Low-Tech Pen Foils CD Copy-Protection Device

Technology buffs have cracked music publishing giant Sony Music Entertainment Inc.’s elaborate disc copy-protection technology with a decidedly low-tech method: scribbling around the rim of a disc with a felt-tip marker.

Internet newsgroups have been circulating news of the discovery for a week, and users have pilloried Sony for deploying “high-tech” copy protection that can be defeated by paying a visit to a stationery store.

“I wonder what type of copy protection will come next?” one posting on Alt.music.prince read. “Maybe they’ll ban markers.”

Sony did not return calls seeking comment.

Major music labels, including Sony and Universal Music, have begun selling the “copy-proof” discs as a means of tackling the rampant spread of music piracy, which they claim is eating into sales.

The technology, Key2Audio, aims to prevent consumers from copying, or “burning,” music onto recordable CDs or onto their computer hard drives, which enables the music to be shared with other users over file-sharing Internet services such as Kazaa and Morpheus MusicCity.

Sony’s proprietary technology, deployed on many recent releases, works by adding a track to the copy-protected disc that contains bogus data.

Because computer hard drives are programmed to read data files first, the computer will continually try to play the bogus track first. It never gets to play the music tracks elsewhere on the disc.

The result is that the copy-protected disc will play on standard CD players but not on computer CD-ROM drives, some portable devices and even some car stereo systems.

Internet postings claim that tape or even a sticky note also can be used to cover the security track.

And there are suggestions that copy-protection schemes used by other music labels can be circumvented in a similar way.