CD COPY PROTECTION SCHEME CRACKED?

Has yet another software scheme aimed at stopping digital replication of music been thwarted? So says London's The Register, which asserts that digital rights management/copy protection outfit Macrovision has whiffed at the ball when it comes to making CDs unrippable. What would Leonardo Chiariglioni say?

Citing (and handily translating) a report on eurohacker site CDFreaks, The Register says Macrovision's SafeAudio product, which has already been stealthily adopted by some labels to protect new CD releases (the labels aren't telling which), has been bypassed by relatively simple means involving conversion of CD tracks to .wav files. We'd tell you more, but we don't really understand.

The point is that the old codehand's campfire tale, which maintains that "nothing is uncrackable," appears to be holding true. The lingering question, however, is just how far Joe and Jane Average are willing to go, in terms of the learning curve and time spent, to bypass the restrictions companies like Macrovision are attempting to impose.

The CDFreaks posting states, "Of course most of the CD Freaks visitors are able to bypass the protections, but the average home user will not." Meanwhile, Macrovision's website asserts that SafeAudio "meets the combined objectives of playability (where the original audio content can be heard with no discernible reduction in audio quality) and effectiveness (where a satisfactory level of copy protection is provided)."

You might not believe it, but we got Cs in school, too.