Korgscrew
Group: Super Admins
Posts: 3511
Joined: Dec. 1999 |
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Posted: Oct. 25 2003, 08:54 |
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In the case of the protection employed on Tubular Bells 2003, it's better explained as a twisted version of the CD format, which theoretically makes it unplayable to PCs. That's often not true, and on the flipside, it can make it unplayable to non-PC devices (CD players, DVD players and so on).
Much of it works by them corrupting various parts of the data on the disc - as far as I'm aware, the table of contents is their main target. It tells the player that the tracks are shorter than they really are, the idea being that a CD player will read past the end of the track, find there's still something there and keep going, while a PC CD ROM drive won't. There are many CD ROM (and other CD capable drives, I won't list them all! ) which actually will read past the 'end' like the CD players do (but I should say that not all CD players do - that's one of the sources of problems with this form of copy protection), which renders that little trick ineffective. The problem is that the system relies on every PC and every CD player working in the way the system's makers expect them to, and they don't.
The other trick is having a second session on the disc, containing computer data - this is where the player software, and the low quality compressed files are stored. The idea is that the computer will skip to this part, the player will launch, and the user won't have any way of copying the disc...that's not always how it happens, of course.
Incidentally, there's some evidence to suggest that there might be a few dirty tricks being employed in the software. The most suspicious thing in my view is the fact that it'll install files without any warning (though I believe not if the user has autoplay turned off). I've heard from several people who've had various problems with playing MP3 files after the installer has run. I don't have any information on what is actually installed, so I can't even begin to tell what's going on here.
Several others have reported that the software has messed with their system settings, some even to the point where they've had to erase their hard drive and reinstall the entire system to get it working again. Others, meanwhile, have not had the disc install anything - I think it's not unlikely that there is more than one version of the disc.
I should say that I've had no personal experience with the software on the disc, as I don't own any Windows machines myself, and got rid of the disc before I'd thought to try it out elsewhere.
If anyone out there has had any bad experiences with the software on Tubular Bells 2003, I would, as always, be interested to hear.
A final trick they employ is to introduce a certain amount of deliberate digital errors into the audio. They knock out small portions of the data, which in theory can be compensated for by the CD player, but will be magnified if the disc is copied (particularly at high speed), leading to all manner of nasty noises in the audio. Perhaps it seemed like a good idea to them, but not only does it reduce the quality of the disc no matter what it's played in (though how many people notice is a different matter - their assumption is that not many will), but some players have lower tolerances for various reasons, and so the original disc plays with distracting clicks and pops, or sounds distorted.
You could also take a look at this page of mine, though I think I've said most of what's there already.
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There are various ways of overriding this mechanism, but of course I'm not listing any of them here. 
