To Break Copy Protection, Ask Politely.

by Devanshu Mehta

A few days ago, I had written about “a flawed copy protection scheme”:http://www.scienceaddiction.com/2005/06/09/copy-protected-cds/ on the new “Dave Matthews Band CD”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00082ZSP2/galaxyfaraway/ which, if you have autorun enabled, installs itself on your computer and prevents copying. Key phrase is if you have autorun enabled. Also, it works fine on a “Mac”:http://www.scienceaddiction.com/categories/computers/apple/ – so maybe that’s the computer you should use :). I know I do.

Well, there’s an update to that story; apparently with a new technology (believe-it-or-not, it’s called First4Internet!), you can’t transfer the songs on to an iPod either UNLESS “you email Sony BMG and complain”:http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=581&e=3&u=/nm/20050616/tc_nm/media_music_cd_dc in which case you will get a nice email explaining how to circumvent the copy protection. Great- flawed technology for an unnecessary purpose built by people who tell you how to break it if asked politely.