[Free-sklyarov-uk] The lastest copy prevention scheme

[Andrew Rendle]

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As reported, briefly, in this week's New Scientist, in their bit of
shorts on things that have recently been patented (can't find the
section in their online version, so any typos are mine):
"A PC with a high-speed burner can clone a CD is a few minutes, and for
only a few pence.  So Sony of Tokyo is patenting a system that exploits
the higher speeds used by computer CD drives to prevent copying (WO
03/063154
[http://l2.espacenet.com/espacenet/viewer?PN=WO03063154&CY=gb&LG=en&DB=EPD
- - AR]).  The music CD is pressed with its central hole slightly
off-centre, while the label side of the disc includes asymmetric
markings printed in heavy paint.  This shifts the CD's centre of gravity
- - not enough to matter when the disc is played at normal speed in a
stereo, but a high-speed PC drive finds it "impossible to maintain
rotation", says Sony.  The disc drive then wobbles about like an
unbalanced washing machine and the PC cannot make a faithful copy."

Sounds like an interesting idea, but has one obvious fatal flaw to me -
just tell the CD-ROM drive to read the disc at single speed and you've
got around it.  I can't see that this idea of Sony's will prevent
copying, it will just make it take slightly longer.  Having said that,
for the same reason, from our point of view it must be better than
systems that work (well, sometimes work...) by corrupting the data,
since it shouldn't stop anyone playing the disc, only make ripping more
of a chore.

Andrew
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