Copy Protection Technology is Doomed

48 Computer Copy Protection Technology Is Doomed A t some fundamental level, seemingly as axiomatic as the speed of light or the conservation of energy, copying information— strings of bits—will always be easy. Historically, systems intended to restrict this fundamental property have always been defeated, and there is no reason they won't continue to be defeated. Copying has always been easy, whether it was my junior high school computer buddies running Copy ][+ to pirate games in our school's computer lab or kids today swapping MP3 files on Internet chat systems and burning them to CD-ROMs. But vendors continue selling content and people continue to buy it, even when they can get that content illegally. Copyright concerns have persisted for as long as the media for making copies have existed. Some early musicians refused to record their work, fearful that nobody would attend their live shows. When radio appeared, record companies feared that it would can-nibalize record sales. These fears never materialized. Instead, with analog music technology, copying music always entailed generational loss. For that matter, every time you played a record, the quality declined as the needle wore down the record's surface. To have the best fidelity, consumers would purchase their own copies. Radio play served as an advertisement for consumers to buy record albums, which in turn created fans to attend live performances. Existing copyright law proved quite sufficient to shut down attempts to produce pirated copies. The introduction of the compact disc initially reduced music piracy because duplicating CDs required expensive equipment and because CDs provided features not available with analog technology, such as instant track skipping and improved resistance to wear and harsh environments. Because CDs were a fundamental advance over earlier analog technology, consumers had less incentive to copy digital music to analog media. With the ubiquity of CD burners, technology has again advanced, making copying audio CDs bit for bit trivial. The record companies could address this situation by creating fundamental advances in how they deliver music to consumers. Instead, technology companies are offering the record companies a wide variety of snake-oil schemes to help them maintain their previous business models. These schemes can be defeated—doing so only requires that somebody study how they work. Some copy-protection systems focus on water-marking music by adding largely inaudible distortions to it before the content reaches the consumer. Watermarks can encode digital information, whether they are as …