cd copy protection workaround?

[Razgo]

um.... did anyone try this? i don't have a protected cd to try out.
follow the source link for the article:
http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/8143

"most affected users can bypass the system entirely by holding the shift key while inserting the CD,"

# "Many users disable the autorun feature [11] (autostart on Mac OS), so their systems will be able to copy the disc unless the user manually launches MediaMax.
# "Windows users who haven't disabled autorun can suspend it when they play a SunnComm-protected disc by holding down the shift key for a few seconds while inserting the CD. They can then copy the data normally.

"In all these cases, the audio tracks are left completely unprotected.

[RossRoy]

It most probably works, though I've never had to use it.

Most "so-called" protected Music CD only use an unreadable invalid data track at the end, the track a computer will try to read first, so that the computer will just keep trying to read the track over and over trying to get to the autorun.inf file (because the TOC for the data track mentions the files, it's just the files are not there when the computer tries to read them). So, pressing shift while inserting the disc just tells Windows to not do anything, and then, when you use a software like dMC Audio CD input or EAC, which don't reply on Windows to tell them what is on the CD, they can just access the audio data directly.

And as long as CD will be in place, there is no way they can protect their CD better, because if they start scrambling the audio data itself, older CD player won't even be able to play the audio thus the companies would alienate a lot of consumer thus making more harm than good.

And anyway, no matter how much protection they put on the discs, there will always be the good ol' loopback into a soundcard, which, if the volume levels are set right, would create almost perfect sounding tracks.

DISCLAIMER: Everything I said here about copy protection I just said out of my head and what I think, I have no officiel sources so if I'm wrong on something, feel free to correct me.

[Spoon]

That Shif key only works on 1 cd currently, because they install a secret program on insert.

[Razgo]

well it is certainly interesting that there are at least some ways around it.

an article on How to copy/rip a protected audio cdcd freaks (http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?threadid=46159) is of interest also.

certainly a sight worth keeping an eye on for cd related info. well i found it informative anyway.

[paratore]

Is this the same as "encrypted" files. I have error messages for some albums when trying to convert them telling me dbpower can't convert the wma to mp3 because the file is encrypted. Any suggestions to get around this?

[ChristinaS]

Is this the same as "encrypted" files. I have error messages for some albums when trying to convert them telling me dbpower can't convert the wma to mp3 because the file is encrypted. Any suggestions to get around this?
Use dMC AUxiliary Input for your copy-protected wma files and capture them to mp3 directly or to wav first and convert them afterwards to mp3.

[paratore]

Thanks, that worked for some of the albums, just not the "protected" ones. I've been re-ripping the actual albums in as mp3 files for these.

[ChristinaS]

Thanks, that worked for some of the albums, just not the "protected" ones. I've been re-ripping the actual albums in as mp3 files for these.
What do you mean it didn't work for the protected ones? dMC Auxiliary Input works independently of the input file type or protection or lack thereof. If you can play the file using any kind of player and direct the sound through the sound card, then you can use dMC Auxiliary Input to capture a new audio file.

[paratore]

Where do I find dmc auxiliary input - I have dbpoweramp music converter, dmc file select, and dmc audio cd input downloaded.

[ChristinaS]

Click on Music Converter (http://www.dbpoweramp.com/dmc.htm) at the top of this forum and look at the bottom of that page for all the downloads.

[princecharming]

iTunes?

1 Disable autoplay
2 Start iTunes
3 Insert disc

Worked every time for me ;-)

Bye now

[LtData]

Also, there are a few suggestions Spoon mentions in the dMC Release 11 help.

1. Holding left shift when inserting the CD and for 5-10 seconds afterwards.
2. Turning off "Table of Contents Dection". This is found in the arrow beside options, and then out from "Standard CD Player Emulation".
3. The Black marker trick.

[Silvestre]

i think there are also drives who have capability to rip protected CD. my drive is able to rip just any kind of CD...i don't need to press shift, turn off Autoplay etc. So, maybe there should be a list of which drive is recommended if you have plan to rip lots of your CDs...

[hexadecimal]

recording with soundforge! ;)

[GSV3MiaC]

i think there are also drives who have capability to rip protected CD. my drive is able to rip just any kind of CD...i don't need to press shift, turn off Autoplay etc. So, maybe there should be a list of which drive is recommended if you have plan to rip lots of your CDs...

I've had most luck with a USB connected (i.e. external) Sony DRU 530A DVD drive - it doesn't seem to get screwed by the invalid index files the way my internal drives do (with protection systems like CACTUS). However just because you can see the tracks, and rip them, doesn't mean you are home free - some rippers make a real pigs ear of recovering from the deliberate errors that are on the 'CD' (it isn't a CD, per redbook standards, of course).

EAC in 'burst mode' does the best job for me on problem CDs (the latest being Norah Jones 'Feels Like Home' - UK version, I believe some other countries sell actual CDs with no protection). DB power amp ripped it, but there were unacceptable clicks and squawks.

However, record from AUX (set to 'stero mix' or whatever) will always work fine .. just takes longer, and requires the tracks to be sorted out afterwards.

[pagerwho]

The solution for Sony BMG CDs is the following:

Step 1:

Boycott Sony BMG CDs

Step 2:

Rip with the included software

Step 3:

Burn with Nero or equivilant (DO NOT USE WMP OR WINDOWS)

Step 4:

Rip with program of choice

Please pass this information along. This should not violate any copyright laws because this is only creating a legal backup of the CD and the music that you purchased. So long as you don't send this out to file sharing you should be OK. This solution is meant only to legally put your music onto your music player of choice, not to pirate music.

[Lost-Prophet]

Some CD's I've purchased are copy protected and it's very easy to create a new disk WITHOUT any protection and without ANY loss in quality (NUDDA!!). I don't no how many CDs use this kind of protection but I might as well post about it anyway. With a standard audio CD all the Audio tracks are stored in the first session of a disk. However on some copy protected CD's the record company creates a 2nd session in which all the crappy copy protection methods are. CD Players will only read the first session of any audio cd, however computers will read all sessions hence why copy protected CD's will work in CD Players and not on computers. All we need to do is create a CD image of the first session of the audio CD and burn it to a blank CD.
(An image of a CD is a single file/multiple files in which every byte of data from the audio CD is copied to a/multiple files onto you computer. Because there is no compression of the data, the CD at the end of this tutorial is an EXACT copy of the CD before [Accept the copy protection] ;-))
Tutorial:
1) Download a copy of CloneCD. It's on a time trial: Download CloneCD (http://static.slysoft.com/SetupCloneCD.exe)
2) Insert your CD and load up CloneCD
3) Click on "Read to image file"
http://i7.tinypic.com/20t4fnd.gif
4) Select your CD Drive with the copy protected CD in
http://i7.tinypic.com/20t4fv5.gif
5) The disk will be analysed. You will be brung to a window with info on the CD (Note: Notice on the right hand side how there are two session 2, this is the copy protection. You wont only the first session made into an CD image)
Right click within the white area and select "New"
http://i7.tinypic.com/20t4gfd.gif
6) Right click that profile and press "edit". Now enter these settings:
http://i7.tinypic.com/20t4hv8.gifhttp://i7.tinypic.com/20t4i0i.gifhttp://i7.tinypic.com/20t4i37.gif
(PLEASE NOTE: The sound extraction quality does not count. We're not extracting the audio we're simply creating a file of the data on the CD. If we were ripping the tracks into MP3, AAC than this will count)
7) Press OK and rename the profile to something like "Copy-Protected CD's". Click on this profile and press "next"
http://i7.tinypic.com/20t4iee.gif
8) Locate where you want the CD image to be saved to. Click ok
(Note: Look at the left hand box. Notice how all the tracks on the CD are in the first session and there are 2 tracks on the 2nd session. These are the tracks that prevent copying etc and by not including session 2 in the CD image you have made a 1:1 copy of the audio CD without protection)
http://i7.tinypic.com/20t4j92.gif
9) CloneCD will begin to create an 1:1 image of the first session of the CD (Where all the CD tracks are) File size varies but it should be between 600mb-700mb depending on the amount of tracks and the length of tracks.
10) Once CloneCD has created the image (you'll hear a lil charm play) we need to burn this image to create a 1:1 copy of the audio CD (bar the protection).
(PLEASE NOTE: The CD image created will come out as 3 files)
11) One the CloneCD has finished copying the disk click "Ok" in the CD reading window.
http://i7.tinypic.com/20t57b5.gif
12) Insert a Blank CD and go back into CloneCD. Select the "Write to image file" option
http://i7.tinypic.com/20t57j5.gif
13) When the new window opens the image file you previously created should be listed in the box in the top left. Click next
http://i7.tinypic.com/20t57xj.gif
14) After the blank CD has been analysed you'll get the window listed below. Select the "audio CD" option and click "Ok". Your new non-copy protection CD will be burnt and you now have an exact copy of your audio cd WITHOUT PROTECTION :teufel8: :smile2: :thumbup:

Sorry for any spelling and grammar mistakes I rushed it :o

[gameplaya15143]

Or... you can just disable autoplay and never have to worry about any of it. ;)

[bravadoca]

Has anybody tried AnyDVD for this? I use it and it works perfectly for copying DVD's and it's also supposed to work for music cd's because there are settings for audio cd's. I've never used it for cd's because I've never had the need to. This is what it says in the features list "Features AnyCDDA: play, copy and rip protected audio CDs" It is by the same people who make CloneCd and CloneDVD. It's a small program that removes all types of protection and it is updated frequently. It works with most DVD copy software and should work with most cd ripping tools. You can also use CloneCD for the same purpose but why pay for that when AnyDVD can handle both protected Cd's and DVD's!

http://www.slysoft.com/en/anydvd.html

[LtData]

Umm, AnyDVD isn't free either, bub

[DJPT-UK]

Or... you can just disable autoplay and never have to worry about any of it. ;)

Wow does this really work? How do you completely disable autoplay / autorun?

I've got a Kylie Minogue CD that I've been trying to rip for ages, it has terrible clicks in it every few seconds. I hate Sony BMG :vmad:

[LtData]

There are two main types of copy-protection:
The kind that launches a program to keep you from ripping the CD
The kind that purposefully makes a CD defective (cracks and pops in the audio). This kind is rather easy to spot, as it doesn't have the "audio CD" logo anywhere on it.

The first type is easy to work around, the second type cannot be worked around.

[trebordean]

Strange behaviour with a DRM CD

I recently bought the Celine Dion CD "A New Has Come" from the internet.
I was disappointed to find that it was DRM protected and stated quite clearly "will not play on PC/MAC".

I read that if you pressed SHIFT when loading the CD or disabling the autorun feature it maybe possible to explore the file structure. Another trick I'd heard

of was to use a black marker pen around the edge of the CD.

I own a fully paid version of dBpoweramp and thought this might be able to extract the audio. The CD drive just refused to play and DBpoweramp stalled, so I closed that down.

Undaunted I looked at this forum and others and I came across a suggestion that I could use a program I had bought "ISOBuster" to attempt to extract the audio data.

I then proceeded to extract the audio as WAV files then, it still too got stuck on the tracks 16 & 17 of the disc. At least I thought I could have most of it.
One final idea came to mind to salvage the last 2 tracks. I got out my CD cleaning kit and gave the CD a good wipe and also cleaned the CD drive lens.

I thought I'll give ISOBuster one more go. It promptly got the job done. Voila!, or so I thgought. After painstakingly converting the WAV files to FLAC and manually editing every file with the ID3 tag info I sat down and thought that's it - cracked it!

I then decided that I'll carry on with a normal CD and rip that. I closed ISOBUster, deleted all the WAV files and fired up DBpoweramp.

Before I had chance to open the drive for the next CD I'd forgotten to take Celine out (no jokes here please).

To my amazement dBPoweramp was showing the entire Celine CD ready to rip. I managed it successfully, no hassles.

Anybody know what happened to dBPoweramp? Why did it rip it this time and not before?

[sjmac]

Wow does this really work? How do you completely disable autoplay / autorun?

I've got a Kylie Minogue CD that I've been trying to rip for ages, it has terrible clicks in it every few seconds. I hate Sony BMG :vmad:

Do you need to switch on the Interpolate missing samples option to get rid of the clicks, or is that just part of the "Defective by design" ripping option?

[bhoar]

Do you need to switch on the Interpolate missing samples option to get rid of the clicks, or is that just part of the "Defective by design" ripping option?

When I enabled "Interpolate Unrecoverable Frames" and ripped a damaged CD using Secure ripping (i did not test DBD ripping), I ended up with substantially more error clicks than if I did not enable it.. I think this feature may only be useful if your particular drive return unrecoverable frames with "grossly erroneous" data instead of "close to error free" data when dealing with damaged frames. That's my theory, anyway.

-brendan

[freaky]

I suggest:
ConeCD + any DVD, write an image in CloneCD, load the image into the virtual clone drive (freeware) and rip with db just selecting the virtual drive as source. Everything's fine then. Perhaps this also explains why there are reference rips in accurate rip. I admit this is a "long walk" around, but it provides with best results (and is finally faster - fast reading in clone, faster ripping in db.)
Greetings