Sony prova nuovi CD anticopia (o a copia limitata)

Sony tests anti-pirate CDs: "SONY SAYS that it is testing CDs featuring technology from UK anti-piracy outfit First4Internet, that will allow punters to only make a limited number of copies... the big idea is to stop ‘casual piracy’ which it defines as ripping and burning CDs by people who have actually bought the disk in the first place and give copies to their mates.

Sony said that it will be releasing CDs with the technology soon, but will not say which ones.

Under the cunning plan, a user can rip tracks from Microsoft's Windows Media Audio (WMA) format. But if a CD is burned with protected audio, the DRM on the disc prevents it from being burned again.

This means that users will be able to duplicate CDs for their own use. Although I suspect the bottom will drop out of the second hand CD market pretty quick.

Ne parla anche Slashdot.

"Trying to make bits uncopyable is like trying to make water not wet."
--Bruce Schneier

...The First4Internet CD copy protection technology destroys the registry keys (driver device names) associated with your CD-ROM devices. Then a monitoring app allows or disallows access to the device. The monitoring app is buggy. If it stops running or loses your device references, you will have to reinstall windows to make your CD-ROM devices work again. Also, by messing with the internal driver properties like this, many apps simply hang or crash the system when trying to access the device.
You can forget about using your legitimate buring software after putting one of those CDs in your computer... -- anon DRM developer