JVC Announces Technology To Prevent Software Copying

An anonymous reader writes: "JVC and Hudson soft Co. of Japan have created a technology that they claim to have tested on 200 CD-ROM devices that prevents users from copying software CDs. They plan to have special encryption keys hidden in software and which are pressed onto CD-ROMs and which can not be read with ordinary procedures. They claim that the location, length and number of embedded keys can vary making it more difficult to hack."

Comments

security

[aaronsb]

So what's to prevent hacker group x from modifying the software on the disc so it doesn't check for the keys anymore?

Re:security

[NiceGeek]

Nothing. Didn't you know that copy prevention isn't there to stop pirates, it's there to annoy legit users :)

Re:security

[kasperd]

it's there to annoy legit users

What prevents legit users from modifying the software on the disc so it doesn't check for the keys anymore?

I have a floppy with an old program that contained some kind of copy protection. Even when installed on the harddisk, the program could not run without the floppy in the drive. But when the floppydrive stopped working I had to do something. Actually I didn't modify the program, instead I just modified the floppydriver to return the values expected by the program.

I don't even think this is illegal. (If I thought so I wouldn't be talking loud about it on slashdot.)

Re:security

[SirSlud]

I was going to say ethics, but then I forgot we've desperately been trying to replace those annoying things with technology that would just prevent us from being bad. It's the corperate software makers dream: If you can do it, it must be ok!

Of course, they dont seem comfortable sticking to this mantra when their software doesn't work as designed or is exploitable. Hows that for irony?

Re:security

[Peeing Calvin]

The problem is the software install files will by encrypted, and can't be decrypted without the keys, which are located on "uncopyable" (except by special JVC hardware) areas of the disk.

DVDs have a similar copy-protection scheme. The CSS decryption keys are located on sectors of the DVD that are unwritable in the DVD-R (or +R, or RAM, etc.) media formats. So, if you copy a CSSed DVD, you get an encrypted copy with no accompanying keys.

So, a hacker group would have to gerry-rig a CD burner that could write to these "unwritable" areas of the CD-R, so that keys could be copied along with the encrypted software. Very difficult thing to do.

Frankly, I'm surprised something like this hasn't been tried already.

Re:security

[ichimunki]

Maybe not illegal for yourself, but you might be violating the DMCA by distributing a "circumvention device" if you gave the rest of us the code you used to do it.

Re:security

[topham]

generally, depending on jurisdiction, it isn't illegal to do, it is illegal to provide the tools to others.

That used to be the standard way to skip past some copy protections under dos. First you run TSR, then you run the program/game.The TSR would capture the BIOS request to read the floppy and return the results without reading the disk.

It is relativly easy to modify a program for the same effect. I used to do it back in the days of DOS for games I bought. (seriously, it was a fun thing to do, and trying to read black ink on a red card was more painfull, never mind looking up word 5, page 45 paragraph 2....)

These young wippersnappers around here think you need sourcecode to modify programs...

Re:security

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember hearing about copy protection on (Atari software) floppies. The manufacturer put an extra hole in the disk in what would normally be a data area, then the software was coded not to read that portion of the track. If some pimply faces theiving bastard tried to diskcopy it, the disk drive would sequntially read the disk, dropping the head into the hole and destroying both the disk and the drive.

Then there was a similar scheme that burned off a whole track with a laser. Once again, the software on the disk knew not to read the damaged portion.

This was back in the 1980s. And as software companies found out in the 1980s, physical copy protection just doesn't work. It annoys legitimate users, and the real pirates soon find a countermeasure.

Looks like the media companies are going to have to learn the same lesson. Too bad the hackers have 20 years head start on them.

Re:security

[Teman Clark-Lindh]

Yeah, these ideas are all great right up until the point that the key has to be loaded into memory to decrypt the content on the cd (into memory).

People will just use Softice to either get the key (since it will be an app key, not a unique one), or to just get the decrypted data. (and replace the decrypt routines with a load from raw file routine).

This is a classic example of people not understanding the trusted client problem, namely that you can't trust the PC as a client, ever!

Re:security

[mpe]

I have a floppy with an old program that contained some kind of copy protection. Even when installed on the harddisk, the program could not run without the floppy in the drive.

This sounds very much a rehash of the same idea. Wonder if they will try to patent it, even with this obvious prior art...

But when the floppydrive stopped working I had to do something. Actually I didn't modify the program, instead I just modified the floppydriver to return the values expected by the program.
I don't even think this is illegal. (If I thought so I wouldn't be talking loud about it on slashdot.)

If this is isn't illegal expect the appropriate lobbying groups to be given revised orders.

Re:security

[kasperd]

it is illegal to provide the tools to others.

I guess that depends on your intentions. If you just want others to be able to use their own legally purcased version installed on their own harddisk, it should be legal.

I didn't actually do this with a TSR program, but it was slightly similar. I just hooked the BIOS call, then called the program and on return unhooked the BIOS call. It is so much easier to clean up that way, and you avoid side effects to other software running later.

never mind looking up word 5, page 45 paragraph 2....

They forgot to copy protect the manuals.

Re:security

[kasperd]

DMCA is that something I should know about? Or is it just an American phenomenon?

Re:security

[funky womble]

You won't be able to talk about doing it under the forthcoming UK legislation...

Re:security

[kasperd]

If this is isn't illegal

I live in a country where the law says, that a person who has the right to use a program is allowed to make changes to the program if that is necesarrry to use the program - including bugfixes. In my case the change was necesarry for me to use the program, and I didn't change the actual program, just put a layer between the floppydriver and the program.

Re:security

[MaxwellStreet]

Frankly, I'm surprised something like this hasn't been tried already.

JVC isn't the only company doing this.

I've got reliable sources that say that SONY is damned close on similar technology.

And the nice folks at Smarte Solutions have a whole suite of products coming online for just this sort of thing.

I'm not sure how easily this will be broken, truthfully. The software can be configured to all sorts of different levels, and the encryption can be linked to unique hardware identifiers and such. I'm no expert, but there are some that believe that this could be very tough.

Re:security

[penguinboy]

If this is isn't illegal expect the appropriate lobbying groups to be given revised orders.

Most likely this is illegal now. DeCSS didn't involve modifying programs, but it still fell under the copy-protection circumvention bit of the DMCA.

Re:security

[innocent_white_lamb]

If some pimply faces theiving bastard tried to diskcopy it, the disk drive would sequntially read the disk, dropping the head into the hole and destroying both the disk and the drive.

And if your drive's read head just happened to be at that location when you inserted the disk into the drive, then goodbye Martha as well.

So much for that idea.

Re:security

[Doug-W]

Actually that's what the black ink on a red card was referring to. text was imprinted on a manual and then covered over with other text such that when viewed through a red filter you could read the underlining text. of course if you tried to photocopy the page all you would get is a black block that could not be read.

Re:security

[uncoveror]

Using this stuff will just anger legitimate users to the point that we will switch to an open source clone of whatever proprietary software uses this crap. JVC and Hudson soft will make a quick buck selling this to software companies that don't get it, and those software companies will go out of business as their former customers, offended by the presumption that they are thieves, take their business elsewhere.

Re:security

[Anonymous Coward]

The proper term there is... EVIL American Phenomenon.. (DMCA being evil...not Americans) :)

Re:security

[Anonymous Coward]

They say it's to keep honest people honest, when in fact honest people will become pirates if the copy protection gets in their way.

Re:security

[Happy Monkey]

What prevents legit users from modifying the software on the disc so it doesn't check for the keys anymore?

Like NiceGeek said, it doesn't stop, it annoys.

I have a floppy with an old program that contained some kind of copy protection. Even when installed on the harddisk, the program could not run without the floppy in the drive. But when the floppydrive stopped working I had to do something. Actually I didn't modify the program, instead I just modified the floppydriver to return the values expected by the program.

And didn't it annoy you that that was necessary?

Re:security

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, this was tried years ago on the Apple //e. It didn't work then - and it won't work now.

This is a chicken and egg problem. You can't control what each person does with the item they've bought. The US Copyright Codes ensures that you are able to make at least one WORKING copy of any software you buy. If you can't make a copy of it then you can either take it back or sue. Because they will have infringed on your rights under the Copyright Act.

Re:security

[r0gue_]

Excellent Point!

Re:security

[Anonymous Coward]

it will take quite some time for this to be cracked -- http://www.doc-witness.com/

Re:security

[harlows_monkeys]

So what's to prevent hacker group x from modifying the software on the disc so it doesn't check for the keys anymore?

Noting but time. The software developer can make it hard to figure our how to modify the software.

For example, back in the late 80's, Deluxe Music Contruction Set for the Mac was a pain to crack, because most of the code was encrypted, so disassemblers, even great ones like MacNosy, were not too useful. The decryption key was derived from a checksum of the code that loaded and decrypted the encrypted code segments, and since the 68k did not have hardware breakpoints, setting a breakpoint in a debugger involved writing a breakpoint instruction into memory, which changed the checksum, which borked the decryption.

The loader/decrypter also took steps to kill any debuggers that were running, so that you could not just hit the interrupt button after the program was decrypted and dump memory.

They didn't quite cover everything....there was a place you could put a breakpoint that was outside the range of memory that was checksummed, but was executed after the key had been derived, so crackers got in...but it was clear that with a bit more effort, they could have delayed cracking for a lot longer.

Remember that the software developer doesn't have to make their program uncrackable. They just have to make it so time consuming as to not be worth the effort.

Re:security

[Anonymous Coward]

Depends if his program is older than the day the DMCA was enacted. Ex post-facto. One of those little pesky things in the Constitution that the content industry would love to exempt itself from.

Re:security

[NortWind]

Then there was a similar scheme that burned off a whole track with a laser. Once again, the software on the disk knew not to read the damaged portion.

The scheme only burned a tiny hole in one sector. The copy protection routine deliberatly tried to write that sector, and if it succeeded, then the disk was assumed to be pirate. A sector that was not supposed to be damaged was also written, to check that the disk was not just write protected. It was a very popular scheme

Re:security

[Sancho]

encryption can be linked to unique hardware identifiers and such. I'm no expert, but there are some that believe that this could be very tough.

That's not very likely, since we're not talking smart cards like one of the more recent stories, the "unique hardware" approach would not be feasible in the least.

Re:security

[kiwirob]

Back in the old days of copy protection on the 'ol Apple][e they used a simular system.

Basicaly they used a non-standard disk format to create something like a 13th track on the disk which was ignored by 99% of disk copy programs. They then placed the VTOC in the 13th track and updated the DOS sector on the disk to point to the VTOC in the non-standard location.

To make legal backup copies of these disks you just needed a simple sector editor. you loaded the VTOC into memory and wrote it back to the correct place on the disk where it should be and then hex edited the location of the VTOC back to the standard address. Then all you had to do was write you new version back to a new disk.

I can't see why you couldn't use a simular system here. Move the data you want to a writeable/readable location on the disk and hex edit the executable to read the data from the new location rather than the original one.

Re:security

[Anonymous Coward]

American with many incarnations in other countries.

Re:security

[Anonymous Coward]

And that logic analysers are getting cheap and good.
As the client (CDROM) is unprotected, the location of those stray seeks wont remain too secret either. As both techniques are in use, I fail to see why 'invention' is used against obvious prior art.

Re:security

[Anonymous Coward]

Digital Millenium Copyright Act I believe...

Re:security

[Zeal17]

Is there any precedence to this? Has anyone said, "Hey, I want to have another copy of [INSERT FAVORITE GAME NAME HERE] and I can't do it, give me money!" and won?

-Zeal

Re:security

[Nogami_Saeko]

Remember that the software developer doesn't have to make their program uncrackable. They just have to make it so time consuming as to not be worth the effort

Um, no. The more challenging it is, the more people will target it. The really good cracker groups get tired of generating keygens and hacking winzip for the 10,000th time, so they really savor the opportunity to go after challenging targets.

Like playing a game of chess with a good opponent that you have to work on, as opposed to a weak opponent that's boring to play...

Re:security

[hype7]

generally, depending on jurisdiction, it isn't illegal to do, it is illegal to provide the tools to others.

bugger, and I just bought shares in Apple and Dell too.

-- james

Re:security

[kasperd]

Ah, I see. Most manuals was however printed with black text on white paper.

Re:security

[Anonymous Coward]

DMCA is that something I should know about? Or is it just an American phenomenon?

Coming soon to an oppressive government near you, thanks to the wonders of globalization and the fact that these guys all piss in the same pot.

Re:security

[Clockwork Apple]

My apologies to the parent poster but I would like a few replies.

I own an A/V amp, 2 TVs, 2 VCRs, and a audio CD player and all are made by JVC but as I vote with my dollars I will not be replacing any of them with new JVC equipment. Can anyone recomend a brand or brands of a similar price/performance level?

I am planning to replace my main TV set this year (around Xmas time) so if you know of a good 30ish inch set that is of good value and quality in the 200-350 dollar range it would be of some help.

This really sucks the big one.

Thanks.

Re:security

[dswan69]

Still has to be decrypted sometime so there'll just be tools that give you the decrypted data. If you can read the keys to decrypt the data in the first place then you can read them to decrypt it to make a copy and the copy will no longer be encrypted.

Problem solved. Don't know why they even bother.

Re:security

[dswan69]

there are some that believe that this could be very tough.

Like those selling it perhaps?

The same claim has been made for every other copy protection scam out there and each one has been breached.

If there's a way to load the data, then there's a way to copy it.

Re:security

[purpledinoz]

It's so true. These copy protection schemes are basically punishing the users that BUY their software, and the pirates are hardly affected. Sooner or later it'll be easier to pirate software than to buy it. If you know where to look that's actually the case. And you know their going to blame the people when their software sales go down because it's impossible to install.

Re:security

[ichimunki]

Depends if his program is older than the day the DMCA was enacted. Ex post-facto. One of those little pesky things in the Constitution

This not true. His program is perfectly legal for him (if my understanding of the DMCA is clear) no matter when he made it. But even if he made it prior to the enactment of the DMCA, the act of sharing that device/program is now prohibited (assuming the DMCA does apply in this case). Unless he shared it prior to the DMCA he would definitely be breaking the law (again, assuming the device/program is actually prohibited under the DMCA, a separate question).

While the law can't take something you have already done and make it illegal and then prosecute you for that act. What the law can do is make an act-- even a passive act, like possessing certain pictures or the buds of a wild plant-- illegal. Then, while you can't be prosecuted for having done that in the past, you could be prosecuted for doing it now.

Re:security

[KingPrad]

and honestly most software isn't worth the time. :-)

Anyone want to lay bets...

[jandrese]

...on how long it will take for this to be cracked?

Re:Anyone want to lay bets...

[return 42]

If widely deployed, less than six months.

Re:Anyone want to lay bets...

[unicron]

Mayor Quimby: Now that prohibition is over, how long will it take you to flood with town with booze?

Homer: No thanks, I'm out of that business.

Fat Tony(leaning in): About 6 minutes.

Re:Anyone want to lay bets...

[Anonymous Coward]

0 day.

Re:Anyone want to lay bets...

[jeffy124]

i think fat tony actually says "4 minutes", and the subtitle over the next scene is "2 minutes later" with barrels and mugs of beer everywhere.

Yeah, right.

[renehollan]

Where have we heard all this before?

Oh yeah, everywhere

And when have we heard this before?

[flinxmeister]

The crackers will love this. Yet another challenge and chance to prove 'skillz'. Do they actually think that people are simply burning copies of the disk?

Re:And when have we heard this before?

[chfn]

It's a never-ending cold war. The better the protection, the better the crackers will get. Lather, rinse, repeat.

The best they can do, as has been said many times before, is raise the effort required to crack the protection high enough that the majority of users will just give up and pay the $$

Re:And when have we heard this before?

[mskfisher]

Except that the efforts of a few are easily transmitted to the masses.
The majority just has to find the work of the few good hackers.
In 2 years, do a Google search for "JVC CD crack" and see what Russian websites you end up on.

Re:And when have we heard this before?

[NanoGator]

"The crackers will love this. Yet another challenge and chance to prove 'skillz'. Do they actually think that people are simply burning copies of the disk? "

The first time I read this I thought you were making a racial slur. You should probably avoid using the words 'crackers' and 'burning' in the same post. Heh

Re:And when have we heard this before?

[chfn]

Good point. Just like the point-n-click SMBdie proggie ;) All it takes is one person and a method of distribution. I guess there really is no point in trying to copy-protect.

Re:And when have we heard this before?

[geekoid]

s/years/months/

Re:And when have we heard this before?

[mskfisher]

I was just figuring that the JVC thing wouldn't come out for a while. :)

It will be out in weeks/months after the JVC thing hits the streets, you're exactly right...

Re:And when have we heard this before?

[Graspee_Leemoor]

There still is a point to copy-protection. Software companies know that there are 2 kinds of piracy- people who download the cracked version without going anywhere near an original disk, and people who say "That's cool, can I borrow it for the weekend ?" and then burn off a copy.

Copy-protection stops the latter case. They will never stop the former.

graspee

Not bad

[chfn]

But you still need to make sure the software that looks for the keys doesn't get cracked. Why bother trying to duplicate the hidden keys when you can disable the software that checks for them?

Re:Not bad

[Anonymous Coward]

no kidding. why do i get the feeling this will boil down to twiddling a je to a jne or something equally trivial?

Re:Not bad

[plalonde2]

The obvious disk hardware solution, although expensive, is a fob embedded in the disk surface that reads light pulses for a query, and "moves" pits (little micro-mirror sillicon elements can do it) according to some public-key exchange protocol (you can power it off the laser light, I'm sure). Done. Now breaking it is hard: you can't generate keys without the private key. All it costs you is a fancy custom CD that in high enough volume will be cheap.

So...

[Anonvmous Coward]

... what about my right to make a backup copy of my software? Nobody's ever described a CD as durable.

Re:So...

[Anonymous Coward]

D00d, th1$ izz AMERIKA. j00 g0t n0 r1g|-|t$!!

Re:So...

[NanoGator]

"D00d, th1$ izz AMERIKA. j00 g0t n0 r1g|-|t$!! "

I think reading your post caused me to violate the DMCA.

Re:So...

[matman]

Hah! I have actually read some EULAs, and many state that you may KEEP your CD as a backup, not make a copy of your CD as a backup, unless the original media is required in order to actually use the software. Arguably, you may make a backup copy of something like Office or Windows, as they often ask for the CD to support new things (especially office now adays).

Relevant spot from W98 license:

After installation of one copy of the SOFTWARE PRODUCT pursuant to this EULA, you may keep the original media on which the SOFTWARE PRODUCT was provided by Microsoft solely for backup or archival purposes. If the original media is required to use the SOFTWARE PRODUCT on the COMPUTER, you may make one copy of the SOFTWARE PRODUCT solely for backup or archival purposes. Except as expressly provided in this EULA, you may not otherwise make copies of the SOFTWARE PRODUCT or the printed materials accompanying the SOFTWARE PRODUCT.

(from http://nl.linux.org/geldterug/license.html)

Re:So...

[the way, what're you]

JVC's new slogan: Crunch all you want, we'll make more!

Cha-ching!

Re:So...

[wilpig]

What if this was applied to the latest versions of microsoft software on the enterprise level? For anyone that hasn't dealt with these it is simply microsoft charges you for 100 copies of their software yet only sends you a piece of paper stating it is for 100 copies and one CD. For most admins in a large environment you will copy your install media then start multiple "legal" installs at one time. Always leaving your original CD in its jewel case so you keep a pristine copy. When will these companies realize that for every one illegal copy they stop, or at least slow down for 24 hours. There are hundreds of legal copies that they also blocking. This making the lives of their paying customers more difficult. Now if I were to choose star office, lotus, word perfect office, or microsoft office. I am most likely to pick the software that I can easily administer.

Re:So...

[Jace of Fuse!]

what about my right to make a backup copy of my software? Nobody's ever described a CD as durable.

You have that right. They also have the right to try to PREVENT you.

This is basically a race, and I WELCOME this before I welcome litigation.

Let them make schemes to keep us from copying their work. As long as we're allowed legally to reverse engineer these schemes so that we can either provider ourselves with working backups OR make the software compatible with our systems (suppose the copy protection breaks the software on my system?) then I'm not at all against them attempted to stop copies from being made. It won't do any good -- but far be it from me to try and take away a software developers right to protect their investments.

Now where I have the biggest problem is that with the DMCA it --IS-- illegal to try and circumvent this sort of scheme, and that is one law that should have never been allowed to come about.

Re:So...

[junkpunch]

You have a right to make a backup copy of your software, IF you are capable of doing so. The manufacturer does NOT have to provide the software in a medium which you can copy.

Think about when software first became available on CD. CD copying technology was not widely available to the consumer, and was very expensive. Were your rights being violated? Of course not. Same thing with software on DVD.

People should take this into account when purchasing their software. Can I make backups of the software, to prolong its life? Yes? That's a feature and a positive for buying it. No? Perhaps you should look elsewhere.

Re:So...

[forehead]

Actually, this isn't as far from the truth as you think it is. Everyones favorite anonymous Perl KU (kwalitee usherance) developer, chromatic, manged to turn the Bill of Rights into a circumvention device.

Re:So...

[TheShadow]

I can believe it. Apparently, there is a huge market for catering to stupidity.

Re:So...

[Slime-dogg]

D00d, th1$ izz AMERIKA. j00 g0t n0 r1g|-|t$!!

Correction!

That last word should read: R16|-|75

Re:So...

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

So Corporate America doesn't mind us having token rights, as long as Congress makes sure we have no legal avenue to pursue them.

Cool.

Thanks for explaining it to us, Mr. Corporate Asslicker. Did they promise a free chance at a New Playstation 2 if you hang out on slashdot and apologize for them at every opportunity?

Re:So...

[inerte]

Amazing. I've laughed really loud !!!

Re:So...

[teasea]

Now where I have the biggest problem is that with the DMCA it --IS-- illegal to try and circumvent this sort of scheme
Actually, it's the DMCA that is illegal. Hopefully this will be recognized and corrected in the near future. In the meantime, I can only do my exceedingly small part and purchase no software from companies that use or support such disdain for their customers. This includes movies and CDs.

Re:So...

[jmorris42]

No, he said if you don't like the copy restriction tech, factor that into your purchasing decision. As for me, being unable to copy would probably cut a software package's value by 25-50% except in a few special cases.

Add that reduction to the reduction I already apply when setting a value on any closed software and it is doubtful I'll ever buy anything except a game on such terms. Games have little longterm value to me so the eventual loss of the media isn't that bad and likewise knowing it will run on future platforms is likewise of little value.

On the other hand, being unable to copy DVDs doesn't bother me yet (And knowing they CAN be ripped, just not copied to another DVD9 means when I DO want to put my collection on a server I can). Being unable to rip music CDs would result in no more purchases though since I rarely play the original physical media anymore.

Re:So...

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Yes, because everyone should know that effective boycotts are easily possible, since most consumers are intelligent and informed enough to tell which is which, and they're never apathetic about such restrictions.

Please forgive me for being a fool.

Sometimes I wonder if you people even deserve to not get shit on all the time. Even now, you seem to think your "rights" are worth anything, when circumstances are engineered so that they are impossible to exercise, without committing or condoming "crimes" as defined by the DMCA. Even now, the twit that you are, is here defending another twit, basically telling me "if you really wanted, you could back them up, but they don't have to make it possible, and if you don't like it, do without". WTF kind of answer is that?

Re:So...

[Rob Kaper]

do most software companies ship you a new CD at production cost when yours breaks but you can show them you have a license for the product?

Re:So...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is some funny shit.

Re:So...

[Tim C]

I have actually read some EULAs, and many state that you may KEEP your CD as a backup, not make a copy of your CD as a backup

That's nothing. According to the Stronghold EULA (iirc; it may be another game), once you have installed the game, you may only use the original CD for archival purposes.

Of course, if you want to play the game, you have to instert the CD. Now, that doesn't meet my definition of "archival" (which is "put away somewhere safe and not touched"), so in my opinion, their EULA actually prevents me from using their product at all.

Sure, it's not what they meant - but it's what they said.

Cheers,

Tim

Re:So...

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad EULA's are not enforceable.

Re:So...

[jmorris42]

It is called capitalism. Vendors offer up products, I examine them and decide if they are worth the price asked. You do the same along with a few billion other people and the market works. Give people a little credit. Remember how long DIVX lasted? It was ignored in droves because the deal was so one sided.

Remember when almost all software was copy restricted? Defrag utils had to have special options to leave Lotus's copy restriction crap on the same sector of your drive lest it stop working! Nobody tries that sort of thing anymore. It was not because the vendors became enlightened, nice or were ordered by the government, it was because of customer complaints and threats to switch vendors.

Re:So...

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Haha. Mind you, I wish you were right. let's examine your examples more closely.

A) DIVX

Ahead of its time. They needed to wait until technology made the concept a little smoother, a little slicker. They needed 3 more years, to sign on the hardware manufacturers, so that more DVD players were divx compatible. If everyone had a divx player, the fact that divx movies had a price tag lower, complete with some of the fancier tricks they were playing...

Consumers didn't reject it, so much as it was immature and the marketing campaign was less than 100%. I cringe even thinking about it, but this monster will be far stronger in its second incarnation...

B) 1980's era copy protection.

Well, the software companies had to back off, to be sure. They even paid lip service awhile, to the opinion that excessive copy protection was a bad idea. However, DRM is about to get going well, and the software companies can hem and haw, pretending that they're against it while they put up a token struggle against the MPAA. You did hear that M$ is getting into the act? Even when morons claimed that "no matter how evil they are, at least they're against this". I tried to point out that they were just biding time til they could figure out how to exploit it the most, and everyone booed and hissed. Wait and see how difficult it will be to avoid it, when all the hardware manufacturers are marching in lockstep.

Re:So...

[seaan]

It is called capitalism. Vendors offer up products, I examine them and decide if they are worth the price asked.

Except you forgot several steps before that.

1) Corporations use special government granted-monopoly (copyrights) that are not part of the free market.

2) Corporations lobby for and get laws passed that remove your choices:

* UTICA contract terms that shaft the consumer (only two states so far)

* DMCA mandated copy protection in video recorders

* DHRA mandated copy protection in digital audio recorders

* FCC mandated copy protection in video satellite receivers

* DMCA anti-circumvention laws, etc.

3) Corporations are currently lobbing for, but have not yet received, laws that even further restrict your choices (FCC mandated HDTV copy protection flag, CBDTPA, etc.).

Now we get to the point where vendors offer up products. You call this a free market? If you really believe in the free market, you should be very concerned about these laws and working to get them repealed! Why do you assume that vendors selling these products get to take advantage of government mandates, but the consumers don't!

Just curious

[sheepab]

But how does this differ from the keys on a dvd you have to circumvent when you rip them? I dont think any company can possibly safegaurd their software with a system that is up against millions of users....eventually there will be a way to get past it.

Re:Just curious

[mpe]

But how does this differ from the keys on a dvd you have to circumvent when you rip them?

It's more like the old software which requires the original floppy disk. Which uses some non standard format.
Thing is that the hardware much be capable of reading whatever this format might be. There is also the problem of how do you put what amounts to a serial number on a random part of a pressed CD, which is rather harder to do than with a recordable CD.

Re:Just curious

[BollocksToThis]

In my opinion, if JVC can get the keys off the disc, *I* can get the keys off the disc. Somewhere in the software is the code that does this, thus, cracked in a week or less.

I also notice they didn't actually state that the COPY PROTECTION was tested on 200 CD-ROM drives, only that CD's with the protection still worked in those drives. Nothing about copies failing...

Re:Just curious

[NeMon'ess]

Fine, but most people, including most people who try to use CloneCD to copy their games for friends, can't. That avenue removed, people will have to download their games and apps off the internet. One less avenue is what JVC is going for.

Re:Just curious

[ethereal]

Until somebody comes out with CloneJVCCD, at least. It only takes one person to write it ...

Re:Just curious

[Anonymous Coward]

Almost everyone I know who makes backups of their CDs is willing to accept they need to make a quickstop by astalavista before they can use it...

Re:Just curious

[NeMon'ess]

You miss my point. They won't be able to burn a copy, they'll have to download it. If the game is multi-CD that could take a long time. If piracy is primarily restricted to online downloading, it will be much easier to shut down file traders and make a difference. Sure private ftps where only trusted users can download will still exist, but the general public will have to know friends, who know friends, who know friends...

Re:Just curious

[sir99]

They won't have to download the whole thing. They might not even have to download a crack for each game. Most likely a single crack will be sufficient for every protected CD.

Re:Just curious

[Anonymous Coward]

No, I think you miss the point... if you can read the data from the CD, you can write it to another CD. Maybe you can't write the KEYS, but that's what you get a crack for... to stop the software hunting for the keys, and just reading the raw data from the CD.

Bring it on baby!

[Anonymous Coward]

I got my sharpie ready!

u r teh PEINS!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Slow down cowboy!

Another million dollar attempt at twocent hacking.

[MikeDX]

This sounds awfully familiar to the protection used on the playstation emulator "Bleem".
Fair enough it took them a while to hack, but they did!

I think what these copy protection people are forgetting, whilst spending these millions of dollars in research on anti piracy techniques is that at the end of the day, the data STILL NEEDS TO BE READ in order for it to be of any use to anybody.
They arent stopping the professional pirate. They will just annoy the mediocre pirate and frustrate consumers.

Shouldnt be too tough

[orangesquid]

All we'll need to do is hack up Wine to report (But still perform) "strange" CD-ROM accesses. Then we'll know just what the program is looking up on the CD, and we could even get a traceback of the code (EIP, registers, etc). Then, just make a crack that swaps a JMP instruction for a JZ/JNZ...

Re:Shouldnt be too tough

[Zeal17]

In theory, couldn't you also just hack up your cd-rom drivers?

-Zeal

10.9.8.7.6.5.4.3.2.1.....Hacked

[haplo21112]

Yeah thats was probably just enough time...
I'll expect first proof of concepts compies of the Hack on source forge by morning...

Thanks...to who ever it was that just hacked it....

If they build it...

[dunar]

... I (or someone else) will hack!!!

Simple Relationship

[Anonymous Coward]

Silly anti-piracy measures.
There are no absolutes anymore; It's only really a matter of time-- Usually, time being directly proportional to the strength of protection.

Doesn't seem to help

[Sabalon]

sounds like it is designed not to allow a cd-cd copy.

Why can't I just rip an image, or at least open the cd and copy the files to my hard drive?

Why can't I patch the program after the above not to decrypt?

I seem to remember that DeCSS came about cause of these "no one will ever get our keys" security.

What about older CD drives?

Re:Doesn't seem to help

[coryboehne]

Lol, yea, my thoughts exactly, a simple rawrite may be able to defeat this technology... Of course your average cd copy tech can't do it, but bit-bit copying sounds like it may very well defeat this... However a simply X-Copy will not work, as the keys are most likely hidden and un-readable by average software (read MS). Course I could be wrong, but we'll see what happens... I really wouldn't mind seeing something like this actually work, I don't mind paying for GOOD software, (of course I would much rather get good software for free, assuming it's legal) and if something like this works, the price of the software may very well go down in response to the impossibility to crack/hack/copy/warez it, as companies account for the losses and pass it on to the end user in price... Of course the same force that keeps them raising the price to make up for lost piracy also has the tendency to not allow them to price-gouge, as they also realize that if the price is too high no-one will pay for it except the first user, after that everyone will simply make copies to avoid out-of-mind pricing. So the piracy actually works to the consumers' benefit and also hurts the consumer by raising the price..... Hmmm, well now I'm not sure that it's a good thing to make something copy-proof. Not to mention how the hell do I make a backup? Maybe the companies should start to offer a low$$ copy service for licensed users. Either way, I'm not too sure there is anything that will ever be invented that won't be defeated by the computer-savvy out there.

Re:Doesn't seem to help

[Ashran]

> and if something like this works, the price of > the software may very well go down in response > to the impossibility to crack/hack/copy/warez > it, as companies account for the losses and
> pass it on to the end user in price

LOL yeah! What did you smoke and where can I get some too?

Re:Doesn't seem to help

[JM_the_Great]

Not to mention the A-hole. Of course, I mean the analog hole. At some point it'll be turned into an analog signal (until we get little chips implanted in our brains...), then we can always just loop it back in and record it. There won't be much loss-of-quality, and it'll take a little longer, but I still see no way to stop this...

Re:Doesn't seem to help

[electroniceric]

Not to mention how the hell do I make a backup? Maybe the companies should start to offer a low$$ copy service for licensed users.

You're on to something here.

As much as I dislike the legislative attempts to give content "owners" complete control over any work that they somehow managed to get a legal title to, I really this boondoggle about backup
copies gives bad press to the anti-DRM crowd.

Here's a simple solution:
What if you got two of the exact same CD in the package? With the same activation, etc....

If it's really what you want, perhaps some letters to companies are in order, to convince them that you really just want to reinstall. Cause as of now, the "I need to make a backup argument" smells like duplication to everyone but an ISO-burnin linux geek.

Re:Doesn't seem to help

[RebelTycoon]

SOFTWARE... SOFTWARE... Its to protect software dumbass!

Re:Doesn't seem to help

[schmink182]

I'm not too sure there is [any copy protection] that will ever be invented that won't be defeated by the computer-savvy out there

I've got one. I have a box hidden in my room that holds a CD. Nobody can copy it because it's in a box that I won't let them get to. Problem is that the data isn't very useful in there.

Re:Doesn't seem to help

[Shadarr]

Yeah, we can just capture the output and reverse engineer every game that comes out.

Re:Doesn't seem to help

[Myco]

Here's a simple solution: What if you got two of the exact same CD in the package? With the same activation, etc....

You're forgetting the whole point of having a backup -- it's so that if your original media gets destroyed, you still have a copy of its contents. But when that happens, your backup becomes the new original, and you now have a right to make a new backup of it for when it gets scratched. So no matter how many backups they give you to start with, in the long run you still need to be able to make your own.

Re:Doesn't seem to help

[drsoran]

But when that happens, your backup becomes the new original, and you now have a right to make a new backup of it for when it gets scratched. So no matter how many backups they give you to start with, in the long run you still need to be able to make your own.

I agree. I prefer to make an ISO image of my CDs and store the backup on a convenient distributed file sharing network. That way, if my house burns down, chances are someone will have replicated the image onto their system and I can restore the image! It's called a distributed offsite backup system.

Re:Doesn't seem to help

[Myco]

And the best part is, multiple people can rely upon the same backup copies, eliminating redundancy! The copyright holders should be pleased, since this means there's fewer unnecessary copies floating around, right? Everybody's a winner!

Re:Doesn't seem to help

[Anonymous Coward]

Well since CD burners are nothing but a tool used by criminals, why not outlaw them?
Tape drives should be able to cover your backup needs anyway(You only backup to CD's anyway, thats why we buy a 250cd spindle once every fortnight).
So can CD burners only be used by "Licensed Professionals" at approved facillities (No your home will not be approved).

To make all the cd-rw units out there obsolete, Microsoft just makes XP not able to burn CD's.

So there that should help... I think

noduh

[nege]

They spend thousands only to have it hacked in the first month by some 16 year old kid. It never fails, when will they learn?

Re:noduh

[mpe]

They spend thousands only to have it hacked in the first month by some 16 year old kid.

Or even they spend millions and it's cracked in week. Security is not a function of the amount of money spent. Especially with DRM which is the software equivalent of trying to make pi equal 3.

Hacked Programs

[irritating environme]

I agree, this will just lead to people hacking the program installs thus encouraging the creation completely bypassed software versions.

If the write-protection is a minor bother, it will stop most casual users since the l00t haX0rs won't deign to crack it. If its like this, heck, that's just a gauntlet thrown down.

They will just be more likely to create easily distributed hack patches.

I'm confused...

[Allaria]

Wouldn't the key have to be burned into the CD anyway? So the program could read it in the first place. Doesn't this mean that bit-by-bit burners would copy it fine?

I always thought that's how the other 'copy-protection' algorithms worked, and how they could be thwarted.

What does this technology have that the past doesn't (besides better encryption)?

Re:I'm confused...

[Anonymous Coward]

A bit-by-bit burn will never fail...they're trying to annoy the kiddies using Verio CD Copier Pro.

Until somebody creates a CDROM Drive that does all of that encryption internally (? maybe), these will always be copyable.

Re:I'm confused...

[mwjlewis]

That is the first thing that i thought. Why not make an image of the disk on your hard drive, and copy the image bit by bit back to CD.

Also, Isn't that going to raise CD cost's marginally, if they have to change the key on each CD? ( I didn't read the article in true slashdot style. )

Re:I'm confused...

[mathgod79]

I thought the exact same thing when I read this.

If these keys are going to be used to verify that a CD is legit, the software HAS to be able to read the keys off of the CD somehow, otherwise there would be no point, since the software wouldn't be able to distinguise a copied cd from a legit one.

I can see something like this working for a console, if they wanted to modify the CD drive to read additional things that a PC couldn't. I can't see this working on a PC, though, because the disc has to be read/played with a standard PC cd-rom.

Anyone want to offer an explanation?

Re:I'm confused...

[uberdave]

The keys can be on a portion of the CD that is not in the burnable area: Like maybe the center ring where the barcode is on some cds.

Re:I'm confused...

[coryboehne]

if it can be read, it can be burned... only by bit-bit, but it CAN be done.. rather easy to do actually....

Re:I'm confused...

[forevermore]

A bit-by-bit burn will never fail...

You've obviously never tried to copy many modern cd's... An oft-used copy protection scheme (used most often on game CD's) places physically bad sectors (or something that appears as such) on the disk that prevents bit-by-bit copies from completing (SCSI drives can handle it better, but IDE drives go NUTS when they hit these spots due to some 30-second timeout mess). Once you get your copy (if you used a SCSI drive to rip it) and burn it, your result won't work because your disk doesn't have those "bad" sectors on it - ie. it still needs a cracked version of the .exe that won't check those spots.

Again, this is mostly games, since they almost always require you to put in the CD as verification. To get around this, well, I don't play games. ;)

Re:I'm confused...

[uberdave]

It can be burned if the disk has burnable surface in that location, and if the drive has no built in "can't write to that part of the disk" coding in it, is what I think you mean.

Re:I'm confused...

[coryboehne]

Well assuming that one has normal hardware.. if you have some weird crap hardware then no, it most likely won't work.

Re:I'm confused...

[mpe]

Wouldn't the key have to be burned into the CD anyway? So the program could read it in the first place. Doesn't this mean that bit-by-bit burners would copy it fine?

This is probably the more difficult way to do it. Probably easier to have such a program treated like one with a regular dongle and the cracked version written to a perfectly normal CD.
Then the cracked version is actually more valuable to regular users since they don't need to mess around inserting a CD.

Re:I'm confused...

[geekoid]

not if it is some piece of hardware in the disk.

Re:I'm confused...

[mathgod79]

How so? so let's say they put in some "hardware". When the program needs to validate the disc, the CD-ROM has to be able to read something back to the program. So, if the "hardware" communicates 000110100101011101, then those bits could be burned to a CDR.

The only thing that makes any snese is if something was put into a protion of a CD that ANY reader can read, but no burner can burn. I'm not really sure if an area like that exists, but i don't doubt it, as there is probably some kind of "information header" on the far inside of the disc. maybe a burner couldn't write to an area like that.

Re:I'm confused...

[innocent_white_lamb]

Doesn't this mean that bit-by-bit burners would copy it fine?

There used to be a copy protection scheme for floppy disks that used an extremely weak sector (just barely magnetized) on the disk. When the drive read that sector, it would get a value but when it read the same sector again it would get a different value because the field was so weak and could barely be read at all. Copying the disk verbatim didn't work because you would end up with a copy that had a sector that would always read the same value. BLAMMO! "Sorry, Mac, this is a copy."

This is one way to get around the "if it can be read it can be copied" problem; have a sector that changes its value.

Re:I'm confused...

[Anonymous Coward]

nono, you got that wrong. assume the disc contains some sort of hardware that can do processing. like maybe a turing machine or something. small cpu basically that can fake output to the cdrom and receive input from an acceleration sensor. The decoding software could then send some bits turning on and off the motor of the cdrom. the gravity sensor would give that input to the cpu which would fake an authentication string based on it's built-in private key which would be read by the software.

Re:I'm confused...

[Dragon213]

Ok...maybe I don't understand CDs as well as I think I do, but wouldn't it be nearly impossible to put a sector on a CD that would change values when read? AFAIK, a CD can only have set values burned on it (logical 1s and 0s...or pits and peaks) as opposed to the barely magnetized area spoken of above...how would you create a logical "weak" partition on optical media?

Re:I'm confused...

[Zeal17]

Until somebody creates a CDROM Drive that does all of that encryption internally (? maybe), these will always be copyable.

Enter the PC-based mod chip...

-Zeal

Re:I'm confused...

[CrackersnSoup]

No, a stamped cd can be made to have weak sectors.
Its jsut a matter of hit`n`miss if they have a way to do it and not make a working cd, thus a coaster

Re:I'm confused...

[Anonymous Coward]

SO macs are making giant leaps ahed in the copy protection market also??? WHAT IS the world coming to!?!

Re:I'm confused...

[Nazmun]

I'm surprised no one posted this already... About 99.9% of all cd's you buy are not BURNT they are pressed in a factory. This includes virtually all silver cds (there are some cd-r's made to look silver i think).

Re:I'm confused...

[uberdave]

I'm just presenting some possibilities here:

There are tracks of data inside of "track 0" on a CD. They are just outside the hub, and on the CDs I've looked at, usually contain a bar code and/or a human readable serial number. The CD-Rs I've looked at also have serial numbers in this area. The dye coverage of this area was inconsistent as well. Some have it, some don't. So, it seems reasonable to me that these "negative tracks" are unburnable.

As far as the hardware is concerned, how do you know that "normal" hardware doesn't have circuitry/programming in it that prevents writing to particular tracks on the CD? Drive hardware/software is not open source. Anything could be in there.

Re:I'm confused...

[Rakarra]

if it can be read, it can be burned... only by bit-bit, but it CAN be done.. rather easy to do actually....

Not for the average person. And the casual copier is all they need to stop, really. Well, and the crack makers.

Re:I'm confused...

[Anonymous Coward]

Clone CD has a function to "amplify weak sectors".

*Sigh*

[Knife_Edge]

Why do people think that it is possible to make bits uncopyable? Have we not been over this before? Has this changed since the last time we went over it? I am not even going to bother reading the article for this 'technology.' A design for digital copy protection is like a design for a perpetual motion machine - It may be interesting to look at, but you know from the start it is impossible to build.

Re:*Sigh*

[mpe]

Why do people think that it is possible to make bits uncopyable? Have we not been over this before? Has this changed since the last time we went over it?

The problem is that the people comming up with these schemes don't understand and probably don't want to understand.

I am not even going to bother reading the article for this 'technology.'

It isn't technology, not even advanced technology being precieved as "magic" in order to make this work you'd need to use actual magic.

A design for digital copy protection is like a design for a perpetual motion machine - It may be interesting to look at, but you know from the start it is impossible to build.

I suspect that the people doing the building know this full well. But if someone keeps offering them silly amounts of money to design perpetual motion machines is it any suprise that they will come up with something flash looking.

Re:*Sigh*

[MicroBerto]

The funniest part of it all is that these companies (JVC, in this case) are actually PAYING engineers and the like to implement these innovations. Haven't they learned that it's always been a bust, and that they're just wasting their time?

Re:*Sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

well, hey. You read the article the other day that allows you to create 100% secure transmissions using the phase or whatever? With a little ingenuity I imagine you can come up with something that is very, very close to totally uncopyable.

Re:*Sigh*

[Stormie]

The funniest part of it all is that these companies (JVC, in this case) are actually PAYING engineers and the like to implement these innovations.

JVC are not paying engineers to produce an innovation which allows the creation of uncopyable CDs. JVC are paying engineers to produce an innovation which can be sold to software companies for 20c to $1.00 per CD. In this endeavour, they are perfectly likely to succeed and prosper.

"...very difficult to hack..."

[astapleton]

Don't you mean "...very new and entertaining to crack and distribute..."?

Root Technology?

[NanoGator]

I think they're calling it 'root technology' because of the effect it's going to have on its consumers.

Re:Root Technology?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nano...

re: your sig

I don't think you need an apostrophe there.
P.S.- it's RIGHT ON.

Re:Root Technology?

[NanoGator]

Think so? The reason I added it is that 'enpimpins' kinda hides the word 'pimp' without it.

Whatcha think?

Re:Root Technology?

[inerte]

I think they're calling it 'root technology' because of the effect it's going to have on its consumers.

"You can all su my balls." ;-)

Well

[ChrisMG999]

Maybe if they didn't inflate the price of software so much it wouldn't be pirated so often. Really, is this going to make it so that people can't go out and download the software that they want? No, people will find a way around it. If they really want to pirate it, they will. Companies should lower their prices on software to combat piracy rather than stupid stuff like this that doesn't work.

Re:Well

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever looked at the price of console games compared to PC games?

Which are generally cheaper?

The industry is a bunch of thieves.

Re:Well

[leabre]

Crap. WinRar is $29 and WinZip is $29. Yet they are incredibly heavily pirated. You think all those warez dudes actually paid for WinRar and almost all their warez are in Rar. Therefore, that software being too expensive is crap. $29 isn't too much money. Not any different than $2,900 if it's still cracked or serial generators are easily findable with a simple search on your favorite "security" related search site.

Thanks,
Me

Re:Well

[burnetd]

$29 for a GUI for zip....You could knock one up in VB in 5 minutes so I'd say yes it is to expensive.

And why does anyone pirate WinZip anyway, its not like the thing stops working is it.

Re:Well

[sweetooth]

To assume that everyone that uses rar archives pirates a copy of winrar is almost as bad as assuming that everyone that backs up a cd is a "pirate".

http://www.unrarlib.org/license.html

There are alternatives for just about everything.

Same for zip.

Re:Well

[funky womble]

$29 for a GUI for zip....

Using the free code from the Info-Zip group to handle the compression, no less. Still, it's been kind-of traditional to base things on other code in the world of compression.

Re:Well

[mpe]

Maybe if they didn't inflate the price of software so much it wouldn't be pirated so often.

They could probably afford to reduce the price quite a bit if they didn't try to chase the impossible

If they really want to pirate it, they will.

Remember also that there is "piracy" from people simply to claim they have a copy of an expensive, "un-crackable", etc program.

Re:Well

[mpe]

WinRar is $29 and WinZip is $29. Yet they are incredibly heavily pirated.

Most likely that simply demonstrates that $29 for a compression utility is excessive.

Therefore, that software being too expensive is crap. $29 isn't too much money.

It's a lot more than gzip or bzip. It's also a lot for something which costs virtually nothing to duplicate and distribute, with most of the actual costs being covered by the "customer".
Possibly quite a bit of the $29 actually goes to cover the cost of processing the payment.

Re:Well

[erasmus_]

Since you're so confident, let's make a deal.

• I pay for your flight to my city.
  
• You come equipped with lots of cash, which you show me before we begin for verification.
  
• I show you to a workstation equipped with VB6 as well as VB.NET for your convenience. You are not allowed to use any materials you brought with you - this is a "from scratch" project.
  
• You sit down and I then start the timer.
  
• If in 5 minutes you have produced a close approximation of WinZip, including create/update capabilities for all archive types that it supports, Explorer right-click menu integration for easy extraction, ability to span disks, UUEncode support, and ability to view files and zip comments, I will give you $2000. If you've failed, you give me $4000.
  
• Since I know you will fail, I will make it more interesting. Depending on your confidence level at the end of 5 minutes, I will let you extend the timer to 10 minutes. If you win, you get $4000, but fail again, and owe me $8000.
  
• With some begging, I may extend the contest to 11 minutes, but you'd need to agree to tattoo "I will not badmouth quality shareware" somewhere on your body in an at least 12pt font.
  

Let me know your thoughts please.

Re:Well

[Graspee_Leemoor]

Can I have Halle Berry sucking my cock while I do it ?

graspee

Re:Well

[martissimo]

I pay for your flight to my city.

You come equipped with lots of cash, which you show me before we begin for verification.

I show you to a workstation equipped with VB6 as well as VB.NET for your convenience. You are not allowed to use any materials you brought with you - this is a "from scratch" project.

Step 3 is where this will all start to breakdown, since at this point i will be off to enjoy my air-fare free vacation and you will not be likely to see me again... but hey it sounds fun, what city is this fine excursion to anyways? :)

Re:Well

[Rakarra]

Ever looked at the price of console games compared to PC games?

Which are generally cheaper?

The industry is a bunch of thieves.

Keep in mind the PC is much harder to design for and test than a console. If you're designing a game for the PS2, you only have one set of hardware to worry about. If you're designing for the PC, the hardware is varied.

It won't be long...

[hendridm]

If there is a drive in existance that can read the media, someone will develop a drive that can write what it has read.

Re:It won't be long...

[coryboehne]

Of course that would be implicitly illegal under the DMCA... So I doubt that if it requires a special drive that someone would do that, however if anyone presumes that we will buy a special CD-Rom just to read their crap software they are in for quite a shock.... I doubt that any technology that used that method would catch on very well at all.

Re:It won't be long...

[Cruciform]

Yes, the DMCA...
an American law in a world where the majority of the population isn't American. :) Doesn't sound like an issue.

To agree with other parts of the thread:
I hate on-disk copy protection as well. I don't mind CD keys at all though. At least you can easily back those up along with your cd.

Re:It won't be long...

[plugger]

an American law in a world where the majority of the population isn't American. :) Doesn't sound like an issue.

Unfortunately, it's an American law which is beginning to be replicated elsewhere :(

Wrong use of the tech

[Lysander Luddite]

Why not make CD copies have this instead of the original source discs?

For example, making backups of your software or music files. At least then you can guarantee copies of the original you own and prevent multi-generational copies of copies.

I would think both the software barons and the customer would find this win-win.

Re:Wrong use of the tech

[Anonymous Coward]

Because your scheme would require that everyone uses some proprietary CD-RW drive, while old drives would continue to pump out copyable copies. It would be like Palladium: It can only work if everyone uses the crippled hardware.

Re:Wrong use of the tech

[Anonymous Coward]

Er... how would that prevent someone from making, say, several hundred copies of the original?

All your scheme would prevent, even if it worked, would be copies OF copies.

Re:Wrong use of the tech

[Anonymous Coward]

Freespace 2 had something like this -- the last time I tried via CDRWin anyway.

Re:Wrong use of the tech

[Anonymous Coward]

It wouldn't, but you could tell which original it was copied from, and track down the perp.

Of course, it would never work without hardware support, and noone on this site is ever going to buy restrictive CD drive technology.

"Yes, sell me a CD-ROM drive that will tell me to go fuck myself when I make a backup"

Re:Wrong use of the tech

[Lysander Luddite]

Well yeah. So what? You already have the original. I'm not saying its perfect, but I think its a decent compromise between my fair use rights for backup and prevents people from making copies of copies of copies.

Legacy Drives

[sjgman9]

If one of these discs dont adhere to the ISO cd rom format like those audio CD's that dont adhere to the red book audio cd format, I wont risk my equipment on something that pretends to be what it isnt. I would feel much happier if CDs with this scheme came with a warning label similar to the ones on cigarette packs.

"Warning: This CD does is not a standard data cd and could disrupt your hardware. Caveat Emptor"

Re:Legacy Drives

[penguinboy]

By the same token, why do you have a defective CD-ROM drive that can't handle unusual data patterns?

Re:Legacy Drives

[sjgman9]

Thats not what Im arguing. I worry that the error correction on my drives (a 2 year old 16x TDK VeloCD burner and a Cendyne (Pioneer) dvd rom drive from last year) would fail with all this garbage being thrown at it. Im also interested in getting a titanium powerbook and want discs to not get stuck in there.

Consumers should have the right to know wether discs wont corrupt their hardware by being made in a nonstandard format. CDRom drives might be different from Audio CD players, but I dont want error correction hardware hosed. Its probably all a scam to get everyone to buy new hardware

Re:Legacy Drives

[HydroCarbon10]

By the same token, why do you have a defective CD-ROM drive that handles non-standard discs?

Re:Legacy Drives

[Happy Monkey]

Any software/hardware that handles unexpected input gracefully is not defective.

how long

[Jonny Ringo]

They plan to have special encryption keys hidden in software and which are pressed onto CD Roms and which can not be read with ordinary procedures.

So how long will it take to come up with "unordinary prodedures". :-)

Re:how long

[Ralph Wiggam]

"So how long will it take to come up with "unordinary prodedures"."

You might have to wait all the way until tomorrow.

Re:how long

[elmegil]

But that's what the DMCA is for!

Re:how long

[Kashif Shaikh]

So how long will it take to come up with "unordinary prodedures". :-)

I'd like to add to your question: Isn't there supposed to be some logic within the "software" to read the keys to decrypt encrypted parts? Wouldn't this be the "unordinary procedure" used? Or am I wrong?

I'll lay down 2 to 1 odds...

[Anonymous Coward]

that this gets cracked within 2 months of public release.

Wait....

[3rd_Floo]

What I dont get is, if its imbedded into the CD, and they expect the program to be able to read this key or layer somehow, what stops the user from doing the same thing? Or what would stop Johny Programmer from decompiling/decoding the software calls and keys and finding ways around it? It seems to me that all these new anti-copy techniques are just ways to make it more complicated to reverse-engineer and copy, but dont really work in the long run without new hw.

The only solution I can see is they build a new media hardware format, and try to market and sell that. But who will want to buy company X's new drive and media when it wont work with Company Y's newest product, and wont support your legacy CD Media?

Obfuscation

[chfn]

"The location, length and number of embedded key codes can be customized for each CD-ROM title, making it more difficult for hackers to find and decrypt the codes."

It has to be predicatable some how - otherwise the software "decoder" wouldn't know where to look for the the keys and how many to check.

don't belive this

[iggymanz]

from the article: "The keys are not copied properly when software on the disk is copied to a CD-R or CD-RW disk, thus thwarting illegal duplication, the companies said." Somehow, I have a hard time believing that.....I can make an exact duplicate (sector interleaving, etc.) of a CD-R or CD-RW with the proper software, hidden keys and all.

Re:don't belive this

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure you can. Let's try something simple, go out and make a copy of a playstation game. Try to start it up in an un-modded playstation.

Re:don't belive this

[kasperd]

thus thwarting illegal duplication

How do they distinguish illegal copies from legal copies. (Don't claim all copies are illegal, in my country we have laws legalizing backup copies no matter what the company selling the software says. And BTW some years ago I read about a company in my country that claimed to be able to do exactly the same.)

Re:don't belive this

[kasperd]

Try to start it up in an un-modded playstation.

How large is the market for un-modded playstations?

Re:don't belive this

[Anonymous Coward]

Somehow I don't think that was the point. The original idea was that an exact copy could be made, right? The other AC just if you can make a bit by bit copy, with whatever magic software, why do devices like modchips even exist.

Re:don't belive this

[iggymanz]

heh, I was referring to disks readable my existing audio CD player and CD player in my computer. I can make an exact readable duplicate of disks for those.

Re:don't belive this

[iggymanz]

I just educated myself (in 3 minutes) on how copy protection works on the Playstation(tm). Invalid checksums are written into some of the tracks. These I can duplicate.

Re:don't belive this

[DevilJeff]

I'd honestly like to see that happen. If you can duplicate them, please explain why I bought a modchip?

Re:don't belive this

[iggymanz]

rather than hacking the playback equipment, the prirate/thief or good citizen making archival copy of his software hacks the CD burner firmware to pass invalid checksums, rather than correcting them or altering file size.

Re:don't belive this

[Jaysyn]

Ok, great. How do I make a copy of GTA3, it has safedisc2 copy protection, and CloneCD can't seem to get around it. I am licensed to use the game, I picked it up at BestBuy for $34.99. I'd like to make a backup of it because it gets much use.

Jaysyn

Re:don't belive this

[kasperd]

The original idea was that an exact copy could be made, right?

You are right, we were actually not talking about the same. It is true, that at some layer an exact copy is not possible to make. That is why on top of that layer a new layer is introduced with error correction codes. By messing up the whole stuff, you can make disks, where the original and copy can be distinguished. But this also introduces problems like medias vulnurable to scratches and the like.

Now what I was talking about is the fact, that although you can distinguish the disks, this in itself doesn't prevent the copy from being used. Something more is needed. First of all you need hardware, that will do the checks or allow software to do so. And if the checks are done in software, that software should be in the box, not on the disk. Because if it was on the disk, it could just be removed from the copy.

This kind of protection in the hardware is going to annoy some users. So I'm wondering, how many playstations would they sell, if people couldn't by the mod chip.

if you can make a bit by bit copy, with whatever magic software, why do devices like modchips even exist.

Maybe because some people wants to run other software. Even if they could run copies, that might not allow them to run software not approved by the manufacturer of the box.

Now imagine the situation where MS produces a new box, but when you buy such a box you are not allowed to run software not approved by MS. Of course they are never going to approve Linux, so we need a mod chip. Maybe this isn't even something we have to imagine. Read more

Re:don't belive this

[iggymanz]

There is equipment (CD-RAO burners, etc.) that can read the "subtrack" data on which this copy protection scheme (and most others) relies. There are tons of web pages on the subject, including safedisc2 duplication. I was only making the point that data on a CD or DVD *can* be duplicated exactly, and thus any copy protection scheme that relies on that data can easily be thwarted by someone willing to buy the equipment and software to do so, or has the expertise to modify duplication equipment.

Re:don't belive this

[Anonymous Coward]

Check the Clonecd hardware list and make sure your drive can properly write all subcode/subchannel data. A LOT of drives can not, and thus can not properly duplicate protected media.

Information will be free

[buffy]

You keep setting these "proprietary" schemes up, and we'll keep knocking them down. Only after these companies have lost enough money will they learn the basic tenet that information will be free.

Silly rabbits..

Re:Information will be free

[Anonymous Coward]

information will be free

Let's start with a few items:

Your Full name and address.

Your SSN. Your mother's maiden name.

Your children's ages and gender. What route they take on the way home from school.

Put it on that parapet.net website, instead of that clever stuff.

Re:Information will be free

[Anonymous Coward]

So when information is finally free, you'll have crappy Open Source programs instead of (admittedly) somewhat less crappy Windows programs.

No, doesn't sound like a win to me.

Re:Information will be free

[Sebastopol]

you're assuming we will always have the freedom to "knock them down". i bet enough laws and international "free trade agreements" could eventually stifle the progress of the cracker.

Re:Information will be free

[buffy]

Actually, I made no comment as to the legality of knocking them down. It'll happen if it's legal or not--we'll either be criminals, or not.

Re:Information will be free

[Sebastopol]

"It'll happen if it's legal or not--we'll either be criminals, or not."

Too true.

History lesson

[nattt]

This current trend for copy protection reminds me of the home computer boom of the 80s, when everyone jumped on the copy protection bandwagon producing new and improved ways to "stop the pirates". Eventually all the schemes were cracked, and the companies stopped protecting the software because it cost too much and it was too much hassle. Rember "lenslock" anyone?

Then it was 3.5" discs, but if you copied your Amiga game on a PC, or a Mac, or an Acorn (remember them?) it might work. So they gave up...

And then it was dongles. I see a lot less of them these days.

History shows that these anti-copy schemes get cracked and then they get forgotten. When will they ever learn....

Re:History lesson

[adamjaskie]

I liked the ones where you had to look something up in the manual, like the name of a particular monster, or the wingspan of a particular airplane, top speed of a particular tank, etc. I remeber for Wolfenstein Spear of Destiny if you would just type "snoops" at the question screen you could get past it.

Re:History lesson

[TonyMillion]

even before that, jet set willy had a table look up where you had to enter 4 different colour codes to play the game....

of course copying a game back then was as simple as using a tape to tape :)

Re:History lesson

[nattt]

It only took one person in your class to type out a sheet with numbers instead of colours, and then you could photocopy that to your hearts content.

And as for lenslock - I had a pretty good score rate for guessing that just by squinting!

Best of all was the dongle on a game for the Dragon 32. It plugged into the joystick port while loading, but all you had to do was plug in a joystick and waggle it in the right pattern while the game loaded and it would work.

X-Copy

[johnstown]

And X-Copy allowed folks to copy any copy-protected disk on the Amiga; which had some pretty tricky disk encoding schemes available to it if you banged on the hardware a bit. It'll get cracked. Everything does.

Duh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't these companies be better off by NOT publicly announcing such measures?...

Dear Rebel Alliance,

We have implemented a new forcefield around the Death Star. It's impossible to bypass.

Yours truly,
Darth Vader

Re:Duh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yeah and we patched that exhaust port problem on the last one, so go ahead and try it.

Re:Duh?

[LordNightwalker]

well, it's already pretty well established that security trough obscurity doesn't work. I mean, someone is gonna try to copy that CD anyway, he'll realise it's copy protected with a new and unknown copy protection scheme, before you can say the first 1000 digits after the comma of pi webforums on CD copying are flooded with posts on this new scheme, and the crackers are gonna have one hell of a party trying to crack it (and be home before 2am, all partied out!).

Here we go again

[Rupert]

If I can read the contents of the disk, I can write it to another disk. If I can't read it (with my existing hardware and software) then it's broken.

Besides, how many warez d00ds are actively swapping copied CDs, anyway? Isn't it all ISO images in these days of broadband?

Re:Here we go again

[mwjlewis]

Didn't you read slashdot , we don't have broadband.... *wink*

Re:Here we go again

[mpe]

If I can read the contents of the disk, I can write it to another disk. If I can't read it (with my existing hardware and software) then it's broken.

Not only that you can probably quite easily find parts of the data which are readable, but which break the relevent specs in some way or other.
This sort of thing has been tried before, it's more likely that crackers will just treat such software in the same way as that which uses a hardware dongle.
From the user POV having to always have the CD in the drive is far more hassle than something which simply plugs into parallel, USB or even PCI. This is the second "CD dongle" idea posted to /. in a week.

Re:Here we go again

[Old Wolf]

That's the whole point. It IS broken. But it will still run anyway, and you can't make an exact replica because your hardware can't create broken disks.

Re:Here we go again

[SWPadnos]

Not Necessarily.

Remember the Copy II PC diskett copying system?

First there was software to do sector copying. Then the publishers got smart and started using errors on the disk as a protection scheme (they would actually burn holes in the media with a laser). Software copiers couldn't duplicate the bad diskettes because they couldn't write physically damaged information. Thus, the Copy II PC hardware - a special controller that sat between the regular disk controller and the drive and could write sectors which looked like (physically) bad sectors - was born.

Now, fast forward to the CD-ROM. When writing a CD with a standard CD-R/RW drive, I don't think you can put intentional errors in the data - the ECC information will be correct for whatever data is written to a sector (even if the data itself is useless). You can still read the data, and you will get valid error information with it. So, all they have to do is write the keys to sectors with specially screwed up ECC data, or just write the codes into the ECC data itself. This data can be read, but not written by consumer grade devices.

Re:Here we go again

[Proc6]

And the even better part about it is, the people who actually download and use pirated copies won't have to buy anything special. The crackers will simply be the ones to break the mechanism, even if it means building a modded CD-ROM drive, but once they dupe the CD, special encryption keys and all, they'll crack it and distribute a "patched" version that doesn't require any special hardware at all. So it's not like all the people that want to use pirated disc images will have to have a modded CD-ROM drive, only the heads of warez groups will have them to rip and crack original copies, then they'll distribute the same thing they have been for decades.

Re:Here we go again

[Kashif Shaikh]

Besides, how many warez d00ds are actively swapping copied CDs, anyway? Isn't it all ISO images in these days of broadband?

Only those 'queer' folks who want to copy their friend's Deer Hunter CD because no "real warez d00dz" are going to put that crap on _______.(otherwise "legitimate" ISOs will be shit kicked out of the "circular 3-day buffer")

Re:Here we go again

[walt-sjc]

... And before that (from the same company) there was the "dump memory & CPU state to disk" Copy Master card for the Apple ][. Seems that most games only checked copy protection when booted. After they were running, they just accessed data files. So the disks created by the copymaster board booted into the running game, overlaying the entire computer memory and state from the snapshot image.

Bottom line is that there are many creative ways to crack this nut. It's just another case of history repeating itself. Not ONE copy protection scheme has not been cracked (on open architecture systems like personal computers anyway.) Why? Simply because the program has to work. If it can load, it can be cracked. Sometimes by software ICE, sometimes by hardware, a program can be traced, it's secrets revealed.

Re:Here we go again

[hyphz]

This is the real kicker.

The way to do copy protection is to make data that can't be WRITTEN, not that can't be READ.

After all, if you want to READ it, all you have to do is to find the part of the protected program that reads it and see how it does it - presto. And that part can't be encrypted or anything, because it hasn't read the key yet.

All of the 'error based' protections were based on this - that most copying programs, and BIOSs, won't deliberately write an error on a disk.

Thank goodness

[secondsun]

It is about time some one comes up with an unhackable security standard. I am tired of having to make back up copies of all my games and apps (esp VS. NET academic, 7 fucking cd's). Now with this technology deployed I can simply ask for a replacement disk when one of mine fail.

Wait, companies don't offer that protection even if my media fails? You mean I will have to pony up another 50-300 dollars for a piece of software?

Damn damn damn, I hope it gets cracked faster than IIS on a bad day.

Re:Thank goodness

[mpe]

It is about time some one comes up with an unhackable security standard.

Such a thing is impossible, anyone wanting to try would be better off putting their energy into something which stands some chance of actually working.

Re:Thank goodness

[AntiNorm]

Wait, companies don't offer that protection even if my media fails?

M$ does, but they charge so much for it that I suspect you're actually just paying them for another license. I own a legal copy of VC++ 6.0 Standard Edition, and when I needed the CD replaced, M$ wanted $30 plus s/h. If you consider that I only plunked down $40 for my first copy ($100 shelf price - $50 M$ rebate - $10 gift certificate Staples had given me), why don't I just buy another copy off the shelf?

Re:Thank goodness

[Reziac]

And where are you going to get replacement media if meanwhile the company has gone out of business? Chances are you won't be able to at any price.

And what if the company stops supporting that version? You may be forced to buy an upgrade instead.

(See my other post somewhere upstream, about a real-life example of both.)

Has anybody

[sofist]

have a soft-tip pen to borow - last time when there was a uncrackable CD protection that did the trick... ;)

Is it worth all the trouble?

[jsimon12]

I wonder if it is really worth all the trouble to get people not to pirate. Sure the industry comes up with numbers in the millions or billions, but the real question is would these people really buy a legite copy if they had to? Or would the reaction be similar to what is going on with the RIAA and "un-copyable" CD's? Has anyone actually proven that making a CD uncopyable will do anything good? Or will someone just figure out how and get put in jail (a la DVD and DeCSS).

Re:Is it worth all the trouble?

[mpe]

but the real question is would these people really buy a legite copy if they had to? Or would the reaction be similar to what is going on with the RIAA and "un-copyable" CD's? Has anyone actually proven that making a CD uncopyable will do anything good?

With quite a bit of the "warez community" having software is about status. Quite likely some crackers want these kind of schemes, because when they crack something like this they get lots of kudos. Quite likely the selling price also affects the warez value.
But they probably never would have bought the program at any price.

Nice to see 90s-style hubris is still in fashion

[ArcSecond]

Whenever I see these claims of "better, stronger, faster" anti-copying schemes, I wonder if these guys are noticing that the counter-anti-copiers develop new tactics faster than a bacterium can split in two.

What would this scenario look like if we translated it into WarCraft 3?:

"I AM THE MIGHTY THRALL! SEE THE INPENETRABLE WALL OF TURRETS THAT SURROUND MY BASE! I AM INVINCIBLE! NO-ONE WOULD DARE... HEY! STOP THAT! NOOOO!! PLEASE!! STOP!! ARRRRRGGGH!"

it's all about the 95%

[rta]

As usual, they're not going to stop dedicated crackers from copying the software on these disks. However, it will be much harder than just sticking a disk in your cd rom , another one in your CD-RW and hitting the copy button.

so this will cut down on a high percentage of copying by normal users.

no comment on fair use issues or whatever, but from the point of view of cutting down on casual software piracy this seems like a good idea to me.

They don't get it!

[ryanwright]

When will these people get it?! First, you can't copy protect something. It will be hacked with 48 hours of release, if not sooner. Second, all it takes is one person to put it on Kazaa and it's everywhere.

Meanwhile, millions of honest, law abiding people will have to deal with the bullshit problems that this will create. I use no-cd hacks for most of my games. With data storage going for close to $1 per gig, who the hell wants to insert a CD every time they want to play a game? Copy the whole CD to the hard drive and throw it in a box. Saves time and effort every time I fire up the latest version of (insert game here).

"All CD-ROM drives could read software with the encryption keys without any trouble," a JVC spokeswoman said.

Yeah, we'll see. Trust me, this time will be no different than the last eight times they've said this.

Reminds me of the 3DS Dongle

[thesolo]

This reminds me of the 3D Studio Max hardware dongle issue. To protect the software from piracy, the authors of 3DS Max had the program check for a dongle on the serial port of the computer. The dongle would return a unique key requested by the program, depending on the activity you were doing in the program at the time. The thought was with all the combinations that the dongle/software combo could possibly have, it would be impossible to emulate with software, thus keeping 3DS secure.

What happened?? 3DS was one of the fastest-cracked pieces of software I've ever seen. Instead of trying to emulate the dongle, crackers simply went through the program and removed all the calls to the dongle! 3DS was circulating around the internet in less than a week after it's official commercial release, paired with a fully-functional crack.

I expect this technology to be no different. People won't try to copy the original, they will figure out a way to get around the checking mechanism, then copy the cracked version. As the saying goes, where there is a will, there is a way.

Re:Reminds me of the 3DS Dongle

[TerryAtWork]

Isn't that the time where the dongle turned out to do some subtle part of the floating point arithmetic and when hacked out of the program caused every user's mesh to collapse slowly and irretrievably? Some hack.....

Re:Reminds me of the 3DS Dongle

[bhurt]

It's worse than that. The key to decrypt the software is on the disk, just in a "non-standard" location. Obviously, despite it being non-standard the software can read the location. All the cracker has to do is find out where on the disk it is, and read the key off themselves, and viola.

A better example would be the old floppy-based copy protection schemes where they'd use weird track steppings or other floppy controller timings to try and hide the data. If I recall correctly, all the copy protection schemes based on this failed as well. In fact, I seem to remember "perfect copy" programs that would copy said disks anyways. The only thing new here is that they've add cryptography. Not that it helps.

Of course, now I've gone and violated the DMCA. Hmm. Since the information is stored in a "non-standard" location, I wonder if documenting how to access that location aka documenting the hardware interface to the drive is now a DMCA violation?

Brian

Re:Reminds me of the 3DS Dongle

[ajs]

You're missing the point. No one cares about pirates. Pirates bulk-copy CDs, and a bulk copy is going to contain these odd keys. The target here is the guy who backs up his software. That guy is hurting business because we know that if he loses his copy of a piece of software, he's going to march right back into Best Buy and pay for it again. That's revenue, and we all know that revenue is a good thing!

The anti-consumer attitude that the software and hardware industry is pushing is just beyond belief.

Re:Reminds me of the 3DS Dongle

[Sebastopol]

However, if that smae 3DSMax today was running in a Palladium-enabled machine, you couldn't edit the source code otherwise the key wouldn't match and the OS would reject the application.

be afraid.

Re:Reminds me of the 3DS Dongle

[Anonymous Coward]

From the doc at EETimes, it seems like the innovation is that they put the key in a hidden location that's different on every disk. But that's just watermarking.

The hack to find hidden watermarks is that they show up if AND enough copies.

Re:Reminds me of the 3DS Dongle

[swb]

In fact, I seem to remember "perfect copy" programs that would copy said disks anyways.

Locksmith!! God, I wish I had back the hours spent staring at the screen as it tediously copied a 120k disk nibble by nibble on a single drive system.

Re:Reminds me of the 3DS Dongle

[Reziac]

One of my clients ran into copy-protection problems with some software he legitimately owned. Upshot was he needed new media, cuz the old media had become defective. Meanwhile, the publisher had gone tits-up and the software was now owned by another company -- which refused to supply new media. But they'd be happy to sell him an upgrade, for full price.

My client bought different software from someone else.

Re:Reminds me of the 3DS Dongle

[pruss]

This could be made to work. Instead of calls to check the dongle--that's dumb--you encrypt various portions of the code. Then, before calling the code, you decrypt it with the keys given by the dongle. After running it, you encrypt it again. True, you can grab the code once it's decrypted. But since the code isn't all decrypted at once, you would need to write a program that watches and grabs upon decryption.

Moreover, the hacker might easily miss more rarely used parts of the code (say, parts of the code using features that aren't always used), so chances are that some part of the code would remain encrypted after one was done, and the pirated program would crash from time to time.

Of course the hacker might search out all calls to access data from the dongle, figure out what data was sent to the dongle then, and decrypt. Each access to the dongle could, however, be disguised to look different (even automatically!) so this couldn't be done by an automated procedure. Even more seriously, the dongle might not be memoryless. Thus, the route by which a program would get to a given routine would affect what key the dongle sends back since it would affect the sequence of past dongle calls. Thus, one couldn't just find the call to the dongle and grab the key from the dongle. One would have to figure out the logic of the program and see what previous dongle calls would have had to be made to be made to get to that part of the code, etc.

Sure, in the end everything is crackable. But this might take a LONG time, and there would be a good chance that the hacker would miss something and the hacked version thus would crash occasionally unexpectedly.

Another nice trick one could use is to run different copyprotection code depending on the year. It would take an average of half a year for the hacker to figure out that his crack was good only for a year, and people with "cracked" copies would notice them stopping working with the new year. Changing system date will fix that, but it will be a nuisance and make buying the program more attractive.

ARP

Re:Reminds me of the 3DS Dongle

[SmileeTiger]

Actually, it is pretty easy to see if a user has changed the date on his computer so that wouldn't be a help.

You can simply check to see if a certian number of files have a modification date later then the current date. If this is the case then the date has been set back.

Re:Reminds me of the 3DS Dongle

[|<amikaze]

until "mod chips" come out to circumvent the palladium subsystem, yet still have it return valid keys. i'm sure it's plausible to have a cracked DRM OS. i most certainly don't have the skills to do it, but I also haven't ever cracked a piece of software to remove copy protection.

Re:Reminds me of the 3DS Dongle

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you`re saying `pirate` when you mean `professional counterfeiter`. A pirate is just someone who copies a disk from a friend/colleague. No-one cares about them - its counterfeiters who hurt sales.

Well I know what I'm gonna do...

[Anonvmous Coward]

... I'm gonna start scanning my CD's. Eventually the DPI will be enough to make it work.

Re:Well I know what I'm gonna do...

[poot_rootbeer]

I don't know if that would work. Maybe instead of using regular light to scan the CD surface, you could use a laser, and instead of scanning the entire surface of the disc at once, you could spin the disc around and scan the disc one bit at a time...

Re:Well I know what I'm gonna do...

[tandr]

... and print them on (laser?) printer with high DPI as well.

Oh, shlt... multilayered DVD are out of bounds.

Re:Well I know what I'm gonna do...

[Anonvmous Coward]

I think it'd take around 60,000 DPI to pull it off. (note: Bad math estimate in my head so don't take that # too seriously)

The best scanner I've ever seen was 4,800 DPI. (note that I've looked around much.)

Does Moore's law apply to scanners?

Re:Well I know what I'm gonna do...

[tandr]

looks like Moore law is sorta universal. Remember 2-3 years ago? Super puper was 1200 and everybody said "oh..."

Re:Well I know what I'm gonna do...

[Anonymous Coward]

Moore's law does NOT talk about speed, resolution or anything like it. It talks about the number of *heat emitting transistors* being doubled every 18 months. Now, *that* is why current CPU's, graphics cards etc. needs so much cooling just to do the same work that I could do on my C64 years ago.

Re:Well I know what I'm gonna do...

[Anonvmous Coward]

It was just a joke. :P

Time and Desire

[stoolpigeon]

My wife and I visisted a mayan city when we were on our honeymoon in Cancun. I was amazed by the incredible amount of pure information they had ammassed in regards to astronomy.

Our guide was really helpful in explaining that this amazing feat was possible because the people figuring all the stuff out had tons and tons of time to work on it over years and years.

Just imagine all the people out there w/nothing but time and desire (I'm willing to bet there are more people that will work to break this than there were Mayans studying moon/stars/seasons). What system can stand against that onslaught?

.

A very special technique...

[jukal]

From the Hudson Soft release: " The new technology developed by Hudson and JVC uses a special technique to keep the key hidden"

I wonder if this special technology is security by obscurity :)) If the magic can be read by the cd-rom drive, I really don't see what would be so hard in developing a "special technique" for recording the disc while playing back data from the original to create a new record without this silly copy-protection.

Misprint

[Anne Thwacks]

There was a misprint:

This is actualy a system to prevent users from BUYING CDs.

Re:Misprint

[jelle]

Ahhh. This is a good day for Open Source.

prevention

[Satai]

Ok, if anybody here knows more than what the article says -- presumably, the key will be accessible through direct-level calls to the CD-ROM to read specific tracks; what is to prevent the user from either intercepting these calls or monitoring usage of the CD-ROM, in order to determine where the keys are placed on the CD? I imagine an API implementation like WINE would be able to intercept these calls, with parameters, to find the specific locations.

But, I assume, this has been thought of by JVC. Why wouldn't it work?

Re:prevention

[PD]

Run the thing in VMWare, and intercept the calls when it hits a hacked Linux driver. Easy. Sort of.

Re:prevention

[shrikel]

It would work.

From the post:

They plan to have special encryption keys hidden in software and which are pressed onto CD-ROMs and which can not be read with ordinary procedures. They claim that the location, length and number of embedded keys can vary making it more difficult to hack.

The data _must_ be accessible, in order for any normal CD-ROM to be able to read it, but you have to use, like you said, low-level access to the device. It's not impossible, but it's more difficult. First, there's the difficulty of determining where the software looks for the information. Presumably, it's reading the disk, and sorting out that one line that it's requesting the key from is difficult. I'm not saying it's impossible. But it would probably have to be done on a CD-by-CD basis. So likely, you'd have to either develop a very sophisticated program to determine, given a copy-protected CD with its program running, which data contains the key, or crack each CD one at a time.

It's not foolproof, but it at least is a new thing. When are producers of products going to learn that they CANNOT STOP people from ripping off their product until people have the MORALS not to do it? Face it, there's no unbreakable copy protection except for a populace who refuses to copy copyrighted works!

So the producers just have to keep coming up with new measures which will be either less or more effective than past ones, and hope that the crackers will be inconvenienced enough that they'll just wait for someone else to crack it and use the other person's crack. The more difficult the protection is to crack, the fewer people will be able to crack it, and (hopefully) the fewer people will be disposed to take the TIME to crack it.

Crackers will find a way for anything, if they feel like the rewards (free (as in beer) software, the pride of having cracked something, or whatever else motivates them) compensate for the trouble of finding a crack.

Re:prevention

[Anonymous Coward]

Easier:

Write a filter driver for the CD that logs what you need. No need for VMWare.

Re:prevention

[SmurfButcher Bob]

First, there's the difficulty of determining where the software looks for the information. Presumably, it's reading the disk, and sorting out that one line that it's requesting the key from is difficult Err... why bother monitoring low level calls when you can make them yourself... if the software can issue a call to read the data on the disk, encrypted or not, then you can issue a call to read the data on the disk, encrypted or not. Then, you can issue a call to write that sector on a new disk, encrypted or not. When you're done, we'll have a perfect bit-wise copy, sector by sector... or physical track by physical track, whichever works better. Read a sector, write a sector. The context of the data is irrelevent, and will remain intact.

Re:prevention

[Dannon]

When are producers of products going to learn that they CANNOT STOP people from ripping off their product until people have the MORALS not to do it? Face it, there's no unbreakable copy protection except for a populace who refuses to copy copyrighted works!

Very well-said.

As other posters in this forum have mentioned, publishers have every right to make it difficult to copy their work. It is, after all, their work.
I have every right to work around it, as long as I am not depriving anyone else of life, liberty, or property. It is, after all, the disk that I have paid for that could easily be scratched or destroyed.
The RIAA/MPAA Lawyers have been flexing their political muscles to make the exercise of my right illegal.

However, that doesn't mean I have to either play their game or break the law to enjoy good music.

For one thing, I have been developing my taste in classical music. Orchestral pieces written by dead white guys. I'd just like to hear them try to claim copyright against Bach or Mozart.

And yes, I do use peer-to-peer... but not for piracy. I download broadcast television from other countries. Aired free to the public, but unavailable locally. No different from getting a videotaped copy of that show I missed last week from a friend, at least, not in my mind.

And then, there's software. I used to accept copied versions of programs from friends on a regular basis back when I was in college, and broke. Nowadays, I have money... and if it's worth my time to use it, it's worth my money to encourage that company to make more good software.

So, rather than expressing my contempt for the DMCA by violating it, I choose to voice my opinion with my dollars... and, of course, with letters to my representatives in Congress.

Just my two bits.

Re:prevention

[rweir]

Face it, there's no unbreakable copy protection except for a populace who refuses to copy copyrighted works!

Or one that fears their government .

Couldn't they just..

[Anonvmous Coward]

...sniff the IDE channel and dump the data from it somewhere on a hard drive?

Whatever

[Auckerman]

"special encryption keys which are hidden in software that's pressed onto a CD-ROM and cannot be read with ordinary procedures."

"The development team has already verified the compatibility of the Root encryption key system with about 200 models of CD-ROM drives on the market."

Unless those CD-ROM drives are using abnormal means to read those little 0's and 1's these statements are mutually exclusive. All one would have to do is a raw device dump and burn the resulting disk image on their favorite CD burner.

Greedy bastards!

[mustangdavis]

I wonder how much money was wasted doing this (soon to be futile) "research" .... again!

How can these "researchers" actually take a paycheck for this "work" and live with themselves?

To all researchers on this project: Would it hurt that much to become a productive member of society? For God's sake, flipping burgers would be more benificial than wasting time and resources trying to re-invent a wheel that has (and will be) broken time and time again!

Just keep building the mountains taller and taller ... hackers need exercise too!

Even if this thing did work....

[ebyrob]

It certainly won't be profitable in the game biz. Show me a game that can't run without the CD and I'll show you a game no one wants to buy.

I have an 8x DVD drive that takes about 2 years to spin up, there's no way in luserland I'm going to wait for that delay anytime during game play, or application use for that matter.

Re:Even if this thing did work....

[penguinboy]

This raises another question for me: CD servers. I have a 7-disc changer connected to my fileserver for CDs I use frequently and I'm sure that this scheme won't be able to function correctly when it's accessing a network share rather than a local drive.

Re:Even if this thing did work....

[Dynedain]

sorry bud, but the majority of games released today require the CD in the drive in order to play. Of course there are cracks for most of them, but most people who buy the games and play them aren't running the cracks.

Re:Even if this thing did work....

[askii64]

I know quite a few people who buy games and then crack them. Reason? They go to LAN parties, and don't want to bring their original CDs for all their games along with them, in case they're stolen. Of course, most people who use cracks probably do have warez copies of the games.

Then there are CD cracks that require a CD in the drive, but not necessarily the original (like the Sims.. I can run it from my backup CD with the crack but trying to run it with no CD with the crack results in the game not showing the mouse cursor).

Re:Even if this thing did work....

[ebyrob]

Of course there are cracks for most of them,

My point exactly.

most people who buy the games and play them aren't running the cracks.

I guess we'll let the market decide... Oh wait, this try at CD protection is going to fail too isn't it? So, we won't know what truly rigid copyright enforcement might do to the market until somebody actually achieves it.

BTW - How many gamers do you know? Okay, now subtract the number of them that have ever infringed a copyright. Still know any gamers?

Re:Even if this thing did work....

[Dynedain]

no....but of those, only one ran a no-cd crack....and that was because the copy protection scheme on Diablo II didn't work on the DVD/CDRW drive on his new laptop.

Re:Even if this thing did work....

[ebyrob]

Hmm... Come to think of it, nearly every gamer I know is either a network admin of some kind a programmer or an engineer. They all run at least half their purchased games cracked, but my view of "easy" may be warped.

Some guys I know even run warezed copies to keep their boxed copy pristeen and un-opened... (probably some kind of dark grey area there)

Backups

[Alizarin Erythrosin]

Well, at work we make backup copies of our software then store the master copies in a safe place, that way we can send the copies out with our techs so if they get scratched and stuff it's no big deal.

Fair use is a nice thing, and it actually saves us money because we don't have to buy new copies when one gets scratched.

Re:Backups

[TFloore]

I *almost* welcome these types of schemes... I'm waiting for one of them to actually work.

I'm going to be hopelessly optimistic here.

When one of these copy-protection schemes finally works, software manufacturers will suddenly make it much easier to get extra CDs of their software. You pay for the license, the media should be provided at or around cost, right? So you buy your software in a store, register/activate it, call them up and say your 4-year-old scratched the CD playing with his toy hammer, please send you another.

The next week, you call them up and ask for another, cause you dropped the 2nd one in the parking lot and stepped on it when you burned yourself with that hot cup of coffee as you were cursing your clumsiness.

The next week, you call them up and get another, cause this one got sat on and scratched by the arm of your favorite office chair. (By the way, will you people pay to get the scratch taken out of my chair???)

How long before they just send you a 10-pack of media? (Opps, I put the mail down by the fireplace, and they all melted.... Send me another 10-pack?)

If these companies are serious about selling licenses, and not little disks of plastic and aluminum, they should have no problem with this. Right?

Right?

(Of course, the record companies should also provice you, for a nominal fee, with a CD version of the White album that you already bought as vinyl *and* cassette tape, because, after all, they sell licenses for music, not pieces of plastic, right? And ditto with their media replacement policy.)

Hey, I said hopelessly optimistic, didn't I?

To save everyone the usual comments

[Anonymous Coward]

1) We don't care if you buy all your software, or alternatively, don't play games, think free (beer) Linux is l33t, and that we should too. This comes from a Debian Woody/Win2k dual-booter. *Yawn*

2) Yes, one single point of failure. Someone cracks it, and suddenly cracked copies float all around the 'net on every P2P we can imagine. So the tech is mostly useless. Yes, we all know this too. As for copying from friends: most even non-computer-literate people know how to use point & drool P2P nets now to download W4r3z, pr0n, eBooks, and anything else we can imagine. The number of times I've actually physically had to pirate a CD in the past two years can be counted on one hand.

Lastly, something perhaps vaguely original: having just read the GPL article, and the main incentive being given for development as 'reputation', and seeing as how warez and cracker groups operate the same way, one wonders if a comparison article is in order...

Re:And when have we heard this before? [OT]

[tdelaney]

Um - what does "cracker" have to do with a racial slur (I really want to know)?

Remember, not everyone is from the US ...

Technology to prevent software copying

[suso]

They call it... The baseball bat.

Re:Technology to prevent software copying

[Ziviyr]

They call it... The baseball bat.

Hey, encoding programs on a baseball bat, that would be a tough copy. Would likely break off my CD-ROM tray...

I guess bat-drives will start appearing now, maybe they can capitalize on confusion by releasing flying-mammal bat drives to throw evil h4x0rz off the trail.

Oh Great....

[graphicartist82]

Quoth the article: JVC intends to charge between 20 cents and $1 per disk for the encryption service, depending on the complexity of the key codes.

Yay, 1 more thing to drive up the price of CD's.. This reminds me why I don't buy CD's..

features special encryption keys which are hidden in software that's pressed onto a CD-ROM and cannot be read with ordinary procedures.

Couldn't this be overcome by doing a raw copy of the CD? AFAIK, as long as it's not a hardware-driven protection mechanism, a raw write would just transfer the data to the new CD..

Re:Oh Great....

[WinPimp2K]

Software CDs oh artistic one.

JVC, unlike the fine folks who bring us music CDs does recognize a difference between computer (and probably console game) software and the data collections that the RIAA/MPAA stuffs onto audio CDs/DVDs and laughingly calls "software".

Having adequately corrected your misunderstanding (if you still forgot why you don't buy CD's you may elect treatment at your nearest re-education camp), I would venture to say that if a popular product like NWN II (hypothetically) were to use this technology, that 20 cents to 1.00 additional charge would work out to a 5.00 to 10.00 increase in the MSRP of the package.

The question the "real" software industry will have to ask themselves is:

Will using this technology actually bring in enough increased sales (from people who would otherwise pirate it) to make up for the inevitable ill will this will generate?

Historically, the answer to this question has always been NO. But past performance is no guarantee of future results.

Re:Oh Great....

[Anonymous Coward]

This is supposed to drive down the cost of CDs.

Just like security cameras in the mall have driven down the prices of the items I buy because they can catch th shoplifters who drive the prices up.

Just like my car insurance is going down because I am wearing my seat belt.

Re:Oh Great....

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you actually wearing a seatbelt now, whilst sitting in front of a computer, reading Slashdot?

I don't think that is what they mean by, 'always wear your seatbelt'.

MORE difficult?

[telstar]

"the location, length and number of embedded keys can vary making it more difficult to hack."

• So that means it'll take like two days, instead of one?

BlindWrite

[mshowman]

http://www.blindwrite.com

Re:BlindWrite

[Anonymous Coward]

Blindwrite doesnt circumvent the physical limitations of a CD-R, and does nothing that any burner/software combo that supports DAO RAW-96 mode doesnt.

It doesn't copy PSX or Sega Saturn discs, despite the fact that both are, at their core, pure yellowbook.

Quit trying to impress people with your limited knowledge of technology.

Re:BlindWrite

[mshowman]

Now I remember why I don't post here. I might offend the bitter hoardes of jobless anonymous cowards with their small IQ's who feel an overwhelming need to belittle others. Go back to downloading animal pr0n and quit trying to impress people with your bloated ego.

Re:BlindWrite

[Anonymous Coward]

you smell like poop

Re:security, think PSX

[Tmack]

This is also similar to the way PSX discs are "protected". The discs are made with intentional bad sectors in specific areas. Normal copying software ignores the errors, and normal burners cant "burn" bad sectors the same way, so the discs are "un-copyable". The playstation looks for these errors when booting a disc and if not found, it wont load. The solution to this was the MOD chip. You make a copy of the disc without the errors, and the mod chip makes the PSX bypass the error checks. This new copy protection is going to be open to the same flaw, you wont be able to make a "perfect" copy of the disc, but whats to stop someone from bypassing it, de-crypting the disc and removing the protection, then re-burning it?

Tm

Right.

[AugstWest]

They claim that the location, length and number of embedded keys can vary making it more difficult to hack.

"more difficult" != copy protection.

The copy protection arms race has continued unabated for what, 20+ years now?

No matter what they build, it will be circumvented. If a human can design it, another human can dismantle it.

It's sad, really, watching these companies dump millions of dollars into useless protection schemes while watching their profits and stock values shrink day by day.

Look -- it's not the pirates that are hurting your businesses. They have always existed and will continue to exist.

It's your stubborn unwillingness to admit that you cannot recoup every single penny from every single installation of your software throughout the world.

Re:Right.

[brogdon]

What's the big deal? Seems to me they have the same grasp of the issue that you do.

What's wrong with this thought process:

1) We can spend $600k making this new technology
2) It will, of course, be cracked
3) However, it will make it harder for the average person, who is technologically clueless, to pirate our stuff
4) Because of #3, we will sell $3M more to users who would commit casual piracy before easy-to-use cracks and tools become available
5) We bank an extra $2.4M

What's so stupid about putting in copy-protection to make piracy harder even though you can't completely eliminate it? If the costs work out the right way (obviously my own numbers are made up), why not do it?

You seem to be saying that pirates are hurting the bottom lines of content-creators less than their copy-protection budgets. I disagree. I have a feeling most businesses' people can handle a simple ROI check.

Re:Right.

[Anonymous Coward]

They should call it copy-deferrment.

Re:Right.

[jonnythan]

You left out the "piss off our customers by forcing them to buy backup cd's from us, and decrease our revenue and alienate our consumer base" part.

Re:Right.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not the average person that is doing the hacking. All the average person has to do is jump on their favorite file sharing program and execute a search. It's the above average person, who knows how to hack this for-fools encryption sceme that will offer it up on p2p networks. All it takes is one copy to be hacked.

Re:Right.

[Anonymous Coward]

> I have a feeling most businesses' people can handle a simple ROI check.

Actually, most "business people" running larger entities are remarkably poor at calculating ROI at all, and simply horrible when negative intangibles are involved. Even when they do the work, and get it right, they have a strong tendency to ignore any result that doesn't fit with their "world view".

This is this sort of "crap" ROI thinking that lead to copy protection schemes, and these schemes are one driving force behind GPL style software. Believe me, Linux has caused more damage to Microsoft, alone, than has the loss of all copy-protection detered piracy.

Then, of course, ROI for open software has pretty much been proven itself in quite a number of meaty places. Yet, many still leave their head in the sand and send millions per year to MS.

ROI and "big business". Right.

Re:Right.

[Anonymous Coward]

You hit the nail on the head. I`m sure most of the people who claim protection is useless would still put some protection on their games. The idea is to delay piracy. Most games sell in the first couple of months after release. So it doesnt much matter if people copy it after that time. Just a few weeks can make all the difference.

Hudson Soft?!

[fondue]

Surely the headline for this item should be "Hudson Soft make first ever announcement that has nothing to do with Bomberman"? =)

patent 5,809,545

[nobody/incognito]

Optical disc for a master key, and a method and apparatus for optical-disc information management which inhibit and permit reproduction of main information from an illegal copy disc by using physical and logical security information

Inventors: Ozaki; Kazuhisa (Yokosuka, JP); Kayanuma; Kanji (Hadano, JP)
Assignee: Victor Company of Japan, Ltd. (Yokohama, JP)
Filed: September 12, 1995 Issued: September 15, 1998

nobody

Re:patent 5,809,545

[epictetus]

Somebody mod up the parent.

It looks like they are encoding a "wobble" onto the CD, i.e. a physical error, in a certain area. Mass-market cd-burners can't do this--they can only write bits. So the software attempts to read the magic part of the disk and gets back a certain error code. You can't copy that because your burner can't write a wobble.

People are correct in saying that the data has to be detectable by standard software, but incorrect in thinking that it has to be detectable as data. In fact it is detectable by its error code.

Weak bits

[TheoFish]

Sounds similar to the floppies which were written with "weak bits" that didn't always produce the same value when read and which could not be duplicated with normal floppy drives.

Back then, you'd patch the code that checked for it and only people with illegal copies of the floppies wouldn't have to worry about something going wrong.

Of course there are a heap more bits in todays programs, so it will be more of a challenge. Of course larger communities of crackers exist today thanks to the internet.

So, presumably it's in the subcode

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, like that is any great innovation - the subcodes have been sitting there unused for ages.

Actually, as most CD-burners can't write all of the subcodes it sounds like a good idea. At least it would be standards compliant.

Infact, I think that is an excellent idea - standards compliant, easily implemented, and above average difficulty to bypass. Well done JVC. I'm all for preventing copyright theft, and this is about the most sensible way to do it.

Re:So, presumably it's in the subcode

[Mikelikus]

And it has been a waste of money, time and brain cells I'm afraid.

If (by a miracle) raw copiers like blindwrite or clonecd can't copy those cds physically, there's always a cracker who will be delighted to crack that system in less than 24 hours! Actually, the dumb-leech that downloads warez with 1-click(tm) out of any p2p network or any common-leech that lurks at message boards and ftp-lists will never have to bother with this encryption as, they will only have to "copy cracked exe to game dir".

copy protection goes a long way... and if it's software enforced it's absolutely pathetic.

Re:So, presumably it's in the subcode

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, you're right, but it does still prevent *some* illegal copying, and it doesn't introduce incompatibilities, so where is the problem? You can't back up your installation CD, OK, technically you're right, but what are you going to do, eat your dinner off the CD, or use it as a frisbee? CDs are durable, and I doubt whether the software will still be in use in 5 years, certainly not in 10 years, and the CD will last at least 15, so no problem there.

Re:So, presumably it's in the subcode

[BollocksToThis]

CDs are durable, and I doubt whether the software will still be in use in 5 years, certainly not in 10 years, and the CD will last at least 15, so no problem there.

Spoken like someone with absolutely no experience of flatmates, coworkers, animals, or children.

Sure, for a company that copies the install to their server and then stores the CD in a safe, a backup is not needed... but for regular home users who don't have secure storage facilities, realities inevitably intrude.

Re:So, presumably it's in the subcode

[Anonymous Coward]

If a company provides CDs in a plastic slip case, maybe you have a point, but a Jewel case would adequately protect a CD as long as it is returned to the jewel case after use. I suspect that is your point, you want to just leave them laying around.

I have never seen an animal actually take a CD off the shelf, remove it from it's jewel case, and damage it.

Re:So, presumably it's in the subcode

[Anonymous Coward]

Bully for you.

Have you ever seen an animal damage anything?

Have you ever seen SOMEONE ELSE (ie: not yourself) borrow one of your CD's and leave it lying around?

Have you ever seen a child puzzled by a jewel case, and thus not able to open it?

Have you ever seen what happens to a CD when the jewel case is smashed?

In summary, shut the fuck up, and realise not everywhere is a perfect environment for CDs.

Read between the lines:

[mblase]

"The Root encryption deserves to be called fourth-generation encryption. It is different from existing, so-called third-generation encryption, [in that] the encryption keys can not be located easily," said a spokesman for Hudson Soft.

Translation: "The encryption can't be beaten by current software. Consumers will have to upgrade to the next version of their CD-copying software to beat this."

Re:Read between the lines:

[Alsee]

Tomorrows news today:

"The Root encryption deserves to be called fifth-generation encryption. It is different from existing, so-called fourth-generation encryption, [in that] the CD carrying the encryption keys can not be located easily," said a spokesman for Vapor Soft.

-

Re:Read between the lines:

[Anonymous Coward]

It's interesting that a little obscurity ie. making the keys hard to fine, is considered a generational improvement to encryption technology.

Re:Read between the lines:

[Ig0r]

It's not an 'improvement' to encryption technology, it's an improvement to "please don't copy this or look at the method to copy this" form of copy 'protection'.

Re:Read between the lines:

[evbergen]

It's not an 'improvement' to encryption technology, it's an improvement to "please don't copy this or look at the method to copy this" form of copy 'protection'.

The popularity of which having greatly increased since the all-mighty US govt. decided that it can legislate away the need for real encryption, with the DMCA. The sad thing is that the thing was passed as well.

(Oh, and ending is better than mending.)

Re:Read between the lines:

[Anonymous Coward]

If you look really closely you can see where the copy protection is.

http://home.earthlink.net/~zuran129/cd-lens.gif

Disabling Key Checking

[Hayzeus]

I doubt this would be the way to defeat this cp scheme. The "keys" appear to be used to encrypt data the disk. Presumably, this data will need to be decrypted in order to get the SW to work.

Also, these are "special" keys. As we all know, "special" keys cannot be broken by anybody. Otherwise they wouldn't be "special".

I bet its a windows only software

[Utopia]

Its must be a SafeDisc like program. (Microsoft Encarta uses SafeDisc).

Maybe there's another reason

[Dark Warrior]

Copy protection schemes are always cracked. But they're always re-invented . . . and corporations always buy them in a vain attempt to stop piracy. Not that piracy actually hurt anyone, but I digress . . .

Anyway, it suddenly occurred to me that the target of this stuff may well be other corporations. As long as they make money selling it to other corporations, why should they care if hackers can break it? They'll just come up with another "unbreakable" scheme and sell it to the same paranoids that bought the last one.

Re:security, kind of like stealing a motorcycle

[aaronsb]

I'm not so sure. Using the analogy of the CSS decryption keys on a DVD, why not decrypt the keys and write out the unencrypted data back to another disc, then eliminate the security wrappers (whatever those may be) that are embedded in the formerly protected software?

Seems to me that it's no different than old protection methods on floppy discs, except that you've added another layer by decrypting most of the executable data with keys stored in the hidden "uncopyable" areas of the disc.

If someone wants that software bad enough to steal it, it will get stolen.

To me, it seems similar in concept to how one would steal a motorcycle. You can lock the handlebars, put an alarm on it, lock the wheels, etc. but there aren't any passive security mesaures that prevent 5-6 guys from just picking it straight up and into the back of a truck, where they can disarm it at their leasure.

Aaron

See?!

[Anonymous Coward]

I told you that Linux was an illegal circumvention device!

Re:And when have we heard this before? [OT]

[mskfisher]

http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=531479

(n) Originally a term from Reconstruction time (1870) to mean southern men. Now it means white bigot, from whip-cracker or slavedriver.
"Got a little problem with the redneck cracker" -- Ice Cube (The Predator).

"IT'S A TRAP!!!!!"

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't these companies be better off by NOT publicly announcing such measures?...

Dear Rebel Alliance,

We have implemented a new forcefield around the Death Star. It's impossible to bypass.

Yours truly,
Darth Vader

Istead of Adm. Ackbar, it'll be some dork in the mailroom that realizes it!

Sorry JVC, I own a Sharpie.

[teamhasnoi]

They tried 200+ CD drives. So what? They didn't try 200+ CD drives, *with all the different software* that is available, in every permutation.

I'm afraid a Copy-protection Lab with 50 (maybe?!) employees can't compete against 200 million people with time on their hands.

Bzzzzt! Try again. Or, don't.

Just say no to devil CD's

[Anonymous Coward]

I noticed that phrase as well. I'm thinking they're messing with dark forces or something, possibly Satan or space aliens. Circumvention attempts may require a circle of protection inscribed with a point down pentagram. Probably safest to stay away from CD's with it, might be associated poltergeist risk. Or let someone else do it and download the songs from a p2p network. I don't normally use p2p, but all this stuff is making it sound more and more appealing. I don't want no devil CD's.

Right...

[fudgefactor7]

Isn't this something similar to what Sony did with the original Playstation? There were normally unreadable tracks to prevent the CDs from being copied, but then the mod chips came out that bypassed that and then the copying flowed again. I think, this too shall fail.

Why would I buy this?

[phriedom]

Me: So you've got this new CD that can't be copied, but I guess it sounds as good as a regular CD, right?
Them: Yes, thats right, just as good as a regular CD, but you can't read it without our special proprietary hardware/software that knows how to decrypt the special key and read the music. Its safe that way. And if they break it, we can change the key and update the players.
Me: So I can't use the equipment I know and love to listen to your music?
Them: Well, no, but our music...
Me: Hey look over there, music that doesn't make me jump through hoops. Bye.
Them: wait...

Re:Why would I buy this?

[chinton]

ClueMaster: Hey, waitaminute... This has nothing to do with music cds... Read the fscking artcile.

This might be very simple

[Anonymous Coward]

The description seems to be consistent with simply storing keys in sectors of the CD which are not associated with any files in the CD's file system, although that wouldn't seem to require testing drives. If that's all it is, you wouldn't even need a bit copy to duplicate the CD, a track copy would work.

I can just use the headphone jack, duh

[192939495969798999]

How can the sound come out if it is protected? It can't. They have to unprotect it somewhere in the stream, and I can just copy from there --- unless headphones start coming with computers in them to decrypt the audio stream... not likely.
sir_haxalot

Re:I can just use the headphone jack, duh

[teamhasnoi]

Dear sir_haxalot,

This is for software CDs, not audio CDs.
Though I don't think JVC is too worried about you. ;)

Sincerely,
teamhasnoi

Re:I can just use the headphone jack, duh

[Anonymous Coward]

Even though this is only for data CD's, if JVC decided to apply it to audio CD's and all of a sudden everyone went out and bought headphones with decryption chips in them, you could still just put your pair of headphones on top of your microphone and hold your breath for 74 minutes :) This will work until we have digital decryption chips required to be inserted into our heads so that they can decrypt the encrypted audio comming from the speakers :)

I dunno with these computer chips being implanted into people's eyes, how long untill they come with protection devices to only allow you to watch programs you're allowed to watch?

Re:I can just use the headphone jack, duh

[amaiman]

And even then, the audio still comes out of a speaker, meaning it could be captured.

Next they'll want to implant the decryption chips in our brain....

Re:And when have we heard this before? [OT]

[Archfeld]

Cracker is a common (at least here) term for a white guy. I've most heard it used in the context of "get your cracker a$$ over here"

Yawn.

[Anonymous Coward]

> location, length and number of embedded keys
> can vary making it more difficult to hack."

*Yawn* Security through obscurity. Been there, Cracked that.

No backups? No sale!

[Whammy666]

A cd that can't be backed up is totally useless to me. No, I don't pirate. But I do have kids who like to play computer games. As anyone else who has kids will tell you, they are not exactly careful when handling CDs. At nearly $50 a pop, I can see very little reason to purchase a CD that isn't going to last more than a week or two around the kiddies.

but, will it really matter?

[PhrostyMcByte]

They seem to be missing one key point. The key's can not be copied. But, a program on the CD which reads for the keys could no doubt easily be cracked into not looking for the keys in the first place.

Re:but, will it really matter?

[Anonymous Coward]

But, a program on the CD which reads for the keys could no doubt easily be cracked into not looking for the keys in the first place.

You'll still need to get it to fetch the keys and decrypt itself first, then burn the decrypted version of the code with disabled key fetcher. While also disabling any other checks against you modifying the code. And disable the checks in any updater you download.

software piracy

[EngMedic]

(start ramble)
As cited in previous posts (above) and various other articles, there is little doubt that most, if not all, hardware or software protective devices will eventually fail. most of them will fail badly (ie, once they fail, they loose all usefulness), leaving whatever it is they were trying to protect vulnerable.
Therefore, isn't this quickly becoming a nonissue? The ability to break the encryption on a device can almost be taken for granted right now, so what's the big deal?
Personally, whilst i have no problems exercising my fair use rights by mp3-(and more recently, ogg-)ing my audio cd collection, i do take issue to non-backup copying of programs. especially games. a quick persual of KaZaA Lite reveals something like 25-50 versions of GTA3, Warcraft 3, and the like. Last time i checked, the game companies weren't exactly up there in the evil department with the likes of microsoft and company, so even a "political" bent doesn't justify the warez-ing of such products. Support your friendly, neighborhood game company: don't download warez, folks! (regardless of legal and moral issues, i've got paranoid heebie-jeebies whenever i consider downloading *.exe from a filesharing service, anyway...) Unlike the record industry, not all of the money from games goes to the middlemen(or women, if you're hillary rosen)... and companies like sierra, valve, and lucasarts put out killer games that deserve our support (speaking of which, where the hell is my monkey island 5??!) (end ramble)

Pointless

[afidel]

NWN just dumped safedisk copy protection because it caused more support headaches then it was worth. I remember Diable 2 whenever they tweaked safedisk(or whatever copy protection it was) they ended up release usually path,patch.a,patch.b etc because there were always some large minority of people that got screwed by the safedisk changes. Basically most people are honest, and other copy protection mechanisms (cd key in the case of NWN) will get the majority of the rest. You will NEVER be able to stop the hardcore hacker (witness MS's Xbox key fun).

Re:Backups are a non-issue.

[Archfeld]

that helps when it breaks on Friday at 3:00 pm and the vendor wants $5.00 and 6-8 weeks to get a replacement copy to me. I make 'copy' of ALL CD material I get and store the originals in a nice dark safe place. Of course I've been accused of being anal....When the vendor will allow me to D/L the code using my broadband connect, since I am one of the 10% of the US citizens to have one then maybe this might fly. A VALID example is a LAN party trip..NEVER take your original CD's, some Luser will spill something on it or step on it.

Who's looking for encryption keys ?

[bigmouth_strikes]

I'm not sure I follow....

A PC that looks for but cannot find the keys on an illegally-copied disk returns an error message.i>

If they tested this on CD-ROM drives already on the market, how would those know where to look for the keys in the first place ? Doesn't that imply that some sort of software needs to be installed to

a) tell my CD drive to look for encryption keys
b) tell my CD drive where to look for them

Huh ?

It "protects" from both illegal and LEGAL copying

[cyba]

According to the copyright law I am allowed to make a copy for backup.

Lotus 123 used to protect and M$ didn't

[Anonymous Coward]

was it good for Lotus?

Re:Lotus 123 used to protect and M$ didn't

[SmurfButcher Bob]

Bawhaw... I remember that... we beat it with a sticker over the write-protect tab.

lmao

I don't get it

[CaffeineAddict2001]

At some point the data gets unencrypted so it can be read... Wouldn't people just copy this information to disk rather than the encrypted information on the CD?

Impossible, but not laughable.

[Erpo]

It's impossible to implement effective copy-prevention technology on a general purpose pc for a very simple reason. If it is possible to create a program that does "task x" (plays a game, does CAD, etc...) and checks to make sure the cd is in the drive before it does so, it also must be possible to create a program that does "task x" and does not check the cd. It is highly likely that these two programs differ only by a very small amount of code. Therefore, it is obvious that every copy-protection scheme designed for the modern pc is crackable and, depending on the the skill and interest of the cracker, will eventually be cracked.

However, this is not a solution to the copy-prevention problem. If Joe Average has to go to a seedy web site, download a program that he cannot trust not to wipe his machine, and run it so that his kids can play "The Magic Schoolbus" without scratching the cd then something is obviously wrong with this picture. What about when the company releases an updated executable to correct inevitable bugs? Joe must go through the same process all over again. Extend his trust to people he doesn't know all over again. Take time out of his day all over again. Deal with copy-prevention all over again.

This is clearly not ok. Slashdotters, instead of churning out the usual, "This will be cracked before it's released," and, "Why are they doing this? They'll never make money," think about where all this is going. General purpose PC hardware that is free of DRM chips could cease to be produced. AMD and Intel have already committed to it. Laws could be passed to make it illegal to pass on knowledge of how to crack executables. A provision to make it illegal to tell someone how to make methamphetamines snuck by congress in a banking reform bill. A banking reform bill! There is no reason why this could not happen again.

Don't let the "3-2-1...cracked" mantra-drug turn you into a Slashdot Slug! Join the EFF. Get political. Get vocal. Get to it while you still can!

Right......

[Seawolf359]

Well this has been said before hasnt it. Too bad there arent any modern day Socrates to go talk with these companies. Maybe then I would trust them when they say they have the answer to such a complex problem. Personally I think Blizzard got it right when it comes to games. A CD key and heavy monitoring of thier online gaming servers. Granted they lose money to pirates but I am sure its far less than some of these companies with fancy cd's.

Regaurdless of how protection is done its a waste of time. Someone WILL crack it or get around it. If for nothing more than the challenge of breaking the encryption.

Personally I think the best way to stop pirating of software is to make it more affordable. It's kinda sad now that the windows OS is matching prices with some COMPLETE COMPUTER SYSTEMS.

Oh well.

As the saying goes......

[Anonymous Coward]

"For every lock, there are seven people that know how to pick it."

I give it 2 months, tops, before it's fully broken, including newer reversions (a.k.a. "We messed up, let's try again.").

So...

[Anonymous Coward]

So, like all good copy-protection schemes, this one will screw the paying users by preventing them from making backups and causing problems with some CD drives. The non-paying users will download a cracked .exe like they normally do...

I can't believe these people can make any money

Copy II+, Locksmith 5.0, or Disk Muncher

[teamhasnoi]

Yup. One of these will work for sure. I already have Hard Hat Mac, Diamond Mine, Autoduel, Gemstone Warrior, and Rescue Raiders. Took about 5 minutes a disc, and there you go.

My friend is coming over with Mario Bros., Spare Change, Pinball Contruction Set, and Archon II. I'm going to trade him Appleworks, and Leather Goddess of Phobos for those.

Oh, wait. That was twenty years ago.

Re:Copy II+, Locksmith 5.0, or Disk Muncher

[Sebastopol]

Ahhh locksmith... back when the VTOC filled a single 40x25 text screen...

Re:Copy II+, Locksmith 5.0, or Disk Muncher

[Reziac]

Is that a new episode for Vinyl Goddess from Mars? Gimme! :)

Re:Copy II+, Locksmith 5.0, or Disk Muncher

[Anonymous Coward]

Diamond Mine is actually an interesting example, as it implemented a protection scheme that looked at your peripherals and wouldn't work if you, for instance, NMI'd a memory image (with a Wildcard or Crackshot) and then loaded into another computer with a different, say, parallel port card. Shades of XP.

The solution (that I used, which admittedly wasn't the most correct one -- apologies to The Intern) was to identify the routines hidden in the stack and input buffer pages, and fill them all with $60 (RTS). It worked.

Similar half-assedness caused me to produce an Ultima III crack where the Mockingboard support failed. But hey, it was a single disk side, instead of two, when disks still cost $4 ea (I must not have been shopping in the right spots).

It was a good game, though. The author deserved more.

Re:Copy II+, Locksmith 5.0, or Disk Muncher

[sjwoo]

My personal fav for my C-64 -- Fast Hack'em 6.0. Remember Di-Sector? Icepik? Ah, the good ol' days...

Re:Copy II+, Locksmith 5.0, or Disk Muncher

[Anonymous Coward]

> The author deserved more.

He would have got more, too...if it hadn't been for you meddling kids!

Hello Safedisc!

[Aexia]

This really doesn't sound any different. As always, someone will use CloneCD to burn a perfect copy of the CD. Or they'll create an image of it, which I'll download and run on Daemontools.

The only possible way I could see them thwarting a raw copy is if the CD's they're pressing at the factory have extra areas that can be read by existing drives but aren't on (current) CD-R(W)s. I don't know if that's possible though. It wouldn't matter how good a burner you have; you can't burn it if there isn't a spot to burn the critical bits of data.

Of course, they'll still be able to read the original and create an image which can be run in Daemontools. That's how I run all my software anyways. Create an image from the original CD and I never have to go hunting for it again.

You shall not survive MY WOO FANG FIST!

[Anonymous Coward]

rar

redundant

[Atilla]

ok, so it's encrypted.. that means, to execute the code, it would have to be decrypted at some point.. so if someone would want to copy that CD, they would attack the decryption routines (their final stages, anyway) instead of the CD media itself, no?

This won't sell

[Arcturax]

These will not play in a car stereo or a portable MP3 player, only in a computer and likely only in a Windows box. Not Mac or Linux since they have the SOFTWARE player located on the disc.

That completely eliminates most people's desire to buy a CD. Who wants to pay $21 for a CD which you can't take in your car or on vacation without lugging along a Windows laptop?

Given that I also use a Macintosh at home, yet another reason I won't buy this shit.

Of course the most overriding reason is I am simply sick of the RIAA and they havee lost my buisiness forever, even if they fell on their knees before me and wept and tried to get the DMCA revoked.

Re:This won't sell

[davinciII]

Did you actually read the headline? I believe it said SOFTWARE CDs.

What kind of luck have you had putting your software in your car CD player?

Re:This won't sell

[Arcturax]

The headlines aren't always clear. I was also unable to get to the story because it was slashdotted at the time.

Still, someone will crack the encryption scheme before long and this will be as useless as CSS ever was.

From the people who brought us Adventure Island

[Anonymous Coward]

First, a caveman who skateboarded and threw axes at eggs.

Then some guy in pajamas who blew bubbles and caught music notes.

Now, copy protecting software 10 years after it became passe.

Apparently they are still on drugs at Hudsonsoft.

Mathematically stupid

[fini]

As an earlier Slashdot story reported, software obfuscation doesn't provide security. It's mathematically proven. Someone please tells Matsushita (JVC) to get over it. They are losing their time.

Slamming your head with a hammer is good for you. It just feels so good when you stop.

right != ability

[garyrich]

You have the right to make a backup - if you can. They have no obligation to make it possible for you to.

Re:Another million dollar attempt at twocent hacki

[mpe]

I think what these copy protection people are forgetting, whilst spending these millions of dollars in research on anti piracy techniques is that at the end of the day, the data STILL NEEDS TO BE READ in order for it to be of any use to anybody.

This is the basic problem behind any of these DRM ideas. No matter if the data involved is sound, video or software.
Effectivly these people are spending money on something which fundermentally cannot work. They are probably throwing more money into this black hole than could ever be lost to "piracy". When the real answer to piracy is to price such the economies of mass producing CDs mean that it costs more to burn copies than to buy a regular copy. In the same way that people don't tend to photocopy books.

Stop calling it Copy Protection!!!

[hacker]

I have to keep reinforcing this to everyone who mistakenly calls this Copy Protection.

This is not Copy Protection, because it doesn't protect your "copy" at all, and in fact they're trying to mislead you into believing that making a copy is forbidden. There is nothing at all wrong with copying a music CD. Your purchase price INCLUDES the right to make a copy.

Please begin to call this by it's proper term.. Copy Prevention .

Companies like Sony, JVC, and others who are implementing these technologies want to take back the right you've paid for at the register, to make a legal copy of the music you've bought. These companies are taking your rights away, not giving you more rights.

If you want to retain the rights to the music you've already purchased, don't support companies who support or develop technologies like this. This includes going to see movies in the theaters that are sponsored by Sony Pictures and other companies who back or support these restrictive technologies. This is not a joke. Let them realize that their "decrease in revenue" is not because of piracy, but because people are getting annoyed with this stuff, and are boycotting the company's products (not to mention this economy thing these companies seem to ignore in their marketing reports on how piracy has quintupled in the past year).

Once people start using the right terms en-masse, awareness is sure to increase along with it.

Copy Prevention , not Copy Protection . Just remember that.

Re:Stop calling it Copy Protection!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yeah, that will work. Remember trying to explain to people that 2001 was the first year of the new millenium?

Re:Stop calling it Copy Protection!!!

[inerte]

I don't like to think, or say to others, that the price includes the right to make a copy.

Because If they charge less, does it remove my right to copy? Of course not.

Making a copy, for archival or distribution purposes, is a right on its own.

Re:Stop calling it Copy Protection!!!

[jfisherwa]

Oh yeah, I'm specifically NOT going to go home and play GTA3 on my Sony plasma display. :P

3DS Dongle? Please!

[PCM2]

The 3D Studio people hardly invented this type of technique. We've been cracking^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hseeing various forms of this type of copy protection at least as far back as the Apple ][ days.

Electronic Arts, for example, used to write the floppy discs for their games with "bad sectors" that would cause read errors. It was possible to copy the entire disc except for the bad sector. With the appropriate nybble copier, you might have even been able to extract the data from the bad sector and write it, byte for byte, to the copy. Ah! But the trick was that the game looked for the bad sector. If reading that sector didn't return the right kind of error from the OS internals, the program would fail to load. There was no way to reproduce the same bad sector with any kind of copy program.

Of course (and as you mention re: the 3DS dongle), the trick wasn't to reproduce the protection, but to remove the code the checked for it. And how hard was that? In the case of Bard's Tale II, it meant modifying three bytes.

Three bytes.

P.S. If I said "NOP NOP NOP," some of you will know what I mean -- but then I'd probably be violating the DMCA. ;-)

When will they learn...

[Anonymous Coward]

...that there is a fundamental flaw in striving to create unbreakable copy-protection technology, namely that it takes away the *legal right* of people to make backups of their own CDs--and the clincher is, people *know* this! How blind can they be? So the RIAA wonders why music sales have (reportedly) dropped even further? Well, it sure as heck isn't KaZaa; it's because music buyers have heard about the Celine Dion CD and don't want to pay $15 to have their legal rights violated. At least KaZaa downloads won't do that. Wake up, folks!!!

Heh heh heh. Nice.

[ArcSecond]

That has to be one of the funniest disses to h4x0r-speak I have ever seen. Take a bow, NG.

Any security system that publishes the key..

[Anonymous Coward]

..along with the secret its supposed to protect will be doomed to failure. The nazi's learned this the hard way with their 'uncrackable' Enigma system.

The way I read this, though, is that the keys would be in the 'pregroove' area of the CD. This area is already 'burned' on a consumer level CD-r, its used to store the media type, burning speeds, etc.. Ie; its unburnable.

Though theres no reason some sort of cd emulation system, like daemon-tools, couldn't just emulate the whole disc from your hard drive.. Bad sectors and pregroove and oversized image and all..

I also see this, as well as many other schemes found in the wild (espescially Bleem, which another poster noted), being incompatible with many commercial drives.

I *had* to hack/pirate bleem, despite paying for it (and being ripped off). My other option was to buy a new drive that was compatible with their nutty protection.

I see the fact that people need to crack the software to actually make it work as being a huge impetus in the cracking 'scene' as a whole.

Re:Backups are a non-issue.

[unicron]

I love Slashdot. Someone comes along, says "Hey folks, you can do it this way and it's still perfectly legal, it's a little inconvienent, but it's legal" and he gets modded down. How I wish I could get through to all of you, honestly. I wish I could convince you that you are not "sticking it to the man" by copying your copy of the Brittney CD. You are not freedom fighters on any level.

It is NOT your choice what laws you are going to follow and which you are going to ignore. Please believe me when I say I'm not trying to troll, because I'm not. But the average mentality of the average slashdot reader is based more on justifying petty theft to themself than it is the honest drive to protect the digital rights of the consumers of the world.

Re:It "protects" from both illegal and LEGAL copyi

[Anonymous Coward]

Big deal, it doesn't say they have to make it easy, or even possible for you to do that copying.

The law ALLOWS you to, if you CAN.

If I print something in green ink on purple paper, you can read it. Tough luck if your photocopier won't copy it.

Re:Another million dollar attempt at twocent hacki

[kimgh]

This whole thing is reminiscent of the "copy protection wars" of the 1980's. Software makers tried ever more sophisticated means of copy protecting disks, and every one of the methods was broken. Eventually the industry just simply gave up on the idea of copy protecting floppy disks.

Now it looks like the whole batlle is going to be repeated with CD's and DVD's. Guess who's going to lose that battle?

the location, length and number of embedded keys

[wytcld]

the location, length and number of embedded keys can vary

If they vary on different copies of the same CD, it's trivially easy to run diff and isolate them. If they're the same across all copies of the same CD, they're a bit harder to find, but someone finding them can distribute a patch for the disk image to disables them. There should be a map to where the keys are, and if that's hidden, its address needs to be kept somewhere. Do they plan to rewrite the codes that handles this for each CD, so that its fingerprint can't be simply found and the rest unravelled?

Aaah, memories ...

[BESTouff]

This remind me of the Amiga days ... each new game had a new disk protection scheme, and each copier instantly updated to copy it.

In fact, these copy-protection systems were so abusive of our poor disk-drive heads that you better had to run a cracked version than the original.

bits != encrypted bits

[Sebastopol]

I've seen lots of posts that start with "sigh -- data is data and if i can read it, i can copy it".

These people assume that the busses will always be interceptable, which is not true. MS and other hardware vendores are hard at work at their secure OS which would effectively halt any attempts to read anything but encrypted bits. From what I've read, I feel the secure platform is a reality and will very easily stop cracking/hacking dead in it's tracks.

However, maybe when pirating is 100% eliminated, microsoft windows XP will cost $30 and not $300.

Re:bits != encrypted bits

[TheShadow]

No way. Pirating is what is keeping the price down. Because it is only $X for XP, Y% of the people decide that it's afforadable enough for them to buy and Z% say... f-it... i'm just going to copy my friends CD. But, if the price was 2X... well, that Z% will be much higher.

On the flip side, if there is no more piracy... the software companies have no incentive to make their prices reasonable... especially M$ who has a monopoly on the idiot OSes (that run on PC hardware).

All this crap about piracy driving up prices is total BS. The end of piracy will drive the prices up.

Re:bits != encrypted bits

[twistedcubic]

However, maybe when pirating is 100% eliminated, microsoft windows XP will cost $30 and not $300.

And why in the world would they lower the price when people were perfectly willing to pay $300 a few days earlier? The price of the OS is usually bundled with PCs anyway.

Re:bits != encrypted bits

[CrackersnSoup]

"However, maybe when pirating is 100% eliminated, microsoft windows XP will cost $30 and not $300." BULLSHIT. When pirating is 100% stoped they will be free to charge what they want, period. We ALL know what happens when there is only 1 supplier. Crackers`n`Soup

Re:bits != encrypted bits

[Joe Tie.]

the software companies have no incentive to make their prices reasonable

I think they would. I've noticed an oddly large amount of teens using XP profesional. If they suddenly had to either start paying for windows or use Linux, a pretty big chunk of the monopoly would suddenly be gone.Easily enough that microsoft would have to work to try and get it back again.

Re:bits != encrypted bits

[platypus]

However, maybe when pirating is 100% eliminated, microsoft windows XP will cost $30 and not $300.

You're not being serious, are you?

The only reason piracy would make the prize go up would be that the manufacturer doesn't sell enough copies to cover his costs with a lower prize.

Have you look at microsofts financial data recently?

Re:bits != encrypted bits

[shren]

These people assume that the busses will always be interceptable, which is not true. MS and other hardware vendores are hard at work at their secure OS which would effectively halt any attempts to read anything but encrypted bits. From what I've read, I feel the secure platform is a reality and will very easily stop cracking/hacking dead in it's tracks.

People will hack the trusted os to run on untrusted hardware. Palladium XP will cost $30 bucks... when you buy it hacked, mail order from taiwan.

Re:bits != encrypted bits

[(trb001)]

In order to effectively block all forms of cracking, they would have to make hardware that wasn't backwards compatible with the software, and vice-versa. Much of a software vendor's clientel is government/large companies...they will never buy something that doesn't allow for backwards compatibility. It would end up costing them much more in headaches than any possible promotion MS would provide.

--trb

Re:bits != encrypted bits

[ratboy666]

Busses WILL always be interceptable. Otherwise, they are NOT USEABLE.

Also, any one to many encryption is vulnernable. Its the nature of the thing.

That's why there is a LAW about trying to circumvent these measures... If the measures would actually work, or the people who produced them actually had faith in them, there would be no reason to lobby for legal protection.

All I can do is keep "casual hackers" out, where the cost to break in is prohibitive compared to any rewards. And even there, hackers may not measure effort by money (I certainly don't).

Keep in mind the cell phone hacks that (first) replaced the home number, (second) generated random home numbers to provide for "untraceable" phone service (and, as a secondary benefit, free phone service). The cell phone manufacturer sure wasn't expecting the hacker to scrape down micro-chips and replace them. But that's what happened.

On to other matters -- MS is NOT a hardware vendor. Sure, they sell mice and keyboards, but they mostly sell software. MS doesn't want to produce a "secure" OS. At least, not one that is "secure" in any sane definition of that word. They DO want to produce an OS that will make it VERY difficult to produce copies, legitimate or not, of material produced by large companies. Not impossible, mind you, just difficult. It WON'T secure YOUR data. There seems to be no initiative for strong encryption on all email (and why not? there are public key servers. If MS put this into Outlook Express, all SPAM could be stopped by simply requiring all incoming emails to carry valid digital signatures. The email would have to be encrypted to MY public key, and every other recipients. It would be very expensive to generate SPAM -- in terms of CPU cycles.) and on documents stored. There is little need for a "hardware" solution to secure YOUR data, just needs software support. But Microsoft want to solve the "one to many" problem, which is guaranteed to be breakable, unless the cost point is set too high.

So.. what have we learned? Hacking/cracking won't be stopped. Your data will not be secure. It will be expensive to make copies, in whole or part of any large corporations data (they will have to purchase an encryption key). It is illegal (in the US) to attempt to circumvent that measure, because MS and the content vendors know that it CAN be broken.

Ratboy.

Re:bits != encrypted bits

[Criton]

Umm the whole activation thing is what made me not upgrade to XP products. If feel it voilates my rights for them to know what's in my computer. I should only have to buy it ,install it ,set it up and use it . Asking anything more is asking too much form users. Also why should I have to reactivate just because I changed my MB ,CPU or videocard this esp can be an issue with OEM PCs as they usally come with crap video and too small of a HD that end up needing upgrading. The whole activation thing did not help M$ get money from me if anything it caused them to lose money they would have otherwise got and their competitors to get that money instead. Not a major issue for me as Linux is more stable anyway and staroffice 6 opens all the files I need to use.

as qouted by my good friend Eric Wilson

[Indy1]

" For every technology, there is equal and opposite Hacker technology. "

Eric's Theorem tells us that this is doomed to fail miserably, much as Safedisk, securom, etc, have failed.

Virtual CD drives the answer?

[Anonymous Coward]

I may be behind the power curve, but it must be possible to read the 'magic' tracks on the CD in order for the copy protection to work. Therefore, it should be possible to make an image of the CD and store that image to the HD. But since I can't write the exact image back to a copy CD (either because the firmware in the CD drive is blocking me, or because of timing irregularities, hidden tracks, or whatever), it should be possible to write the image in a format in such a way that a virtual CD player could access the image and recreate a replica of the data through a driver emulation of the copy protection despite whatever nasties are imbedded in the original CD. The trick is that whenever a program needs to access the copied disk, it do so through the emulator which in turn can access the actual CD rom drive to get at the sanitised CD image.

I suspect someone has already done this. But if not, the technique should be able to defeat just about any type of copy protection out there.

10 min latter...

[Anonymous Coward]

10 min latter...

Someone 12 yearold kid hacks it. ... The cycle of life continues?

Damn...

[rgoer]

...my plans of acquiring warez copies of all that JVC software have been completely foiled!

So, what will it take to bypass this one?

[Takeel]

What will it take to bypass this copy protection method? We've seen Sharpies and Post-It Notes used for one other infamous copy protection scheme. Perhaps with this one, we'll need to use more technologically advanced Sharpies and Post-It Notes?

Read the damn article

[forkboy]

Without even getting 1/3 of the way through the replies, I saw at least 4 posts whining that they wouldn't be able to play their new music CDs in the car or stereo. (Yeah like you buy them anyway)

I will quote the article:

A PC that looks for but cannot find the keys on an illegally-copied disk returns an error message. Root protection works for all CD-ROM disks read by a PC, but is not applicable to audio CDs.

Now, as far as being protection for software, this isn't going to stop the people doing most of the pirating. Most of the pirated games you download now are not copies of the CD but a compressed file containing the contents of the installation directory along with a hacked executable. With good audio and video compression and WinACE, as well as ripping out un-needed components, a 2-CD game can be crunched down to about 300-500 meg. You then run a simple script that comes with the distribution and it uncompresses everything in the directory you unzipped it in. Look for any popular game on Kazaa, that's the format you'll find it in, isos aren't nearly as common anymore.

Re:Read the damn article

[Fweeky]

On the contary, ISO's, CCD's and bin/cue's are very common, since rips tend to be missing things, be unpatchable and not exactly of the highest quality (er, yeah, like I'm gonna run your dodgy bat file which runs an .exe to do what a .reg would do, and have all the data crunched into some lossy format for the rip to meet some scene guidelines).

Disk images, on the other hand, are easy to make, aren't much bigger than a rip to anyone except dialup users, and are not missing components.

Copy protection schemes like this have been around for ages in the style of SafeDisk; some copiers can cope and some software tools can cope with the dodgy ECC stuff the disks use, but quite often they also come with cracked executables in the image filesystem, so even if your copy is bad, the crack will work just fine.

Probably the most effective protection I can remember is Operation Flashpoint's Fade; it kind of turned poorly cracked versions into demo versions which degraded over time. It gave those who liked it an extra reason to buy it, and gave those who could take it or leave it a chance to play the game. Whether they made enough back off it to pay for it's development is another matter entirely.

Quake 3-style protection is even better, of course; you need a valid key to play online, so no key, no game; you can hardly keygen it, or crack most servers. Not really applicable to single player games though.

Re:Read the damn article

[forkboy]

Perhaps on FTP sites and IRC you run across disk images a bit more, but from my experience, p2p file sharing systems tend to have rips as they're smaller.

I agree that setups like Quake 3 are optimal...if you're going to be playing it online and extensively, you should be paying for the game. If you're just checking it out, who gives a flying one if it's pirated or not.

As far as the dodgy stuff, well, if you're not running anti-virus and packet filtering software on your system, you deserve whatever computerized punishment these maladroit script kiddies inflict upon you.

Re:Read the damn article

[Fweeky]

I find P2P largely useless for anything aside the odd mp3. Usenet's where it's at. It's not eating 400GB/day for the good of it's health ;)

Re:Backups are a non-issue.

[cheese_wallet]

"It is NOT your choice what laws you are going to follow and which you are going to ignore."

I get your point, but that statement is wrong. Of course it is my choice to choose which laws to ignore, and it is the government's choice to put me in Pound-Me-In-The-Ass prison for doing so.

maybe this is a better protection

[Gunstick]

well, on this link is an old copy protection scheme: enforced DMCA?
but it apparently worked for at least one game.

Can we please use a bit of intellegence here...

[Anonymous Coward]

The idea of a copy protection system is to protect the data for the length of time before it becomes not-very-profitable for the owner.

Two examples of successful, unbroken copy protection:

* Capcom's CPS-2 video arcade games

The key is stored in battery backed RAM. Fiddle with the custom chips, and the RAM dies. No encryption key - game doesn't play. Send it back to Capcom, and pay about 90 U.K. pounds to have it repaired. Incidently, I don't consider that to be a rip-off like a lot of video arcade game collectors do. The RAM is backed up by a lithium battery, which lasts about 5 years in storage. Loads of collectors moan about that, but no arcade operator I have ever met has ever had a battery die on them - why? Because they *operate* the boards. If you have CPS-2 boards, just leave them powered for 8 hours a day or so, don't leave them in storage. That way the battery is only used a little bit each day.

Anyway, there were never any illegal copies of CPS-2 based games, so I have the advantage that if I see a CPS-2 game for sale, I know it is an original, which is important to me as I don't want to buy illegal copies of games.

* Sky's analogue satellite encryption

In the U.K. the first 6 issues of cards for viewing Sky satellite television were hacked. The 7th was not, and it lasted for YEARS. Some people decrypted the analogue signal using a brute force method - well that is attacking a weakness in the encoding, not the cryptography of the key. The system was never hacked, and it has now shut down. Sky's system was successful. I think that was a good thing - if you want to watch Sky's programming, (WHY!?), pay for it, (and get a life!).

Re:Can we please use a bit of intellegence here...

[Anonymous Coward]

CPS2 was broken quite awhile ago.

Re:Backups are a non-issue.

[jedidiah]

>> It is NOT your choice what laws you are going
>> to follow and which you are going to ignore.

If it were up to you, we would still be selling each other into slavery.

Fourth generation encryption

[Fritz Benwalla]

August 2002:
"The Root encryption deserves to be called fourth-generation encryption. It is different from existing, so-called third-generation encryption, [in that] the encryption keys can not be located easily," said a spokesman for Hudson Soft"

September 2002:
"My Root encryption crack deserves to be called a fourth-generation crack. It is different from existing, so-called third-generation cracks, [in that] the encryption keys can be published on IRC easily" said a spokesman for Cracketon The Decryptor from the steps of his junior high school.

Dr. Bellows
Funk/Soul/Jazz
drbellows.net
for gigs, music & more.

Uhhh, If I can read the disk, I can write it...

[SmurfButcher Bob]

Since when does one need to interpret data to make a copy of it?

Back in the good 'ole days, people screwed around with half tracking, quarter tracking (which many said was snakeoil), screwing up sector headers, etc. All of these things made life tedious to the point that Nibbles Away, Locksmith, etc. were written.

I never really used those, however, because I didn't need to. It occured to me that these floppies were simply flat audio tape... so I gutted a pair of drives, stacked 'em, put them on a common spindle, and copied them the old-fashioned way... straight analog, no interpretation... just sweep the heads across the platter, what one hears, the other writes. Easy.

If the laser in the CDR can see the bits, those bits can be copied, and the physical image of the rom can be duplicated. End of story...

Red flag

[Zapper]

thus thwarting illegal duplication, the companies said.

Hey JVC, ever heard the saying "red flag to a bull"?

Re:3DS Dongle? Please!

[WWWWolf]

P.S. If I said "NOP NOP NOP," some of you will know what I mean -- but then I'd probably be violating the DMCA. ;-)

Posting source code to the crack! Evil! But I will post the compiled code, since DMCA-like laws are not effect in here (but may be in there, so if they are, close your eyes NOW and do appropriate mouse gesture / keypress combo to close the window): EA EA EA. Of course, it can always be argued where the hell this crack needs to be relocated, but no doubt someone will tell...

I've cracked it already

[Aidenn]

Just hit right, left, right, left, a, b, a, b

If you don't get it, chech out this link

Re:Another million dollar attempt at twocent hacki

[Anonymous Coward]

They are probably throwing more money into this black hole than could ever be lost to "piracy".

This is why I don't think they're really interested in stopping piracy. I think they're interested in keeping control of everything we hear and read (and, when technically possible, say and think). Perhaps I'm just paranoid...

nice plan...

[yankeezulu]

So, you're worried about copy protection and folks are already upset with the price of CDs.
What to do ? Oh, I know, charge a buck per cd to further increase the price of CDs.

So now you've created further incentive to crack these things

Unbreakable copy protection on audio CDs

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember CACTUS DATA SHIELD 100/200? It was supposed to be an unbreakable copy protection and it is used on modern audio CDs, including Celine Dion's latest CD, for example. All you need is a marker pen or some sticky tape to "block" the outer track (there are two very clearly separated tracks if you look under it) of those CDs and the protection is gone. Your computer can't play those CDs because the outer track is intentionally messed up and does not contain anything. Regular audio CD players don't have the intelligence to analyze it - they just skip that track and start playing the inner track which is the actual audio track. So, block the outer track with a piece of tape or a marker pen and you can backup/play that CD with your computer. There are some pictures on the internet if you didn't get it from my instructions.

Am I missing something here?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't you just tape audio CD's onto a decent metal tape via the soundcard line out then sample it back in and onto CD through the line in port?

What effect would this have on the protection? I imagine it would screw it.

Anyone with a knowledge of such stuff care to comment?

Licensed Software

[captainstupid]

CD copy protection schemse like this exist to prevent end users from illegally copying software. However, how can a copy protection scheme determine what is illegal and what isn't?

If software is licensed and not sold, software mfg's need to respect all aspects of that agreement. The software license esentially gives a user the right to USE software. The important thing to note is that the only thing you are paying for is the USE of the software. NOT the media on which it is deliverd.

But try calling Microsoft or most software companies and request a copy to replace the one that was damaged!

If the software mfg insists on licenseing the software AND copy protecting its delivery method, they are, in a sense, invalidating their own license agreement. If there is no way to use the software because a silly cdrom is damaged, what then did you pay for?

It's akin to paying a lifetime subscription fee for your TiVo service, but then your TiVo breaks. "I'm sorry that your TiVo is broken, but we can't replace it until you buy another lifetime worth of service."

If you are only buying the right to use software, the software mfg should provide you with as many cdrom's or downloads that you would ever need. Now I don't mean that a user should be able to call and request 1000 copies of WarCraft III because they bought 1 at BestBuy. But they should be entitled to USE the software that they payed to USE.

Bruce Schneier on copy protection

[frozenray]

Will they never learn? They're distributing the decryption keys on the CD; this harebrained scheme thus relies on wishful thinking (namely, that nobody will succeed in reading the keys). Well, good luck to them. I'm sure the crackers and the cryptography experts will get a good laugh out of this.

Let's hear it from renowned cryptography guru Bruce Schneier:

Digital files cannot be made uncopyable, any more than water can be made not wet.

(Source - good read, btw)

A Backup of XP CD?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, so I would like a copy of my XP CD. Just In Case... No? (anyone who has an XP CD, kindly jump in here and tell us all how you plan to survive if your machine gets hit by a natural disaster, and you have to run out and get it repaired, take it home, and reinstall XP off your backup copy you just made.)

Re:A Backup of XP CD?

[Anonvmous Coward]

I can't speak for XP, but I don't think Win2k has any real anti-copying schemes in use. I've made backups before without any challenges. Either that or my CD burner's more robust than I thought heh.

Re:A Backup of XP CD?

[IceFreak2000]

Er, with the backup copy of my XP CD that I burnt from the original.

All it will take is time....

[DavesError]

"which can not be read with ordinary procedures."

In other words 30 mins after these things hit the shelves we'll be able to make our backup copies like we should be able to.

Re:Backups are a non-issue.

[unicron]

I'm glad you honor the memory of people who have known what true suffering is by equating your potential loss of ability to pirate photoshop to a true travesty against man. If it were up to me, I'd find everyone on this planet that has suffered due to slavery in some form of another, and then I'd find the biggest and meanest out of that group, and let them know that some little pissant thinks he knows true suffering because he actually had to buy his software and music. I'll let them know that you think you know what it's like to actually suffer.

And the most fucked up part, is you actually believe that because someone out there might not want you to pirate some game they wrote, or some music cd they recorded, that you know the slings and arrows of a miserable, hellish existence.

I don't know whether to wish true suffering on you, or envy you. If your life has been that small and uneventful that you can honestly believe what you do, then I must choose to envy you, because you have never known suffering on any realistic or recognizeable levels.

Re:security, think PSX

[innocent_white_lamb]

The discs are made with intentional bad sectors in specific areas.

That was the original copy protection scheme used on the Commodore 64. Write an error to a known sector on the "original" floppy disk. Seek to that sector on load and if the error is not present then die.

The firmware in the 1541 drive would assume that the read head was mis-aligned when it hit the error and try to re-align itself by seeking back to track 0 where it would hit a physical stop bar. Then try seeking back to the bad sector, then back to the stop bar then the bad sector and.... This caused that hammering the 1541 drive was famous for when trying to load a copy-protected disk and caused a lot of 1541 drives to go out of alignment. The read head was held in place on a rod by a little set screw and enough hammering would loosen the screw and mis-align the read head.

The Commodore 1571 drive (made for the C128) tried to address this problem by using an optical doodad to detect when the head was at track 0 instead of a physical stop. So instead of the 1541 "hammer", you just heard a "zip zip zip" when the drive hit a bad sector.

The point of this post is just to say that this is an old idea. Been there, done that, got the disk-copying software to prove it. *tee hee* I don't imagine it will be long before the modern equivalent of "Fast-Hack-Em" or "Copy2-64" will be floating around.

Pfff I can top that ....

[Anonymous Coward]

with my compression algorithm that can even compress random data!

Not only that..

[Reziac]

... but as I heard it, the dongle caused lots of problems itself. The usual advice for fixing it was to go find a cracked copy and run that instead of your legit copy, because at least that way it wouldn't interfere with the rest of the system.

Re:Not only that..

[Sabalon]

That's what I heard. Or if you had more than one device that used the dongle (which was on the parallel port) you had to daisy chain them. You'd see people talking about fried dongles a lot. Or dongles that wouldn't work with other ones, etc...

Re:Not only that..

[Reziac]

The main problem I'd heard of was that printers wouldn't work, or that it would seize up the port and crash Windows entirely.

Yeah, I can just imagine the fun if someone is running more than one dongleware. I doubt they've been tested to see if they all play nice together!

Corporations!

[starcrawl]

Corporations trying to limit us. Someone or another Corporation will find away to get around the preventions that the first guy put out! When will they learn spending money to prevent people from doing something will make their profits decline!

Re:Corporations!

[TheAwfulTruth]

You might not feel the same if you actually MADE anything and tried to make a living by SELLING it only to realize that 95% of the people using your product STOLE it. This sort of thing helps and protects smaller companies and individual producers a lot more that large corperations. They can take a large hit and reamin in buisness. The small 20 person teams (Of which I belong to 2) can't.

Sorry, Illegal for me

[umask077]

My machines all have publicly available through a webbrowser a software vendor license agreement that supercedes any other licenseing. I am yet to be notified via registered letter that a company argues with my agreement as well.

Besides. this new system will give the pirates something to do for an hour or two. Why bother trying? There better then you (the pirates that is).

this is just old fashion copy protection

[Anonymous Coward]

Annoying. As long as it isn't illegal to break, it's just another chapter in the game..

Oh the irony....

[thumbtack]

So the technology works only on data CDs not Audio.. So the recording industry would have to release Mp3 files or Ogg files if they want to protect them. Ya gotta love it...

Strong or weak encryption, I don't care

[HiThere]

I won't buy copy protected software for anything more critical than a game. I've been burnt too often. I suppose that music counts as "not more critical than a game", but with the RIAA corrupting the legislatures, I don't buy that, either.

That said, even for games a piece of copy protected software has a lot less value for me than one that isn't copy protected, so I am much less willing to pay a high price. And I consider $50 to be a high price for a game. If games were important to me, then I'd be working on GPL game building toolkits. Perhaps CrystalSpaces qualifies here.

No, prices will go UP, not down.

[Reziac]

I think it will go the other way: without the threat of people being able to get Windows for free, the price will go UP, because without warez it's either pay for it or do without. But so long as it's possible to warez a software title, major retail publishers have to consider the price point at which the average consumer will buy, vs. a point beyond which they see the item's pricing as a ripoff and would rather steal it.

And this growing presumption that the consumer is the ENEMY is self-defeating. Look what happened with the price of WinXP (with its activation sca^Hheme) -- it retails for roughly double the price of previous versions. And an awful lot of people who'd bought legit copies of all versions before XP, said "if that's the way they're going to treat us, I'll just warez the damned thing and serves 'em right."

If software publishers want this to become the prevailing attitude, hey, go ahead, protect away!

Not to mention that the risk of breakage in some situations (LAN parties, technicians' use such as someone mentioned above, etc.) and the unwillingness of some publishers to provide replacement media, are now incentives to break the protection if only so you can make a legit backup.

Well does it work or not?

[tweakt]

"prevents users from copying software CDs"

"making it more difficult to hack."

Which is it? Does it prevent it, or merely (like everything else) make it more difficult... meaning its eventually inneffective?

Classic man

[Sergeant Beavis]

one of the funnier lines I've read today.

Re:Backups are a non-issue.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you're missing the point that one should not always conform to the law of the land, especially if that said law "Slavery" is a law that is morally reprehensible. Saying we can't pick and choose which laws to obey is complete bullshit. Laws have been ignored for centuries here-- Prohibition, Equal Rights, and the Stamp Act.

Speaking of the Stamp Act, let's talk about your denigration of those who oppose these measures for financial reasons....

America was founded by a bunch of cheap bastards who were incensed that Britain wanted to charge them more via taxes and that they had no say about it. If they had just chosen to follow the law and not be dicks about a few more pennies tacked onto the price for a stamp or tea, then we'd be singing "God Save the Queen" and saluting the Union Jack.

Now, do you see where I'm coming from?

-N.

Offtopic?

[stoolpigeon]

What a retard- I guess if I don't spell out the EXACT correlation between what I have to say and the reason this will get cracked this moron doesn't pick up on it.

What an idiot.

Are all the 'this will get cracked' posts off topic?

Let me rephrase this in a way you may be able to understand- whoever you are you loser moderator idiot.

People can do anything given enough time.
Cracker people have lots of time.
They will crack this like ancient civilizations 'cracked' astronomy.

Does that seem more on topic to your sorry pea sized brain?

.

Re:Backups are a non-issue.

[Happy Monkey]

So when you said "It is NOT your choice what laws you are going to follow and which you are going to ignore.", you meant "It is NOT your choice to decide which laws of the same importance as game piracy you are going to follow and which you are going to ignore, but you can make that choice for the really important laws, like slavery."?

I wonder

[Gavitron_zero]

if there's a spyware app in this technology that automatically installs a trialware version of Adventure Island...

Uh.. huh..

[dwaggie]

if the CD can somehow be read for information, what makes them think it won't somehow just have that readable information copied over?

Really, a good idea would be to have a compressionable algorithm storing all the data so that without the key on it, the data is compressed to the point where it's useless to try anything with it. And then it's also encrypted.

Or, hell, why not just give up the fight? People who want it will have it. It's just like BMWs, Porsches and Impala SSs. The people who really want to get ahold of things like that will be able to get ahold of them without any problem. No amount of car alarm will really deter them.

I'm just waiting for the day I'll be required to use biometrics to open my program. Iris scan, and then play Tribes 9. ;)

Re:3DS Dongle? Please!

[VValdo]

P.S. If I said "NOP NOP NOP" ....

EA EA EA


Help! I'm in peek/poke flashback hell! Someone CALL -151!!!

W

copying wont be hard

[gumleef]

someone will come up with a way to do it.
how bout this...

the cd's must be read by something in order for the data to be useful. reverse the software that reads the cds for its proper purpose and use that code to read off isos.

anything wrong with this idea?

Re:Backups are a non-issue.

[NeMon'ess]

Better keep the CD's in the computer or in a secure case at LAN parties. It's a bad idea leaving CD's out in the open anywhere.

Re:and who knows if it's VAPOR

[gl4ss]

afaik bleem! had the bitchiest copy protection scheme.. and eventually it got cracked too.

look, the disc still has to be read and it can be read-> some kinda software to emulate the cd is on it's way(if daemon tools & bunch don't already don't do it), what they gonna do? plant it on sectors not described to belong to any track on toc? put them on audio tracks? wtf? some raw cdclone app is going to read it.

this is nothing but publicy stunt by jvc&hudsonsoft. who knows if they even plan to have that _ever_? 'they plan to have special jabbajbabba'. i too plan to someday take over the world and jabba jabba

Only one kind of copy protection works

[cardshark2001]

Server side.

Why did everyone pay for quake3 instead of copying it? ID did not put anti-copy measures on the CD. They just had a CD key which used an encryption mechanism that was contained on the server.

Would I make a copy of quake3 for a friend? Hell no I wouldn't! If I did, I sure wouldn't give them my CD key, because then I couldn't play.

The only way around this mechanism of copy protection is to hack the server that the decryptor is on. Good luck.

Of course, if you employ this method of copy protection, you have to require your customers to be hooked up to the net.

Re:Only one kind of copy protection works

[amaiman]

But this only works for games, or an app that requires access to a server in order to be meaningful.

In the case of Half-Life, for example, I can't play online without a valid key. This is effective, since the single player game would get boring really fast.

Take something like Microsoft Word, however. I don't need to interact with other people in order for the software to be meaningful. Therefore, a crack can simply be created to make the code bypass the encryption/server check. It's different from a game that you are playing on the software company's servers.

Uh, you don't know what you are talking about

[Anonymous Coward]

Copy II PC wasnt' hardware, it was a software program.

Any drive could "bad" format another drive.

Most sectors were formatted at 512 bytes. A common scheme was to format one sector on a track at 128 or 256 bytes (or even 1024) bytes.

Because the way the disk alignment was set up, the "read" would fail unless you aligned the drive to read from the proper sized sectors.

This was your simple bad sector copy protection. Anybody with knowledge of bios 13h calls could crack this in about a minute.

The more ingenious copy protection schemes put code on the "bad" sectors. So making the sector bad wasn't sufficient. You also had to copy the code on the sector (which wasn't bad, just sized differently...a limitation of floppy drives).

Been there, copied that, got the tee-shirt

[mnemotronic]

This is all just JVC marketing hype which ignores two important principles:

1. JVC products are absolute dogcrap.
2. Other companies have tried the "partially written, unreadable sector" approach before. They didn't succeed either.

Re:3DS Dongle? Please!

[PCM2]

>EA EA EA

Yeah, and don'tcha get the joke? Electronic Arts ... EA ... oh the IRONY! THE IRONY!!

All kidding aside, hey whaddaya know -- I posted the parent at +1 bonus, and it's since been modded down one with no explanation. I guess CmdrTaco et al really do get hot and bothered about that DMCA stuff.

oh bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

...you sound like another one of those niggers that wants reparations for something that not only had NOTHING to do with them as an individual, but was so reprehensible a practice it was abolished over one hundred years ago. Plenty of reparations have been made already. For the love of gawd, a poor black person can't be denied a bank loan, because to do so is to discriminate against poor black people! It's the white male in his thirties that has no rights and is the slave of today: he's the most disposable person in this country.

Talk to Sony

[freeweed]

Why do people think that it is possible to make bits uncopyable?

Last I checked, it's STILL impossible for most people (if not all) to copy Playstation games 100%, due to bad/corrupt/whatever data burnt to the CD, which home cd burners can't deal with. Yes, modchipping gets around this little problem, but the fact remains: for all intents and purposes, someone HAS created uncopyable bits - at least as far as consumers are concerned.

Now, as far as doing something like this with bits that a CD-ROM drive can actually read and do something meaningful with... that's a whole nother ball of wax.

Re:Talk to Sony

[Myco]

I think that's the critical difference here -- a PS game is not designed to be read on a PC, so you don't really have access to the information. I mean, I know I've had a hell of a time ripping mp3s from vinyl records. :)

Re:Talk to Sony

[freeweed]

No, but a PS game *is* designed to be read from the platform it's intended to be run on - namely a Playstation. The issue with burning Playstation games has little to do with READING the data, it's with WRITING it.

Re:Talk to Sony

[Myco]

Sigh...

We're talking about making a copy. In order to do that, you have to first read the data. then write it. It's not complicated.

Re:Talk to Sony

[Anonymous Coward]

It is perfectly possible to read/copy Playstation's CDs in PCs. Piracy is the main reason for the PS one and PS two not being sold by Sony in South America.

Re:Talk to Sony

[Anonymous Coward]

>has little to do with READING the data, it's with WRITING it.

Whats hard about writing it? Its reading the protected stuff that you can't do.

Re:Talk to Sony

[John Sullivan]

Not with PS disks. Reading the data isn't usually that hard, however the disk format makes use of certain bit patterns which CD-R drives can not or will not write. Such as zeroed out checksum fields which a CD writer will replace with a properly calculated checksum "for you", and data hidden in the ATIP section which is already burned in with media-vendor information in CD-R(W) blanks. So far only an official Sony-licensed equipment or pressing plants will write these.

"can vary making"

[Anonymous Coward]

Erm. Excuse me. I thought this was an English site. In English. Not Tacoese.

OK, I wiz rung.

Already hacked it

[Anonymous Coward]

lotech way:

audio out on pc1 --> audio in on pc2 .wav --> .mp3

done it.

Why not just use the games model?

[Proc6]

What is the one mechanism that currently works to get people to buy CDs? Servers! Games use servers that we all want to play on against each other, and since you have to authenticate with the server, you need your own valid key.

So... all we need to do is to turn every application into a player vs player shooter! Microsoft Word should require you to log into the Microsoft server, and play "against" someone to type up your term paper. As you type letters, they can backspace over them! Deathmatch Photoshop maybe? How about Team Capture the Flag Macromedia Flash?

First Post

[Anonymous Coward]

YEAH BABY! EAT IT!

the obvious aproach to this schemes

[Anonymous Coward]

Would be get the original, image you system, install, compare system with snapshot, repackage and distribute.
The software will have to exist in disc and requiring a cdrom to run would be impracticable/crackable.
Of course the software can be binary different in every copy (related with windows id for example), but then that would be a simple crack - a device driver that responds the required key, a binary patch to the main executable.
Two weeks for the first titles, the rest the ususl hours upon mastering.
Nothing changes.

Re:Backups are a non-issue.

[walt-sjc]

Seems all the posts here talk about the need to get around copy protection. Bottom line is that I won't use software that is protected
in any manor. I refuse to jump through hoops or have artificial limitations placed on my ability to use software, or make backups of software. Any company that attempts to restrict my ability to make legit backups or transfer a "license" to an alternate machine will find me going to their competitors.

Of course opensource has none of these problems.

I USED to use Windows along side Linux on a regular basis, but it was clear with XP that MS was tightening the screws. Now I only rarely use Windows at all, and only when I need to run software that has no linux counterpart. I've purchased my last MS product with Win2K. I will never upgrade. Instead, I will move to Linux for 100% of my work. The EULA's just make life with MS untenable.

How long before we just dont care anymore?

[Proc6]

I mean seriously. If software developers are going to make CD-ROM's that only play in new drives, so we have to buy one every year, and we have to use a special hardware key, and we have to listen to our music through digital players with audible sonic watermarks, and only so many times before we have to hook it to a phone line to dial into a main server and bill our credit card, how long before the average person just says "Man, fucking nevermind. It's just Britney Spears, or another lame fucking first person shooter!" I mean seriously, is all this effort worth trying to protect some flash in the pan teen idol one hit wonder? Make things any more difficult and people will finally realize The Sim's is retarded and go back to other forms of entertainment that don't require so much effort on the part of the consumer.

Re:And when have we heard this before? [OT]

[NanoGator]

Listen to the guys that replied. Heck I learned something from them today. All this time I thought I was being called a saltine.

Re:Backups are a non-issue.

[Hitokage_Nishino]

It is NOT your choice what laws you are going to follow and which you are going to ignore.

Hmm... I suppose Ghandi and MLK Jr had it all wrong! Those dirty criminals...

Say aren't some Music CDs copy protected already??

[Akateriel]

...And wasn't it "crack proof" because of the fact that a sector of data was corrupted? and all people had to do was take a fine magic marker and black out that sector? I am not sure about the truthfullness behind this, I only head this from a person.

Mafia Thugs

[Webmoth]

Here's my idea for fool-proof copy protection.

Every software license comes with a Mafia thug to watch over it. If you copy, you pay or he shoots.

Seems pretty simple, no? No need for confusing EULA's.

Oh, wait. They do.

Re:And when have we heard this before? [OT]

[ripewithdecay]

Or, quoting Bill Hicks referring to Billy Ray Cyrus:

"Jarhead, no-talent cracker asshole."

How about bash?

[Srin Tuar]

Here: zip implemented in bash:

$wget ftp://ftp.uu.net/pub/archiving/zip/src/unzip542.ta r.gz
$cd unzip
$make
$su -c "make install"

Point is that if you had to be nickled and dimed for every POS program on your computer, we'd still be reimplementing bubble sort.

And my 20+ Installs?

[TheBillGates]

And so what if I have to do installs on 20+ machines? I normally burn a few copies and install on several machines at the same time to save hours on the task.

The first vendor that won't allow me to do that, I will be call up their customer server head honcho to demand an unprotected copy.

Yeah, I know the response "well you should have several legal copies you could use at the same time."

B.S.! I buy several licenses and get one media copy. There will be hell to pay for the SOB companies that pull this crap on me.

Am I silly or is this easy to crack

[TomDLux]

Seems to me, if there's a public API, you can read a decrypted data stream with your custom software, and do whatever you want with it....such as save it to an unencrypted disk.

If you can't do that, it only raises the complexity a little. Write a program which pretends to be the sound device, and receive the data stream from their propietary playback software.

I give it a week after release before it's cracked.

Re:Backups are a non-issue.

[Anonvmous Coward]

"It is NOT your choice what laws you are going to follow and which you are going to ignore."

Mr. Lincoln said it better:

"...that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom - and that this government of the people, by the people, for the people..."

The laws (being used against the people) are unfair. I want to rip my Matrix Revisited DVD to my computer so that I can test 'greenscreen compositing' using footage the DVD contains. This is for educational purposes as it directly pertains to my job as an animator. The laws that used to allow me to do this have changed. All this because the *AA is unwilling to change their business plans for fear that they'd only make a fair profit instead of an extortionary profit.

Its Digital!

[xagon7]

When will they learn?! .. Clone CD!

You simply use software codes in a world where one can perform a bit for bit copy! -- sheesh

I want to see their warranty.

[jthill]

BSA: piracy costs the industry $100T/yr!!!
JVC: we gotcha covered, guaranteed!!
Heh heh heh. Heeere, kittykittykitty.

And now...

[Snover]

it's *really* time to outlaw the felt-tip markers.

Who said they want perfection?

[Oliver Wendell Holme]

Frankly, I don't think they care whether or not this is yet another scheme that's doomed to oblivion.

All they care about is whether anyone will PAY them to use it.

As PT Barnum said....

Re:3DS Dongle? Please!

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe it's because that ^H joke was old ten years ago. What can you expect from a crowd that think putting "Cowboy Neal" in every poll is funny....

wouldn't charging $30 kill the piracy?

[wadiwood]

Ie if M$ reduced the price a lot ie comparable to the cost of a CD, then it would likely become more convenient to buy the CD than waste time burning it and this would kill off the piracy in most places. Isn't this how big supermarket chains work? reduce the cost of everything to force the competition out? Then they can charge what they like. Then the competition comes back and the cycle continues.

Sweet!

[stickyc]

The more things change, the more they stay the same. I know my old copies of Locksmith and Nibbles Away would come in handy some day...

Re:Backups are a non-issue.

[Dun Malg]

Dude, I think he was jst using an extreme case to illustrate a point, that point being "we DO have the right to choose which laws we obey". The moral difference between reverse engineering copy protection and opposing slavery isn't relevant to the point; whether or not we have the moral obligation to oppose bad law is.

You're retarded.

[Anonymous Coward]

But you're not alone.

That fob doesn't solve anything. In the end

* the software is still reading stuff from the hardware

* this stuff can be easily looked at

with those two things being true, every copy protection scheme is useless except to force people to get cracks for the software and such.

What would REALLY work (a little better)

[Myco]

Everyone's already pointed out the obvious flaws in this scheme. So try another one on for size:

CDs containing commercial software have a key written in a special area of the disc, which is designated "read-only." Through legislation or industry standards, it is enforced that no CD-RW available to consumers can be permitted to write to that area of a disc, but they can all read it just fine.

Ignoring the problem of legacy hardware and legal issues (who gets the privilege of owning a CD-writer that can write to the special area?), how would this scheme be cracked?

Re:What would REALLY work (a little better)

[bnenning]

how would this scheme be cracked?

Patch the code that reads the key off the CD to instead return a known valid key. As long as the user controls what software runs on his computer, any scheme like this is doomed. This control is of course what Palladium and the CBDTPA seek to eliminate.

Re:Backups are a non-issue.

[thales]

"Hmm... I suppose Ghandi and MLK Jr had it all wrong! Those dirty criminals..."

Ghandi & King weere advocates of civil disobedance, that is of publicaly violating a law as a protest against it's unfairness. They were not scoffalaws that refused to obey laws because they saw a financal advantage in ignoring them. (Something I can't say about many of the posters to this forum)

Listen up script-kiddies, your days are numbered

[Cyberia125]

This is real and will work. The end is near.

They have a technique to write data (keys) to a CD in a way that a standard read can read ONLY by using low-level access. Odds are that they have a patented method of writing these sectors and no current CD burners are physically capable of doing so, even with low-level control.

The files that are copied to your drive during install, are encrypted and require a key off the CD to run. The same key is probably not used repeatedly, if ever (think 'key-date hash'). Additionally, keys can be recursively enrcypted, key-lengths and recursion depths can both be arbitrary, spoofed keys (or worse, think 'crashers') in predictable locations (which is *bad* if recursion-depth is arbitrary)

So they can tie program usage to possession of the original physical PURCHASED CD. What programs require the CD to run nowadays? Games. Think of the market if that is all they can protect. (It isn't)

Even if the unencrypted, hacked program gets out, the Time-to-Kazaa will be so big, they still win!

This is the end.

This reminds me of when...

[randomErr]

Remember when you had to use Copy ][ plus to copy 5 1/4" floppies on an Apple ][?

Remember when you brought copyrighted software that had purposeful holes punched into a diskette? Those holes emulated bad sectors and if you copied that data of the disk to another disk the sectors when be reordered. The new disk didn't have any bad sectors so it just tried to save space and compact the sectors. The pirated software would read the reordered sectors and go into a nasty recursive loop.

It took about 1-2 months for hackers on BBS's and FidoNet to find ways to create programs that locked out corisponding sectors and created new security sectors on the floppies.

How long do you think it will take for the internet community to find a similar loop hole on CD's?

Re:This reminds me of when...

[DirkDaring]

I sure do.

Remember EDD? Essensial Data Duplicator?

Those were the days....

Dirk

And of course...

[wedg]

Everyone forgets. If it plays on your computer, it can be recorded by your computer. Hell, stick a double-female connector from audio-out to line-in. Problem solved. The end-all hack. Sure. You're copying it in 1x time. But there was a point when that was the best we could do. At least we can encode it in real time too.

Nice try, JVC.

Re:And when have we heard this before? [OT]

[Anonymous Coward]

Here are some synonyms for cracker: redneck, whitey, the man. white trash, and honky.

I have also heard slackjaw, mouth breather, and knuckle dragger, but I don't think they have to do with being of the Caucasian persuasion.

Without putting processing into closed hardware ..

[Anonymous Coward]

It will never be tough.

Re:Listen up script-kiddies, your days are numbere

[Anonymous Coward]

It's like other posters have said in so many words, if one human can build it, another can destroy it.

The poster is either a corporate shill or a troll.

Theft to You But Freedom to Others

[Louis Savain]

But the average mentality of the average slashdot reader is based more on justifying petty theft to themself than it is the honest drive to protect the digital rights of the consumers of the world.

What is theft to you is freedom to others.

Protect the digital rights of consumers?

You mean protect the ability of greedy a-holes to infringe on our liberties? If you can't put chains on it or put a fence around it, it does not belong to you. Makes no difference if it's ideas, inventions, music, writings, speech or what have you. Once you've released it, like the air, it belongs to nobody and everybody.

What if some alien jackasses from Andromeda showed up on planet Earth and insisted that everything we own belongs to them because they invented it first? We'd kick their silly-looking arses back into deep space.

Re:Theft to You But Freedom to Others

[junkpunch]

Why is there a copyright at the end of the article in your sig?

Re:Theft to You But Freedom to Others

[Louis Savain]

Why is there a copyright at the end of the article in your sig?

Not to prevent copying, that's for sure. Copyright, in my opinion, should only be a symbol of authorship as people should get credit for their work. I would not stop anybody from copying my stuff and selling it. However I would object to plagiarism. Come to think of it, I am grateful to you for pointing this out. I will add a clause to my site to permit unlimited copying, even for profit.

Re:Backups are a non-issue.

[bertybassett]

"I won't use software that is protected
in any manor"

But would you use it in a humble hovel?

Grrrrr!

[Sj0]

Don't these ignorant bastards realize that there are legitimate reasons to make backup copies of CDs, or make ISOs of them on your hard drive? I call this reason the "shit! a scratch on the CD causes the game to crash right before the last boss!" factor.

I can't wait for this copy protection ..

[IdleTime]

I read the article about the copy protection scheme and was not even lightly amused.

This is going to be so easy to crack that it is not funny. The article said that each TITLE may be given different keys and what not, this will have to mean that every CD of a given software title is identical.

Now, here is how to handle this:
1. Get a CD of the title.
2. Analyze what the program asks for from the CD.
3. Write a filter that intercepts the requests from the program and returns the correct data. The original program does not have to be modified.

Copy protection schemas are not going to prevent copying. My company produces a very expensive system that can be downloaded for free off the Internet. We know people copy it, but none of the people who copy it could afford to buy it nor would they fork out that much money for the program. But, it is better that you donwload it and get used to it, then you'll ask for it when you are done with school and starts to work. More revenue to us, payraise to me. Ergo, it is good for everyone! When are other companies going to realize this?

True Copy Protection

[danaris]

I seriously wonder how long it will be before someone attempts coming out with a copy protection that turns out to be the ultimate "security through obscurity"--the data simply cannot be read. Because, of course, this is the only way to be sure it cannot be pirated (and not even necessarily then!).

Dan Aris

Cracked and completely effectiveless in...

[defile]

Wager time. I'm betting...

One week before researchers have produced code that can completely compromise all of the copy protection.

One point five weeks before the elite technical community can get over the annoyances.

Two weeks before software pirates can make copies without skipping a beat.

Eight months of legitimate users being annoyed before the tech is pulled.

Sprinkle random DMCA arrests and intimidation.

Re:how long -- look at the patent

[DrVeg]

I can't be certain that this patent app is the one from JVC/Hudson, but the description is pretty detailed about the method and sounds a lot like what is described in the article.
So if you want to dig into what is current in the US Patent office, look at this.
http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?TERM1=2 0020080960&Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PG01&p=1&u=%2 Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.html&r=0&f=S&l=5 0
Sorry if I messed up the link, but you can just search at uspto.org in the patent applications for number 20020080960

Er, so how does this work again?

[code65536]

I don't know too much about the technology behind all this, but it seems to be that unless there is a part of the CD that is readable but not burnable, this protection will fail. So does such an area exist? I've been under the impression some of the good burners out there (like LG) coupled with something like CloneCD can more or less defeat any protection system. And even if they can't, how long would it be before some driver manufacuter and/or burning-software-maker create something that can burn all the areas that are readable?

Re:Backups are a non-issue.

[Anonymous Coward]

The southern states seceded over the slavery issue, but Lincoln kept a presence in South Carolina to make a point that the Union should be kept united in fear over being overrun by European forces again.

The Union's presence in South Carolina showed no respect to the sovereignity of states, including their freedom to leave the union.

Electing a president not keen on slavery might have been the cause for the south to secede, but the Civil War was not started for that reason: it was started because the Union was at risk of long-term survival.

If it were up to him, you might very well be under European rule again.

How it works

[deanpole]

Normal CD data is written as a single long spiral. The protected disks have a big spiral too, but somewhere (or in multiple places) there is a short extra spiral along the big one. A normal read or ISO image would not discover the short spirals, but they can be uncovered by repeatedly seeking to the sector and getting lucky. Traditional CD drives & drivers work fine provided you can avoid the disk cache.

Even if you trick the API and discover the short spirals, they would not be writeable to a CDR.

Re:How it works

[Anonymous Coward]

then you get back to the problem of iso images...

If it can be read

[Anonymous Coward]

it can be hacked, cracked, chopped, kung fued, sliced, etc. They should spend more time and money making their products suck less instead of trying to "protect" them.

I guess JVC hasnt heard of SoftIce?

[Anonymous Coward]

If cracker can crack a $50K software that depends on those silly hardware dongle, How fast do you think that copy protection will get crack?

I guess I am done with JVC now.....

[Clockwork Apple]

I own an A/V amp, 2 TVs, 2 VCRs, and a audio CD player and all are made by JVC but as I vote with my dollars I will not be replacing any of them with new JVC equipment. Can anyone recomend a brand or brands of a similar price/performance level?

I am planning to replace my main TV set this year (around Xmas time) so if you know of a good 30ish inch set that is of good value and quality in the 200-350 dollar range it would be of some help.

This really sucks the big one.

Thanks.

The mindset of a cracker.

[legomad]

When will security companies realise that this is all a cracker's wet dream; they are just making the craker's job more interesting not any harder. I know people who write in assembly for fun.

Re:3DS Dongle? Please!

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't be thick. If someone mods you ``Overrated'' your post's score drops with no explanation.

Re:Backups are a non-issue.

[Archfeld]

what I choose to use and what work requires are 2 things. I guess I am just a fat lazy bastard, because I want my cake and I want to eat it too. Why should I have to lose out to do the right thing. In the end I guess I just bitch alot and make small steps :( Damn..I am gonna go have a Guinness....

Re:And when have we heard this before? [OT]

[Archfeld]

LOL that would be an excellent example :)

Yeah, and then the models died

[Perianwyr Stormcrow]

Took em a little while to realize that without a little bit of data stored on the dongle, your models would eventually disintegrate into a pile of spiky crap.

Of course, the crackers got past that too :)

Yeah, that's how any modern system works

[Perianwyr Stormcrow]

SafeDisc comes to mind as an example. Safedisc works by encrypting crucial pieces of the application (usually the main executable) and using a decryption key stored in munged sectors on the disk to get at it.

Been cracked many times in many versions, I'm afraid.

Copy prevention is in conflict with the law

[PsyQ]

Well, at least in Switzerland they can't legally prevent you from copying software. I'd be amazed if other countries didn't have a similar law.

Rough tanslation of Swiss copyright law, article 24/2:

"Whoever has the right to use a computer program may make backup copies thereof. This privilege cannot be revoked by contract."

Awesome, huh? So we can just blast through any copy prevention legally, I guess.

It will be cracked tomorrow

[Hellraisr]

"They claim that the location, length and number of embedded keys can vary making it more difficult to hack."

The operative words here are "more difficult". It will be "more difficult" to the guys breaking the copy protection for about the first few hours. Then when a program is released across the internet that everyone can use by clicking a button, it doesn't become so difficult.. :)

Right to backup does not exist!

[Anonymous Coward]

Allow me to quote a post by bluelarva on a similar topic: (http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=25458&cid=276 4421)

"fair use" is not a right. (Score:4, Insightful)
by bluelarva on Sunday December 30, @07:30AM (#2764421)
(User #185170 Info)
It seems that everyone believe that "fair use" is a right. In fact, it is not a right but it's really a exclusion from prosecution. What this means is that if you use legally licenced copyrighted material (music, book, software, etc..) in a "fair use" manner, you cannot be prosecuted for violation of copyright. This does not mean that if you purchase a CD, you have the inalienable right to make a backup copy. There is a subtle but distinct difference.

Having said all this, record industry does have the right to implement copy protection. I'm not saying that it's good, I'm just saying that they have legal right to do so. Under current law, record company is not obligated to grant you the ability to use the material in "fair use" manner. At the same time, you are not obligated to buy copy protected CDs.

Just comment out the call to the check function...

[Otis_INF]

...and return 'true' or whatever value the check function should return. No matter how smart the protection is, the weak spot is where the code which checks if the copyprotection is in place is called and where the result of that code is examined. The copy protection code is then useless, and the game can be copied freely.

This is known for years, and still companies tend to invent smart copy protection schemes without addressing this weak spot.

How it works and why you can't copy it

[PhunkySchtuff]

What they are doing is hiding encryption information in the subcode channels of the CD-ROM.
Nearly all drives can happily read subchannels off CD-ROMs but very few CD-R/RW drives can actually write this extended information, as it isn't part of the user data stream.
This subchannel information is used for things like index marks within a track for audio, embedding CD+G graphics (low res, 4096 colour graphics) positioning information and ECC/EDC.
All they are doing is embedding extra information within these channels where writing it back to a CD-R, your burner simply isn't capable of reproducing it.
-- k

Re:security, think PSX

[Anonymous Coward]

One solution could be to raw-read the original CD-ROM (with the hidden keys) into a special type image-iso-format. Then, create a user application, much like the already existing image-mount-tools, could mount the image, acting like a CD-ROM player.

This would enable spreading the software as a burned image (including the keys), with the only drawback that you need to read the image through a virtual-drive-application.

Unless...

[athmanb]

you edit the source of the operating system and remove all the calls to the key-checking.

Bingo.

Re:security, think PSX

[Ryosen]

IIRC, the Sega Dreamcast also works in a similar fashion and was easily defeated. Basically, the disc contents were read off through the system's serial port and saved into a new format. Then a generic loader was created that replaced the DC's loader. The two were then burned onto a standard CD-R. When the DC would boot, it would read and run the loader which, in turn, operates on the copied data.

The location, size and number of encryption keys are made available on JVC's protected cd scheme. How long could this possibly take to defeat?

Now, I don't particularly care to be able to pirate software, but I do want the ability to use no-cd patches on my games. When a game installs itself using 2GB of hard drive space for its 3 CDs, there is absolutely no reason why I should have to go fishing behind my desk for the "key" disk. But, again, it's not as if this is going to take a long time to defeat.

Re:Backups are a non-issue.

[tarmo]

Actually you'll be better off if you make a copy of the CD and store the copy in a dark safe place, and keep on using the original.

Why? Because pressed glass CDs (the originals) do tend to break after about 20-30 years due to oxidation. Burned CD-R disks, however, have a life span of 50 to 100 years or even more, depending on quality.

Also, pressed glass CDs have better endurance, so they don't get damaged as easily as CD-Rs (or CD-RWs) when manipulated.

Just my 0.02.

Re:Backups are a non-issue.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh please that is the lamest excuse for ripping I have ever heard. Let me get this right you want to use someone elses hard work to make you look good at work. What a lameass thieving idea. May the DMCA feature promeniently in your future.

Re:Who will buy

[Anonymous Coward]

Who will buy company X's drive?

Everyone, if content producers make a coordinated effort to FORCE it. Say, by slowing/stopping production on older, "open" forms of media?

Fair Use?

[Anonymous Coward]

What about fair use? One thing that bothers me about these schemes is that I can no longer make an archival copy of a something that I purchased. If the media goes bad, my fault or otherwise, why should I be forced to purchase another copy? No matter how careful, one never knows.

It seems to me that companies are saying that if the media goes bad, I no longer have the right to what I have purchased. While this is not a big deal for the $0.99 cassette I pulled out of the junk bin at the local record store, it is a very big deal for $400 software or a CD from an indie band that doesn't exist anymore.

I love this system.

[hvatum]

I personally love any system which makes it more difficult for people to share one cd, forcing them to buy more liscences. If this system works out, then instead of buying one $100 program for 5 friends, people will need to spend the whole $500. Things like this really make people consider just going for GNU software, because any difficulty that they have to go through getting used the the GNU version is more than worth the extra costs of using the Proprietary version. That means we get more users and hopefully more bug reports!

to hell with read the article...

[ph0rk]

read the damn TITLE.

"JVC Announces Technology To Prevent Software Copying" software, kids, not music.

Re:Backups are a non-issue.

[Anonvmous Coward]

"Oh please that is the lamest excuse for ripping I have ever heard. Let me get this right you want to use someone elses hard work to make you look good at work."

Do you really believe that, or are you just trolling? If you reply to this, I'll give you a rebuttal. I warn you, though, defeat is imminent.

That is still the wrong use of the tech

[FreeUser]

For example, making backups of your software or music files. At least then you can guarantee copies of the original you own and prevent multi-generational copies of copies.

That is still a bad idea. If and when your master disk gets scratched, damaged, or lost you won't be able to make a backup of the only existing copy you've made.

The correct use of this technology is serializing each copy of the software, so that the program / song can be associated with a real, living person, or at least their credit card number. This doesn't necessarilly require watermarking, nor does it mean a determined copyright violator can't do the digital equivelent of 'filing off the serial numbers', but filing off the serial numbers is more difficult to justify than making backup copies or moving the copies to different media, and a law disallowing the removal of serial numbers is a hell of a lot more palitable than a law disallowing the circumvention of copy prevention technology in order to back up the software you paid good money for.

Serializing software did more to stop widespread software copying than any of the attempted, and since discarded, copy prevention schemes ever did.
Yes, you still have warez dudes (and you will always have such, no matter what you do), but the willingness of every Tom, Dick, and Harry to share their software illegally went out the window the first time they saw their name associated with a product serial number, and hasn't been back since.

As others have noted, we've been down this path before, and it remains a technological sink hole and dead end. It will never be effective, it will never work regardless of how draconian the laws or how pervasive the spyware and enforcementware becomes.

What is particularly silly is that a solution has already been found and used, and found to be effective, and these idiots still can't grasp it.

Perhaps after they've spent another billion on these snake-oil salesmen they'll start to 'get it', but somehow, based on past idiocy, I'm not holding my breath.

Re:Backups are a non-issue.

[japhmi]

It is NOT your choice what laws you are going to follow and which you are going to ignore.

Many theologians have said that an unjust law is no law at all, because the nature of laws is to be just. So, according to the 1st admendment (freedom of religion), I don't have to follow unjust laws.

I'm so sorry, dewd!

[mekkab]

Sorry yr response got modded down by some maroon, but it just goes to show most moderators not only SUCK, but have no concept of stylistics, which is ALWAYS on topic!

and I see how you would prefer "enpimpin's" over "enPIMPins" or some other silly means of emphasizing the pimp (which must always be emphasisized). Either way, it wasn't until I "heard" myself saying the word that I got it.

Thought technically yr not really contracting nor are you showing possession, but abstractly I think the entire world is possessed by the Pimp. So you can continue using your apostrophe with pride.

Pimp on.

Fair, Unregulated, and Protected Use

[Balagan]

Dont we have a right to make a backup copy for our own personaly use, of *any* content we buy?

Obviously the companies we are talking about want to do everything possible to stop us from being able to make a copy of any kind at all, and they have put laws on the books which enforce that.

Maybe all of us who are looking for technical solutions to these violations of our fair use and unregulated rights should be opening up a second front in this war of self defense... responses to bad technology like this shouldnt only take the form of code, as wonderful as that is.

Hacking better code to get around these copy protection schemes is good. Hacking the law to get around the idiocy in washington is also good. Taking real action by coding around bad technology *and* by actively supporting sane copyright and tech laws is much much better.

Where are the laws and candidates for office we are supporting that would require all media of any kind (software, movies, music, etc) to be physically readable *and* easy to make a backup copy of?

CD's and DVD's are perishable. We have paid for the physical media. We have a right, enshrined in the fair use doctrine, to continue being able to access our own purchased media indefinately. Which in this case means we have the right to transfer that media from one place to another if we so choose - at least for our own use. (Filesharing and such is a whole 'nother argument and has nothing to do with this directly).

Why are we letting these companies, that are actually less influential and smaller than we would be if we bothered getting up off our asses, continue to cram bad legislation and bad technology down our throats?

Lets make copy protection methods like this illegal, instead of letting them continue to make every little important thing in our lives restricted and controlled.

Already been done...

[Anonymous Coward]

A long time ago, there was a floppy-based protection called CopyLock from a guy named Rob Northen. (PC & Amiga) It had 4 keys on the floppy in an area that couldn't be copied. And the program was encrypted with these 4 keys, so, if you don't have keys, you can't decrypt the program, thus you can't run it. (Even bundled with very NASTY anti-debug stuff). I wrote a tool that stripped it off clean, and spit out a virgin program file as if there had never been protection on it.

More recently, Macrovision has released their CD protection thing Safedisc, which more or less does the same thing. It has been routinely whacked in much the same way as my CopyLock ripper from 10 years ago. (only not by me).

Here's what will happen to the JVC stuff. Someone will disassemble the code that reads the keys off the CD. Then, they will rip out the important parts, and make a free-standing program that will read them. Then, if it is VERY nasty, someone will patch the code to read the keys from a file instead of the CD, and the file will just be burned on the CD with the game. Or, the entire "envelope" will be stripped off. This is truly nothing new. Been done for years. Maybe they'll eventually learn..

(Nahhh..I doubt it, but it's fun to watch)

The DMCA is a travesty of justice

[Anonymous Coward]

The DMCA is a mistake and it violates the constitution. Also specialinterest groups are not supposed to be able to make stuff the law thats is supposed to be the people's job. Also I don't think some kid thats breaks a copyprotect should be treated the same as a bankrobber for one he/she indangers noone's life. Also it's joke one can get more time in jail for cracking a copy protect than a rapist does.If you ask me rape is a crime far worse than all copy violations combined. Whats the world comming to when some cooperate fat cat's yacht and golfcourses are more important then protecting people's lives. Now something I think should be law and an amendment is it would be illegal for a legislator to accept any and all bribes and donations in excess of $10,000 from any single entity that would prevent travesties to justice like DMCA from ever becoming law.