to the work.

      You'll notice that even "impairing" a technical measure is illegal - if you do anything to "avoid" the measure, that is still illegal. It would seem to me that this device would fall under this terms, as it "impares" or "avoids" the measure designed to protect copyright...

      As for whether or not what Macrovision is doing is a "measure" to protect copyright, it would seem that it is, as a "process or treatment" (namely error correction) is required to "access" the work. Which means that most likely, those of us in the United States, the land of the Free*, cannot legally use this system.

      * Does not include tax, title or license. Some restrictions may apply.

      • By that rationale, no one can sell a CD player without the permission of the copyright holder. No, the only way the DMCA is going to apply is if they stop the backward compatibility. The key phrase here is "with the authority of the copyright owner". CD player manufacturers do not have this, so neither must software CD player manufacturers.
        • > By that rationale, no one can sell a CD player without the permission of the copyright holder.

          That's pretty much how it works for DVD players. Expect them to try their damndest to phase out CD's for audio DVD's.
      • What I find weird is that in this case, the names of the CDs in question were not made publicly available. I could buy a protected CD, not knowing it was protected. I could then try to rip it and fail. I might then try to rip it by recording from analog in. I would have then circumvented the protection and broken the law without knowing it.

        Am I wrong here? (I hope so.)

        --Ben

    • For instance, if I found a way to rip a Macrovision'ed disc that de-mungs the munged error correcting data I could see how that might run afoul of the DMCA. But what if someone simply pipes the music through the analog inputs of a soundcard, or rips the CD from a cd player with a digital audio out? Since no "circumvention" took place in these cases we now have a situation where, while the destination is the same, one "journey" is legal and the other is illegal.

      This has always been true. It's pretty much a waste of time for RIAA and its ilk to attack duplicating, since we all have that capability, or could get it fairly easily if we don't already.

      They go on about the "quality" of the recording, but in the end it all comes down to how much the intermediaries make off the artists. I was recently at WOMAD, where I bought a whole bunch of CDs for $16 and was glad to do so, since they get a major cut of the money (many dollars), not the usual 4 to 16 cents per CD that most recording artists get. Which is why I also buy my music from touring bands - more money to the artist.

      Until someone does something about that basic equation, I doubt piracy will ever be impacted.

      • Until someone does something about that basic equation, I doubt piracy will ever be impacted.

        The vast majority of people don't care that artists don't make any money. A lot of people use that as an excuse, but in reality they just want the free music. (How many people ever got around sending money to the artists after Naptering/etc. the music? Not many.) Most people don't feel any responsibility towards someone that they don't know personally, and so they don't see anything wrong with taking the music for free.

        Sounds like you really are serious about getting money to the artists. Good for you. But even if the distribution of money changes, piracy isn't going to slow down much.

        • (How many people ever got around sending money to the artists after Naptering/etc. the music? Not many.)

          Many.

          Remember, the studies show that Napster users buy more CDs.

    • Chances are that this method fails the "effectively controls access" qualifier, and DMCA won't apply. You pretty much can't make a CD that is both:

      1. Covered by DMCA
      2. Playable on old equipment
      Choose one. Either break compatability, or live w/out DMCA protection.
  • In many countries (eg. Russia), releasing such an album would be against the law. Here, in the U.S., it isn't. However, I, as a Christian, would never let my record company release one of my albums with this scheme, because it is an attempt to take advantage of the customer.

    Legal, but not moral by my book. I hope more artists will see it this way too.

    If you're not a Christian, move on. Nothing to see here...

  • Be honest now.... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Rackemup ( 160230 ) on Wednesday August 01, 2001 @01:34PM (#24870) Homepage
    How many people didn't see this coming? Don't be shy, raise your hand if you actually BELIEVED FOR A SECOND that this copy-protection scheme would work...

    I think it's funny that they introduced these special CDs onto the market in the first place. People buy CDs for the high-quality music, and then they go and release this "copy-protection" scheme that purposly screws up the data so bad people can't copy the music to their computers.

    Here's a little knowledge-nugget© for you record-producer-type people, some of us rip songs from CDs into MP3 format because it's WAY more convenient to listen to. That doesnt mean I'm going to share the data with the world just to spite the record companies... I know there are people who no longer buy CD's because the music is so easy to find online (and they should be punished for doing this), but I've actually bought MORE CD's in the past year or 2 because I had listened to the music online first.

    Instead of trying to find a way to prevent people from using the CDs that they've bought at a normal store, how about figuring out a way to encourage online users to support the bands who actually make the music....

    • but on the other hand, if you're exposing yourself to new music using mp3s, you're also subverting the economics that the record companies expect. they expect that if they force you to listen to something on the radio or mtv, then you'll go out and buy it. that's why n'sync and all the other shit like that is popular. nobody likes it because they normally would find it appealing. people like it because they're trained to like it.

      if you start liking music on your own and ignore the schlock that you're force-fed, then you're adding unknowns to the system, and the record companies can't consolidate their catalogs to accomodate a universal taste, a goal to which they've been aspiring recently. During the merger-mania the record companies were going through last year, a lot of bands were dropped to slim down the rosters to a small pile of the most profitable "musicians." They WANT to produce as little variety of product as possible to reduce costs, and still sell enough to keep a nice fat income. finding new music on your own gets in the way of that goal.

    • There is an essay on kuro5hin [kuro5hin.org] about a similar thing today.
    • Any and all encryption / security device is just a deterrent. Someone who wants it bad enough will go out and get it.

      Now, most people value their time, and there is a certain threshold where they'll just fess up and stop trying to crack something.

      RIAA knows this, Microsoft knows this, and even the people who wrote the DMCA know this. (The DMCA just raises that bar for everyone... it's meant to make copying happen less often, not try and make it more difficult.)

  • RedBook conformity (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Nihilanth ( 470467 ) <chaoswave2&aol,com> on Wednesday August 01, 2001 @01:33PM (#25086)
    I would imagine the "secure" audio CDs would still conform to the Redbook Standard, since the CDs are only "secure" because the fidelity of the recording is garbled ("corrupts the data", said The Register) in a way that a Hi-Fidelity playback device would be able to deal with, but would cause A CD-ROM drive to error out. Since the redbook standard seems to focus primarily on the physical composition of the compact disc (and the leadin track and "stuff") and not the format of the data on the disk, I would imagine they're still "redbook kosher", they just have intentionally error-riffic data imprinted on them.

    CDFreak's software is really neat, from what i've read about it. It reads in the audio track into RAM and mounts it as a volume, and involved creating a custom VXD, sounds pretty innovative.

    As for a couple of posts i've read about CDFreak being in danger of legal repercussions, their case is different from Dmitry's in that (please correct me if i'm mistaken) they're giving the software away for free, not selling it to make money, so they're not breaking any laws, even under the DMCA.
    • As for a couple of posts i've read about CDFreak being in danger of legal repercussions, their case is different from Dmitry's in that (please correct me if i'm mistaken) they're giving the software away for free, not selling it to make money, so they're not breaking any laws, even under the DMCA.

      If they aren't distributing their tool "for commercial advantage," then they can't be charged with a criminal violation of the DMCA. However, Macrovision can still file a civil suit against them, probably leaving them in debt to Macrovision (and to their own attorneys) for the rest of their lives.

    • Re:RedBook conformity (Score:3, Informative)

      by _xeno_ ( 155264 )
      As for a couple of posts i've read about CDFreak being in danger of legal repercussions, their case is different from Dmitry's in that (please correct me if i'm mistaken) they're giving the software away for free, not selling it to make money, so they're not breaking any laws, even under the DMCA.

      Sorry, you asked for it (literally), but you are mistaken. From the DMCA (as reproduced by the EFF) [eff.org]:

      `(2) No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that--

      `(A) is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title;

      `(B) has only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title; or

      `(C) is marketed by that person or another acting in concert with that person with that person's knowledge for use in circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.

      Notice it does not say they have to "selling" the device, only "traffic" in it. Now while Sec 1201, subsection (a)(1)(E)(2)(C) (is that how you reference it?) says "is marketed," that has been interpretted in the past as meaning something along the lines of "offered" and not necessarily "offered for trade."

      So it would seem that yet, they can still be tried criminally under the DMCA.

      • Hmmm... the DMCA states, "...`(A) is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls...".

        So, that means that anything that's purpose is not circumvention, but use, should be legal. IANAL, but I speak English, and that is what those words mean.
        If that's the case, then why are we losing the DeCSS case? DeCSS is only a part of what was supposed to be used for playing DVDs, so why is it illegal?

      • So it would seem that yet, they can still be tried criminally under the DMCA

        Am I mistaken, or isn't this CDFS software the same exact VXD that's been out there for YEARS, used primarily to make it easier to rip to MP3, back when it was a lot easier to find WAV-2-MP3 converters rather than digital CD converters?

        I remember using this software way back then.

        Unless it's been changed specifically for the purpose of getting past SafeAudio, I do not see how they could possibly be arrested because of the DMCA.

    • CDFreak's software is really neat, from what i've read about it. It reads in the audio track into RAM and mounts it as a volume, and involved creating a custom VXD, sounds pretty innovative.

      That's about as innovative as MS Windows. Filesystems that treat the audio tracks on CDs as files, have been around for many years. I think I played with one on my Amiga, oh, about 4 or 5 years ago (and it was old then)?

    • Umm... sorry (for all of us) - but the fact that CDFreak is not selling their software will provide them no protection at all against DMCA actions (civil and criminal).

      The point is that they are distributing a copyright-protection circumvention device; even the tangential benefits that they realize by doing this (more visitors to their website?) will suffice to make them liable.

      I'm wagering they'll be the next copyright-lobby DMCA-effectiveness poster-children, myself.

      -Renard

  • Familiar (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Ed Avis ( 5917 ) <ed@membled.com> on Wednesday August 01, 2001 @01:33PM (#25745) Homepage
    This reminds me of copy protection schemes for floppy disks that worked by deliberate corruption. Changing the checksum for a particular sector of the disk, or something, so it would appear that any read had failed. It wasn't done at the filesystem level because even a 'raw backup' would fail.

    I remember thinking at the time, I wish this machine would stop trying to be helpful and check the validity of what it's reading, and instead just give me the data with no questions asked.

    I know that CDs use some kind of Gray code or other ECC to encode 16-bit sample values into 20-bit words or something similar. Then there are other error-correction measures, checksums and so on. That's why a CD holds only 650Mbyte (or a bit more) although the physical capacity in terms of raw bits is much higher.

    Is there any software or hardware to give a genuinely 'raw' CD image, before any of the error correction has been performed? Such an image would probably be around a gigabyte in size.

    • Re:Familiar (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      CD's are encoded at the physical level in 14 bit words. This was not for security, or error correction, but due to the physical properties. Let me explain. CD's are enconded with physical pits and lands. Lands and pits are not distinguishable by an ordinary CD reader, and both represent binary zero! (really, I'm not making this up). The CD reader can distinguish the transistion between lands and pits (thank you destructive interference), and these represent binary ones. Now, the reason for 14bit encoding is that the encoding rules require at least 3 zeroes between each one, and no more than 11 zeroes between each one. There happens to at least 256 14bit words that fit this criteria. The CD reader does the 14bit to 8bit conversion after it performs error correction. There are two level of error correction.

      • Re:Familiar (Score:3, Interesting)

        by gorilla ( 36491 )
        Encoding by changing from one state to another instead of directly encoding the bits in the state is actually quite a common way to encode data, it's called 'zero crossing', and it's done because sometimes it's easier to detect a change in a state than tell exactly what the state is. T1 lines and X10 use it too.
    • You could try BlindWrite [blindwrite.com]

      Blurb from the page: What's all this, then?

      The BlindWrite suite is a tool designed to perfectly reproduce most CD.

      To be or not to be (RAW mode compatible) ?

      RAW mode is needed to produce perfect backups of some protected CDs !

      DAO mode is even better. Almost all protected CD can be perfectly backed up using with DAO.

      Blindread / Blindwrite are perfect tools to produce backups in RAW and DAO mode.

      Don't know if that's what you mean?

      Michael

    • Re:Familiar (Score:3, Interesting)

      by kstumpf ( 218897 )
      I think you're referring to raw recording, in which you can read/write 2336 bytes per sector rather than 2048. Its used as a copyright measure pretty often, since very few drives now handle raw sectors as you'd expect. I remember reading that this ability was dropped in order to gain faster speeds for rewritable drives. Yeah yeah yeah...

      I have a Ricoh MP6200S which I bought several years ago. It's 6X read, 2X write/rewrite, but I won't trade it for anything in the world. The only CD I havent been able to duplicate on it thus far was Black & White (not worth copying anyway).

      Most new cd ripping software typically does not support this drive since its so old. I'm still using a dos-based copy of DAO (precursor to CDRWIN). I originally got this setup in order to copy my PSX disks (which require raw reads) so I had all my games at home and at college.

      Anyhow, if you want a powerful (albeit slow) drive, look up older models on eBay.

    • CloneCD [www.elby.de] makes a bit-by-bit image of a CD. It will still run into the errors that are introduced by some copy protection, but it'll skip right over them, and you can also make it copy the errors, which need to be there for some copy protection programs. I've used this to make Backup copies of Black & White and The Sims, which both use a copy protection that fools EZCD and Nero by introducing errors into the first 1000 blocks of data. Not sure if this is what you're looking for, but it sure helped me out.

  • BeOS (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Gothmolly ( 148874 )
    How does this "technology" affect BeOS users? BeOS has the ability to mount CDs and read the WAV files right off them.

  • Heh (Score:2, Redundant)

    by Have Blue ( 616 )
    Just proves a few old truths:
    • If a special-purpose machine can do it, a general-purpose machine can do it nearly as well, and a faster general-purpose machine can do it better.
    • If it can be seen or heard, it can be copied.


    Oh, and first post :P

  • Ahh, Macrovision (Score:3, Insightful)

    by kaszeta ( 322161 ) <rich@kaszeta.org> on Wednesday August 01, 2001 @01:30PM (#29933) Homepage

    I still don't get how they think this is a deterrent... The most frequent use of ripping discs these days is to make MP3's of them.

    Well, mp3 encoding is lossy (although unless you are foolishly stingy with the bitrate the loss is very slight). Since someone ripping mp3's is willing to accept a slight amount of degradation, they should also be perfectly happy with a nice digitally filtered copy of the song with all the Macrovision glitches removed.

    Heck, if your CD player can do it, so can software---your CD player doesn't really do anything all that fancy with filtering anyways.

    Then again, don't be surprised---it's not like Macrovisions stuff ever really stopped people from copying VHS tapes or dubbing DVD's onto VHS for their friends...

    • From what I gather about what has been released, software can only "do it" if it can read all the raw data off of the CD meaning both the audio data and the correction data. The computer could then identify exactly which samples are "uncorrectable errors" and create the interpolated samples between the known errors and the known good samples.

      Current systems CD-ROM data paths usually return an audio sector that has been verified correct, one that has been corrected, or the raw correct-or-not sector data. They don't usually return the error correction bits so that software can analyze the sectors and fix them.

      If I'm way off and most CD-ROM drives out there provide a simple way to read the data with correction bits, then you are right. The software will be able to do the same interpolation the player hardware does.

      You can still rip at 1x using your CD-ROM's audio path. And, as you said in your post, mp3 is lossy so the loss of quality caused by going D to A then A to D may not bother people as much. They're just upping your CD rip time from 10 minutes to 60 minutes. Once ripped, the file can float among all the others in the great P2P file sharing netherworld.

    • Re:Ahh, Macrovision (Score:4, Insightful)

      by cnaumann ( 466328 ) on Wednesday August 01, 2001 @02:21PM (#12159)
      In its twisted way, it is an anti-deterrent. Suppose they come up with a 100% fool-proof way to stop CD ripping. What would happen if someone wanted an MP3 from that album? They would turn to one of the many file sharing applications of course! Somewhere out there, there will be a digital copy. Eliminating 95% of the ripping does not mean that the MP3 would be 95% less avialable. The logic of need for CD protection is flawed beyond comprehension. The record companies should be doing the oposite, putting good MP3s on the CD with the regular stuff, making CDs that are easier to read on computers. They are trying to protect themselves from the people who are actually buying the CDs. By locking up the CD, they are giving people even less insentive to buy them. Most manufacturers make an effort to make their products easier to use, but for some very odd reasons, the record companies have decided to the way to increased sales is by making their product more difficult to use. Unfortunately, cracking the copy protection is the wrong solution to this non-sense. The correct solution would be for consumers to reject the CDs like Divx.

  • What about CD players with digital output? (Score:4, Informative)

    by Karpe ( 1147 ) on Wednesday August 01, 2001 @02:10PM (#32141) Homepage
    It is very common now to buy CD players with digital outputs. How does this anti-copying mechanisms work with these outputs? Isn't it just the case to connect these outputs to a soundcard with a digital input? I know the SB Live! has such a connector, altough it "upsamples" every input to 48kHZ PCM. I know the Santa Cruz by Turtle Beach also has such an input, but am not sure if it also does this "upsample". Well, you wouldn' lose quality by transforming the 44.1 to 48 sampling rate, but if you would then downsample the 48 back to 44.1 I don't know what the algorithms would do. Would they just take the original 44.1k samples or get some of the "generated" samples?
    • Resampling digital audio always has detrimental effects. Doing it twice (44.1 to 48 and back) makes these issues worse. Three times (44.1 to 48 to 44.1 and 48 again on playback through an SBLive!) is obviously quite a bit of comb-filtering bit-munging.

      Better to just buy a card with a non-resampling assortment of SP/DIF I/O, such as the plethora of "pro" cards from Lexicon, M-Audio and the like.

      Or, a $30 Zoltrix Nightingale (or about any other card [including some motherboards] based on the CMI8738 chip) will do the trick nicely with coax or toslink. Also works well as a hardware format converter, and an SCMS stripper.

      While I'm on the subject, the error correction of a CD player takes place well before the bits reach the digital output.

      While I'm on the subject, it occurs to me that such things as SafeAudio lend a hand toward legitimizing filesharing services. "Well, your Honour, I didn't have any way to utilize Fair Use and use this CD in the MP3 player that came with my new Mazda, so I downloaded the files from someone else who was able to figure it out."
  • Doesn't that make an audio CD player a device for copyright protection circumvention? If it won't play in a computer CDROM when reading the raw data, it would seem that using an audio cd player to make a copy is circumventing the copy protection!

  • All I have to say is HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
    It seems that every bit of protection they [RIAA] come up with (SDMI, SafeAudio), it gets cracked. The article summed it up in one line: "of course most of the CD Freaks visitors are able to bypass the protections, but the average home user will not". Once again, this just proves that they're not preventing people from copying music, but just pissing off the regular buyers/listeners.
    • Why do you think they made it against the law to crack them? They know as well as we do that anything that can be read into memory ultimately can be copied. Attacking users for copyright violations is useless -- it costs more for your lawyers to go after them than you'll ever get out of them. So set it up so you can go after the people who make copying possible, kill off that troublesome "Fair Use" and (try to) ensure that you'll never have any piracy related "losses."

      Of course, the software industry went through a copy protection phase too. They ultimately decided that it was too much of a pain in the ass. A lot of customers simply avoided the copy protected software because it was such a pain to deal with the protection. Others copied it anyway because cracks always came about. The problem with "losses" is they don't reflect on the sales sheet. If you tell investors "We implemted foo copy protection and our sales dropped off" because the people pirating weren't going to buy your software anyway, the copy protection goes away pretty quick.

  • The problem with many of the copy-protections systems is that they only make it difficult for the your average listener to copy the data. Commercial pirates will always look at all possible ways to break the protection, as they see an incentive to make money. This means that while fair use is stamped out, nothing is realistically done about the people the record industry should really be worrying about.

    The truth is what-ever copy protection system exists, it will only be a matter of time before it is broken, since on the one hand people want their rights back and on the other you have some people wanting to make money whatever the costs.
  • WINE doesn't work with programs that have been crippled with Macrovision (Safedisc) -- such as Sybex's CCNA Virtual Lab e-trainer. I've tried patches, and will give it another go tonight.

    It's very annoying to have paid $100usd yet the program doesn't even pop-up an error message that could give any hints why it's not happy. Did I mention that I'm annoyed?

    Maybe a generic fix for this nonsense will end up in Wine? That would be nice...

  • So what? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by telemnar ( 68532 )
    What has continued to surprise me is that no one seems to have caught on that this particular copy protection like this only affects DAE (digital audio extraction, isn't it?). Good ol' analog ripping - by way of the MPC/2/3 CD-Audio out from the CD-ROM drive, or even a 1/8" stereo mini plug, or better yet, a pair of composite RCA type plugs... into the line input of your sound card, or hell, any other recording device - would be a, perhaps inelegant, but still effective way to rip... and is that even circumventing anything? Is recording from a supposedly secure standalone CD player illegal yet?

    I'm not bothered so much by purposefully garbled music as I am by the idea of authentication. Music that requires a certified legitimate player to show its papers, players that require music to do the same, all in the name of preserving the profit of record companies... Read this great article [discover.com] by Jaron Lanier over at Discover Magazine. (first saw it on a /. post some time ago, no I don't remember where/when) It's a great what-if about the possible future of secured music, and he makes a damn good point - all of the mechanisms for effecting complete control over what and how you listen are being slowly and for the most part quietly put into place... and that scares me.

  • I was waiting to get my hands on one of those CDs with copy interference and see if I could hack a CD player to supply raw digital data to some kind of aquisition board or something connected to the computer. I know some electronics but very little about CD players so I thought it would be a fun project. Maybe an EE could do it as a digital design project sometime.

    Anybody know where I could find specs or schematics or service manuals for old Sony Discmans (Discmen?)...? Or any other info useful for such a project?

  • "...already had their copy protection broken ..."

    There is NOTHING int he Macrovision spec that prevents copying. Absolutely NOTHING. You can still stick them in your Unix box and copy those AIF's right off it. You can still do an EXACT copy of the CD with any off the shelf CD burner. Don't call it copy protection. Call it what it is, "Conversion Protection".

    If anyone callsit "copy protection" stupid Joe Reporter will pick up on it, and use it as a buzzword.

  • Annoyance (Score:3, Interesting)

    by verbatim ( 18390 ) on Wednesday August 01, 2001 @05:01PM (#43993) Homepage
    I would like them (RIAA, Macrovision, etc) to explain why I don't have the right to convert CD audio into another format. I have a Creative Nomad (MP3 player that uses smartcards) and it is 10x better than a CD player (IMHO) - never skips, great quality, lots of features, etc. Isn't it fair use of the CD to convert it into a format that my MP3 player can understand? It's not like I'm ripping the CD and giving it to someone else - it's all for my own use, just like copying it to tape which, afaik, is perfectly legal (now, I understand that tapes are lower quality and this lower quality is RIAA's main reason for not caring).

    ???

    Good thing I'm in Canada and not subjigated to the DMCA... oh wait... dammit... they're bringing that over here.... arugh.

    Even so, I buy very few CD's anyway. Most of my favourite artists either give away MP3's and/or sell unprotected CD's. I adore the old Amiga tracker scene and all those great songs... so I'm happy ;).
  • Here is part of the article, since the site appears to be slashdotted.

    -=-

    SafeAudio, you probably already heard about it. It's the music industries latest technology to make sure they will get their money from the public.

    I've never seen a industry that is so keen on money and tries in any way to protect it's products so desperately. Since they have stopped Napster they are disliked by more and more people, but they don't seem to care.

    Altough SafeAudio is rather easy to bypass I think Macrovision can already market it as a success as it seems a lot of record companies have adopted the technology. Soon Macrovision will publish their results and I'm very curious how much they've made this year.

    ...

    SafeAudio protects a CD only from ripping. This means that converting your CD to MP3/WMA files should be impossible. Stupid of course, as there are MP3 players on the market, just like a walk/disc man that you can carry around and for those you NEED to convert your CD's.

    ...

    Macrovision and TTR (that started developing this technology) say that the error corrections that are done while you play a CD in your normal CD player/computer can not be heard, for now there is no reason to believe they are wrong.

    The main questions rises, can we bypass it ?

    ...

    Software that is able to do that, and besides that is always very handy is a modified version of CDFS.vxd. (Download here) Before installing this new windows CD-ROM driver you should think about 2 things:

    It does not work for Windows NT/2K/XP and with all CD-ROM players

    Make sure you have a backup of your original CDFS.vxd file (or just rename the old one to CDFS.old)

    You can find the CDFS.vxd file that has to be replaced in the folder:

    C:\Windows\System\IOSubSys

    If you have succesfully copied the file, you need to restart your computer so the file can be loaded in the OS.

    If all went well you can now open your Windows Explorer, and when you have a Audio CD in your drive it will show you all kinds of maps with choices of wav files. You can now pick the file you want and drag it to a folder on your HD !

    By dragging and dropping all the files to your HD you have a very easy to use way of making a backup of SafeAudio protected CD's, and damn what will those Macrovision guys feel bad

    -=-

    see the actual site later for more info.

    Enjoy.

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