Monty Burns, an user of our forum has reported that there is a new protection on DVD movies. The protection is different from the already widely used Content Scrambling System (CSS) protection that encrypts the data on the DVD and requires a key to decrypt the files. The CSS protection prevents users from copying the data from a DVD using e.g. the Windows explorer. Only licensed DVD playing software is able to decrypt the CSS protected files. Of course, as with all protections, it has been cracked and now also other software such as AnyDVD and DVD Decrypter are able to decrypt the files to enable users to make a backup.
This new copy protection, however, has nothing to do with encrypted files and is reported to be using a ring of unreadable sectors. The CSS protection is not on these discs and the ring is the only method of protection. The appearance of the new protection has also been confirmed by Olli (Oliver Kastl, original author of CloneCD and CloneDVD) and according to him an updated version of Slysofts AnyDVD will be able to beat it. Also leaving out the first chapter of the main title with e.g. CloneDVD
seems to be an option to trick the protection.
Although the
protection is in it's current stage easily beaten, it could become tougher to
beat when it gets improved. Currently unreadable sectors are widely used in game
CD copy protections and they have improved a lot over the years and are harder and harder to copy.
Read more in our forum thread. The protection has no name yet, we are taking suggestions.
Source: Club CD Freaks
