Anatomy of Cactus Data Shield

meehawl writes: "This is a good analysis by CDRInfo on the current version of Midbar's Cactus Data Shield. This is the format Universal will use to protect its new audio CDs. It's been reported here already that some DVDs effectively bypass this protection, but this article addresses the specific concerns of how best to backup these protected CDs, and how to extract the music data at high quality for download to a personal MP3 listening device."

Comments

So, if the only CD player I have is a CDROM

[pyramid termite]

... I can only listen to the music as a 128 bps MP3. Why should I pay 12-13 bucks to do that when I can download 128 bps MP3s for nothing? (And yes, a person who knows how to record from one audio source to a computer can make an MP3 that's indistinguishable from one ripped from a CD.)

This is a shameless rip-off of the consumer. It's fraudulent, in fact. When I buy a CD, I expect CD quality music, not MP3s. They should have to put a sticker on the case explaining that computer users get MP3 only quality.

And yes, my only CD player IS a CD-ROM. I won't buy one of these "CDs" ever.

My first copy-pretection experience

[tjansen]

Here is my first experience with a copy-protected cd:
it was 'Better Days' by JOE (Jive Records/Zomba). I got it from Amazon.de. The only sign that it was copy-protected was a very small printing on the back side "This CD is not playable on computers (CD-ROM/DVD-ROM)". So I tried it on my computer running Linux, with a Creative Dxr2 5x DVD-ROM and I could hear it on audio mode. To my surprise I was also able to rip it using cdparanoia (otherwise I would have returned it immediately, I have far too many CDs to manage them in any for but Ogg Vorbis or MP3 format). So I tried it on my DVD-Player (Yamakawa AVphile 715), and it worked, too. However I noticed that the player needed an unusual long time to detect it as a CD. Next try was my stereo, an old Sony CD player: worked fine as well. Then I tried a Windows PC with a 40x Pioneer CD-ROM: did not detect the CD. Ok, so at least in one cd drive the copy protection worked.

I thought about the possibility of returning it to Amazon, but I felt bad about the idea of returning a CD that I had already ripped and that worked in most computers, so I didnt do this. I wrote a letter to Amazon.de though, asking them to include information about copy protected CDs in the description and I told them that I would never buy a copy-protected CD, and if I would ever get another one I would return it immediately. They replied, telling that they cannot put this information in the description, but because of the special circumstances I was allowed to return even opened CDs if they are copy-protected.

Ability to play in a computer is questionable

[Phil Wherry]

I'm just about to finish up ripping all of my CDs to 160 Kbps MP3 format so I can do casual listening without handling physical media. I'm not too terribly bothered by the loss in quality caused by compression, since I've got the original media to work with for those occasions when I need higher fidelity.

It occurs to me, though, that the inclusion of a compressed audio player on the CD really doesn't solve the problem, even if it's possible to copy the audio files in some protected way to a hard disk.

Here's why: my earliest CDs were purchased in early 1986. At that time, my PC was running MS-DOS 3.1. Think for a moment about the odds of a copy-protected program from 1986 working unmodified in a modern computer--let alone the computers we'll have twenty years hence. The inclusion of a copy-protected player program in lieu of a standards-compliant CD looks even more pitiful when one stops to consider the fact that the player program will be basically unuseable in a few years' time.

What about CD recorders and the AHRA?

[dpbsmith]

I own a Teac RW-CD22 CD Recorder.

According to the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992, I'm AUTHORIZED to make single-generation digital copies of CD's onto "Music CD-R" media, a portion of whose price includes a payment into two funds administered by the Library of Congress: two-thirds into a Sound Recordings Fund, with small percentages of this fund earmarked for nonfeatured artists and backup musicians, 40% of the remainder for featured artists, and the rest to record companies; one-third into a Musical Works Fund, to be split 50/50 between songwriters and music publishers.

My Teac appears to be rapidly turning into worthless junk. UMG's "More Fast and Furious" will not copy on it (it gives the error message "CANT COPY, SCMS ERROR").

So, the copy protection fails to prevent UNauthorized copies... but succeeds in preventing AUTHORIZED copies.

Midbar and UMG are cheating those of us who BOUGHT and PAID FOR the right to make copies.

Isn't it all just ones and zeros?

[HuskyDog]

At the end of the day, a CD is just a great big heap of ones and zeros. In some fancy way, your CD player turns this into sound. Presumably, it does this via a combination of software and nifty electronics (which could be emulated in software). So, therefore, if we could extract all the ones and zeros we could write a program which emulates an audio CD player (on which these crippled discs seem to work fine). We just put an OGG encoder where the D/A converter would be and voila! If a 15 year old CD player can convert the binary data into sound, then so can we.

So, what is the problem with implementing this scheme (apart from the DMCA). Is it that there is no way of persuading a CDROM drive to output the raw data? If so, this just confirms my view that the entire problem lies in CDROM firmware. Could we re-flash this in some drives?

Somewhere in a CD player the bits we want are wizzing along a PCB track. Does anyone know the practicality of tapping into this?

Just my random thoughts on the topic.