When I first read about this new fabulous copy protection scheme could work, is something impossible to be done.
This article gave me the clues how it works.
What makes any copy protection almost impossible is:

1. There's no way to change the information contained in a pressed CD.
2. The format used must be compatible with common CD players, if not it would be a commercial suicide, nobody will buy a special player for a restricted use CD.

For limiting the number of copies there must be a place where to store the previous history of use.
Where store this information?

1. In the CD: impossible!, presed CDs are not writtable.
2. In the CD reader: very difficult, a CD driver doesn't store any information, so it must be a special CD reader and all the fabricants must follow the same standart, of course Asiatic products will not follow this and old reader will not have the feature.
3. In the CD burning software: Very difficult, all the burner softwares must have included the protection scheme, and the softwares comes from all around the world.
   Anyway any cd burner protection software is easily bypassed by a common two step burning, you ripp the CD data into your hard disk and then burn CD with the hard disk content, all protection information is lost in the process.

So, what can prevent you for reading the content of the CD and doing anything you want with it?
The only possible solution is to alter the normal working of your computer, to hijack your computer in that way that it will not obey your orders!
The only way to be done requires:

1. To install a trojan in your computer (autorun)
2. To have support of the operating system for the nefasting job (they have Microsoft as accomplice).
   But the scheme for work will need the latest windows XP and the latest MediaPlayer.
   If you use previous Windows or MediaPlayer probaly the protection will not work, if you remove MediaPlayer and use other thing, probably will not work and with Mac, Linux, and other of course doesn't work. The negative effect of this protection scheme on users is that requires that the CD to be mixed medium (Data and Audio) and some CD players refuse to play a CD that has any data content. So many CD players are not able to play this CDs.

Message edited on: 11/04/2005 16:51

Stupidity also evolves!