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Incearca si asaMake Your Own Copy-Protected CD with Passive Protection

Heres a great gift idea just in time for the holidays: Make your friends and relatives their very own copy-protected CDs using the same industrial-grade passiveprotection technology built into XCP and Macrovision discs.

Passive protection exploits subtle differences between the way computers read CDs and the way ordinary CD players do. By changing the layout of data on the CD,its sometimes possible to confuse computers without affecting ordinary players orso the theory goes. In practice, the distinction between computers and CD players is less precise. Older generations of CD copy protection, which relied entirely on passive protection, proved easy to copy in some computers and impossible to play on some CD players. For these reasons, copy protection vendors now use active protection special software designed to block copying.

Discs with XCP or Macrovision protection employ active protection in conjunctionwith a milder form of passive protection. You can create your own CD with exactly the same passive protection by following a straightforward five-step procedure. Ill describe the procedure here, and then explain why it works.

What youll need:

A computer running a recent version of Windows (instructions are Windows-specific; perhaps someone will write instructions for MacOS or Linux)Nero, a popular CD burning applicationCloneCD, an advanced disc duplication utilityTwo blank recordable CDs

Step 1: Burn a regular audio CD

Start Nero Burning ROM and create a new Audio CD project. [View] Add the audio tracks that you want to include on your copy-protected disc. [View] When youre ready to record, click the Burn button on the toolbar. In the Burn tab, make sure Finalize discis unchecked. [View] Insert a blank CD and click Burn. Be careful notto infringe any copyrights! For loads of great music that you can copy legally,

visit Creative Commons.

Step 2: Add a data session to the CD

Start another Nero compilation, this time selecting the CD-ROM ISOproject type. In the Multisession tab, make sure Start Multisession discis selected; and in theISO tab, make sure Data Mode is set to Mode 2 / XA. [View] Add any files that youwant to be accessible when the CD is used in a computer. You might include bonuscontent, such as album art and lyrics. [View] For a more professional effect, consider adding the installer for your favorite spyware application and creating anAutorun.inf file so it starts automatically. When youre finished, click the Burntoolbar button. Insert the audio CD you created in Step 1, and click Burn. [View] Nero should warn you that the disc youve inserted is not empty; click Yes to a

dd your data files as a second session. [View]

At this point, youve created a CD that contains both audio tracks and data files.The data files you put on the CD should be visible in Windows Explorer (in My Computer, right click the CD icon and click Open) and the audio tracks should berippable with your favorite audio player. To add passive copy protection, youll need to modify the layout of the data on the disc so that the audio tracks are more difficult to access.

Step 3: Rip the CD as a CloneCD image file

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Make sure the CD you just created is still in the drive and start CloneCD. Clickthe Read to Image Filebutton. Select your drive and click Next. Choose MultimediaAudio CDand click Next. [View] Select an easy to find location for the image file and click OK to begin ripping.

Step 4: Modify the image file to add passive protection

The CloneCD image you created in step 3 actually consists of three files with names ending in .CCD, .IMG, and .SUB. The .CCD file describes the layout of the tracks and sessions on the CD. Youll edit this file to add the passive protection.

Start Windows Notepad and open the .CCD file. Modifying the file by hand would be tedious, so Ive created an online application to help. Copy the entire contentsof the file to the clipboard and paste it into this form, then click Upload. Copy the output from the web page and paste it back into Notepad, replacing the original file contents. [View] Save the file and exit Notepad.

Step 5: Burn the modified image to create a copy-protected CD

Insert a blank CD and start CloneCD again. Click the Write From Image Filebutton.Select the image file you modified in step 4 and click next. Select your CD recorder and click Next. Select Multimedia Audio CDand click OK to begin burning. [View]

Thats it! Youve created your very own copy-protected CD.

Now its time to test your disc. If everything worked, the files from the data session will be visible from My Computer, but the audio tracks will not appear in Windows Media Player, iTunes, and most other mainstream music players. The CD should play correctly in standalone CD players.

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