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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."
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.
In college, really poor, need a flatscreen.
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?
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.
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.
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.
There are only 10 kinds of people in this world... those who understand binary and those who don't
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.
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.
/. in a week.
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
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.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
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.
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.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
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)
Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est