Felt tip marker hack now completely neutralized, says Midbar

August 29, 2002

Midbar, the Israeli company announced that their Cactus Data Shield technology is on 10 million CD's that that have been released in Japan and 30 million worldwide. As a side note the felt tip marker was invented in Japan. Their protection

CDS-100 technology, which caused myriad difficulties for PC users who attempted to play purchased CDs in their computers' CD-ROM drives, as well as in DVD players and car CD drives.

CDS-200 protection scheme, will play on computers by using "proprietary electronic circuits and software algorithms" to alter the data on the CD, making it unreadable by CD-copying software.

Midbar did add a feature in the last version of the CDS-200 that completely neutralizes even the remote possibility of its success."

There is some humor in this story

a grassroots effort will surely soon be underway to test that claim. Japan's Pentel, Inc., once known as the Japan Stationery Company, is credited with the invention of the felt-tip marker back in the mid-60's, and a company representive assured us that production levels are more than adequate to cover any increased demand as a result of the millions of copy-protected CDs flooding the market.

Also sometime between now and end of the year Midbar will release CDS-300 technology

which will work with downloadable music services, to prevent data streams from being copied by the user.

Okay they may have stopped the felt tip marker but surely there are more ways to skin a cat so this is perhaps wishful thinking on the part of Midbar.

Source: The Register