A little while ago we reported that Macrovision has announced a new copy protection for audio CD's. Stvastva found an article in Stereophile magazine that gives us a little more information about this new protecion. (article scanned and digitalized with OCR software). You can read it below:
Music fans can forget the Serial Copy Management System '“ Macrovision Corporation is taking CD copy preven-tion to the next level. The folks who made it impossible to loop your DVD player through your VCR want to make sure you can't copy new music either. On February 27, Sunnyvale, California '“ based Macrovision announced that it will bepn beta-testing its Safeaudio Toolkit, a CD-audio copy-protection technology. One major record label has already completed its own testing, according to an okicial statement. Macrovision announced its intention to go forward with the technology late last year. |
Safeaudio (a trademark registered by Macrovision) is intended to prevent the copying of CDs, or tracks from CDs, onto CD-R discs. The technology was developed jointly by Macrovision and TTR Technologies, Inc. in response to the widespread availability of CD burn-ers and disc-compilation software. Safeaudio encoding is 'applie'd during the mastering process at CD manufac-turing facilities and is designed to pre-vent unauthorized copying of music CDs." The process takes place at the mastering house 'on existing replication equipment... automating the copy-pro-tection process and keeping the original unprotected master file secured," Macrovision claims.
'The proliferation of commercial-grade CD-recordables and inexpensive CD-R media has become a major con-cern to the music labels. We believe that Safeaudio provides an opportunity for the music industry to regain the billions of dollars lost to unauthorized casual copying. We are eager to start our beta trials and to get the technology into the hands of the music labels for evaluations," commented Macrovision presi-dent and COO Bill Krepick.
Safeaudio runs on standard PC Win-dows 95/98/ME/NT4 and Windows 2000, and consists of a 'Safeaudio pro-tection generator (SPG) program inte-grated with the Media Morphics and Eclipse EFM encoders." Macrovision has a strong track record with such ventures; their Safedisc CD-ROM software copy-protection technology has been licensed to more than 100 mastering and replica-tion facilities throughout the world and is used by many publishers. We have no idea how this will affect the tens of thou-sands of audiophiles who use separate D/A processors.
Looking at the success of SafeDisc, this protection will probably also give us the joy of bypassing it.
Source: mail
