Cracking CD Protection
On the subject of copy protection (ahem), I’m sure you’ve all seen this story (about which method The Register suggests actually works):
Marker pens, sticky tape crack music CD protection
By John Leyden, The Register
Music disc copyright protection schemes such a Cactus Data Shield 100/200 and KeyAudio can be circumvented using tools as basic as marker pens and electrical tape, crackers have discovered.
The Blue Peter-style hack, which was first unearthed by a reader of chip.de works by covering up the outer ring of a copyright protected audio disc.
On copy protected discs this outer track is corrupted, which prevents copying, or even playback, by PCs but is ignored (at least in theory) by regular CD players.
Simply covering up the outer track disables the protection, allowing a disc to be played as normal in a PC or Mac.
Update: [2004.01.12] Folks, this was never a post about how to crack CDs but about the apparent futility of content protection methods. Every comment has been something like a request for info on how to crack this CD or that, so I’m closing comments because it’s a waste of your time and mine to leave them open.
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Posted to Computers • 2002.05.15 (Wed) • 02:56
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