CD-R copy protection
 

@All

I know the answer is basically you can't stop a skilled person form
copying a CD-R, but has anything new hit the internet. I like the
technique used by SecuROM and SafeDisc, to prompt for a Id
code before burning to copy, but it ain't cheap. I have some home
made promotional CD's for my business and would not like to keep
safe. Any new ideas. :)

-BP

Re: CD-R copy protection
 

Yes :D
Here's an idea BP.

If your promotional CDs are data (may as well be video :) ) you can use this: http://truecrypt.sourceforge.net/ ;)

Then you can give the CD away and personally give your customer the encryption/decryption password, and then they can "mount" the volume and view the disk.
If someone copies the disk, they're out of luck, because they won't be able to see the data :mrgreen:
( It works like a charm. I use it every day on my 1GB USB Flash stick at work ;) )

-kwag

Kwag wrote:

Thanks Kwag :) . I'll give it a try 8)

-BP

@Kwag

Here's an idea that could seem possible. Every blank CD-R has stored
on it information about the manufacture, capacity, etc. with a identification
number. Suppose there was a program that could read that id number
and would only execute your files if that number matched. Any CD-R
you copied wouldn't work, because the id doesn't match. I have a
slide show presentation about my business and only give copies to
selected customers. Others have copied my CD-R's and use their name
or my format without putting in any work. :evil: :evil: My slide show,
ghototShow can execute a program before starting the presentation.
This is where I could check the CD-R's id. Copying to a new disc would
cause it not to match. What do you think about this idea :roll:

-BP

Hi BP,

I'm almost positive that the numbers in the CD-R are non unique. That is, if they make a 10,000 batch of CDs, they all have the same codes stamped :)
There's no unique "serial number" identifier on the disks.

Eventually, this will happen, which is just what you want: http://www.drmwatch.com/drmtech/print.php/3397451
Unless you contact some manufacturer and order a set of custom blank CDs "serialized" :idea:
Then your idea would work, because you would look for the specific unique "ID" on every CD, and that ID nobody can reproduce ;)

-kwag

"CD duplication without the Postscribed ID process does not reproduce the unique ID."

I never trust this kind of "ture lies". They will never tell you that tools like CloneCD do copy the stamp. But it does...
(I don't know for this particular one, but a lot of protection that claimed to be "not copied during duplication" are duplicated by cloneCD).

Anything that can be read by the player on an original disc can be reproduced by a tool that drive directly the lazer lens.

Nope, not exactly Phil.
Take for example, the Playstation 1 CDs. There's no way to make an exact copy, because of the way they manufactured the CDs.
You must use a "mod" chip, in order to be able to play them.
That's the best example of CD copy protection.
There's not a single CD copy program that can copy those disks, bit per bit.

-kwag

That is not exactly the same thing.

There is not secret in this protection : the PS1 look for the ID of the disc and if it was not the legal ones of disc produced by sony, it was refused.
As NO BRAND never produces any virgin disc with a fake "Sony" cd-r stamp, you can't copy a PS1 disc (because this part of the disc can't be copied as it is in a non writable area of the medium, you already know that). That's the same thing that prevent to use a non-Audio CD-R disc in a standalone audio-CD recorder : you can't.

Anyone can do the same if it has it's own CD making units.

But PS1 disc have also other "logical" protection taht Sony claimed they won't be copied but are copied by CloneCD. With this you can avoid the painfull lurk for a crack or "noCD" patch on the net.

Nope.
They use a "trashed" CRC (forced incorrect CRC) into the first track when mastering the CDs.
When the players (Or CD copy programs) try to reconstruct the CRC, the copy is useles, with an incorrect CRC.
All CDs from factory are identical. For example, all "Rayman 2" CDs , will have identical trashed/forced erroneous CRC.
The only way to copy would be to hack a CD drive with some hacked firmware, that would copy bit for bit WITHOUT CRC, and then it should work.
I read about some drives that have been hacked to do just that, but it was a long time ago, and I'm not sure about the truth and accuracy about that.

-kwag

CloneCD do not recontruct the CRC if you ask it to not doing that !
That's one of the wonderfull features of the soft.

You are mistaken the medium protection with the logical one. The bad CRC was passed out with a crack and CloneCD makes these craks useless.

Look at there for instance, they talk about the two kinds of protections :
http://www.psxtune.com/copye.html

The hardware (CD DRIVE) always will do CRC error correction :!:
It doesn't matter if you tell CloneCD or whatever program to ignore it :!:
The "Built-in" correction on the drive will "correct" the "what seems to be errors" on these kind of CDs.
That's why I mentioned that only if the firmware is hacked to bypass error correction (at the hardware level), then and only then you will be able to duplicate the CD. That's why the MOD chip is needed, because that's the only way it can bypass the CRC read routines when the players requests these sectors. Exactly :)

And I'll put it in bold, from that link:

This is normal because there are bad data sectors at the end of the first data track which the CD-Recorder cannot copy.

These are "forced" bad sectors, with "forced" incorrect CRC".

And if you haven't all ready guessed it, that's part of the copy protection the console looks for, and why you need a MOD CHIP to bypass this operation of searching for bad sectors on your new CD-Backed disk to check if it is valid or not.

And your backups will never work, because when the CD is copied, the CRC is fooled by what was in the source, and the new CRC of the copy is not the same.
Again, if the duplication process could extract bit by bit from the media, WITHOUT doing any CRC error recovery, then the copy would be identical.
The way it is now, EVERY hardware CD player will do CRC error correction, thus producing an incorrect footprint on the protected track/sector, with no matter what software you try to copy the CD.

-kwag

You quoted only the parts that help your speech but drops the other one that is the opposite of what you are saying :
"Depending on your recorder and software these sectors will be regenerated and corrected on the new disk."

Okay, they do not say exactly that you can have the sector not regenerated with a tweaked software only. But not quoting all the discussion to inforce your point of view... No I won't use the word "gang" but... :-D

No problem, I really don't care who is wrong or not, I know I'm right :lol:
Raahhh... kidding !

Exactly :!:

Quoting:
:arrow: these sectors will be regenerated and corrected on the new disk.
End Quoting:

And they will be corrected with incorrect CRC information :!: You can't, because it's the hardware (or firmware, really) that does the extraction and error correction :!: It's about what's correct, and what's not correct. ;) I'm right that :arrow: you're wrong :mrgreen:

-kwag

@Kwag and Dialhot

Finally, tried

1) FREELOCK http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Code/6061/

with

2) CDRWIN http://www.goldenhawk.com/download.htm

Copy files to cd.bin and cd.cue using CDRWIN. Then created floppy
using FREELOCK. Executed batch file from floppy to alter cd.cue file.
I ran CDRWIN to burn altered cd.cue which adds 2 messed-up files
in mode 1 called FL.DAT. Finally used CDRWIN to burn the results to
a blank CD-R. CDRWIN ended in error, but was 80% copied. This
is normal according to FREELOCK doc's. Played the protected CDR and
it played normally. Tried to burn a copy of the protected CD and
Nero wouldn't stop trying to read the CDR. For the casual person
who would just use copy CD to CDR, this should work. For the
expert, I'll assume they could care less about my slide show
of the business I'm presenting. :wink:

Thanks for all your help :)

-BP