CD Media World - Commercial CD/DVD Protections: SAFEAUDIO

SAFEAUDIO

Company	:	TTR Technologies Inc. - changed name to: Amedia Networks & Macrovision
Protection	:	SAFEAUDIO
How to Detect	:	Not available as of yet!
Backup Solution	:	Record directly from the analog output of the drive to the soundcard. The quality will be lower than the original but it is the easiest way to make a working backup. It seems that the Alternate CDFS.VXD tools for Win9x works to rip WAV's from a protected CD.
Protected	:	Audio CD's
Press Releases	:	Get Your Filthy Hands Off My CDs SAFEAUDIO Technology Adopted By Key CD Equipment Manufacturers SAFEAUDIO Audio CD Copy Protection Available Now for Production Copy-protected CDs quietly slip into stores Anti-piracy CD system raises distortion fear

Protection Info

SAFEAUDIO provides audio content owners with an easy-to-implement copy protection solution for CD audio discs that provides effective protection against unauthorized disc copying or ripping of songs. The SAFEAUDIO manufacturing process is software based, involving no additional hardware components. SAFEAUDIO protection is a media-based technology and therefore cannot be easily circumvented by PC ripping programs. TTR jointly developed the SAFEAUDIO CD copy protection solution with Macrovision. The SAFEAUDIO solution meets the combined objectives of playability (where the original audio content can be heard with no discernable reduction in audio quality) and effectiveness (where a satisfactory level of copy protection is provided). TTR and Macrovision are supporting ongoing evaluation and test programs with several major music labels.

The basic idea is to create samples that sound like bursts of static, and scramble the ECC data around to make it look like an uncorrectable error. Audio CD players will interpolate the samples during playback, but CD-ROM drives doing digital audio extraction generally won't. The result is a disc that plays back correctly on a CD player, but won't "rip" or copy correctly on a CD-ROM drive.

Protection Info: SAFEAUDIO v3

SafeAudio changes the music data at the bit level, flipping a fraction of a disc's billions of 1s and to 0s. That "very subtle" degree of data corruption, while enough to block an attempt to copy a track onto a hard drive, won't affect the quality of the playback or affect the disc's physical playability. The noise induced by dirt and scratched easily drowns out the noise inherent in the copy-protected data...