Sony testing out new copy protection for CDs

Sony testing out new copy protection for CDs

The war between Music companies and the consumer continues as Sony BMG began testing yet another technology of copy protection with the aim of preventing piracy of audio CDs. The latest protection concepts feature technology from U.K. anti-piracy specialist First4Internet. This allow the consumers to make limited copies of protected discs. However, making copies of the copied disks is blocked.

They call this latest DRM technology ‘sterile burning’ and the company believes that it will stop the casual burning of copied CDs, which lead to piracy of digital content. The company has released around 10 commercial titles featuring this technology since the month of March.

President of global digital business for Sony BMG, Thomas Hesse had this to say about the latest developments: “The casual piracy, the school yard piracy, is a huge issue for us. Two-thirds of all piracy comes from ripping and burning CDs, which is why making the CD a secure format is of the utmost importance.”

The company however denied releasing the list of the titles, which are currently featuring sterile burning technology. This latest solution let the users to copy the music from the protected CDs to blank CD in Microsoft’s Windows Media Audio format. This blocks the further replication of the CDs to new blank media. The aim is to prevent the abusive replication without limiting the rights of the consumer to take backups of the content they legally purchased from the market.

However, we will have to see whether this really succeeds in achieving its goal of restricting piracy without bothering the customer. iPod users however won’t like the fact that Windows Media Audio format means that their Apple device won’t be able to play these files.