Defeat Sony XCP copy protection with scotch tape

Yet again, copy protection is defetaed by a near trivial method. LMAO

-goro-

http://informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=174400748

With a small bit of tape on the outer edge of the CD, the PC then
treats the disc as an ordinary single-session music CD and the commonly
used music 'rip' programs continue to work as usual.
By Gregg Keizer
TechWeb News



Sony BMG Music's controversial copy-protection scheme can be defeated
with a small piece of tape, a research firm said Monday in a
demonstration of the futility of digital rights management (DRM).

According to Gartner analysts Martin Reynolds and Mike McGuire, Sony's
XCP technology is stymied by sticking a fingernail-size piece of opaque
tape on the outer edge of the CD.

That, the pair said in a brief posted online, renders "session 2 --
which contains the self-loading DRM software - unreadable. The PC
then treats the CD as an ordinary single-session music CD, and the
commonly used CD 'rip' programs continue to work as usual."

Such simple work-arounds, said Reynolds and McGuire, make Sony's
decision to copy protect is music CDs an even bigger mistake. "Sony
BMG's DRM technology will prevent neither informed casual copiers nor
high-volume 'pirates' from doing whatever they like with the content
the disc," the analysts continued. "It does, however, load 'stealth'
software - software that has been demonstrated to have suspect
effects - on uninformed users' machines.

"The bottom line: Sony BMG has created serious public-relations and
legal issues for itself, and for no good reason."

Only after 10 days of mounting criticism about its surreptitious
installation of a hacker-style "rootkit" to users' PCs did Sony
announce that it would end the copy-protection; a week later it said it
would recall all unsold CDs and exchange those already in consumers'
hands with unprotected discs.

Sony's exchange program also gives buyers of the 52 in-question CDs the
option of receiving unprotected MP3 files of the album's tracks, in
large part because the disc exchange process takes three to six weeks.

Those users will receive an e-mail directing them to a site where they
can download the MP3 files, Sony said on its exchange program Web page.

This isn't the first time that simple methods have defeated a Sony
copy-protection plan. An earlier technology that Sony used could be
circumvented by using a black marker to draw a line near the edge of
the disc.

"After more than five years of trying, the recording industry has not
yet demonstrated a workable DRM scheme for music CDs," concluded the
Gartner analysts. "It will never achieve this goal as long as CDs must
be playable by stand-alone CD players."

.

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