Cactus Data Shield Tries Again

autocracy writes: "Midbar, an Israeli company that developed the breakage of standard called Cactus says that they have released more than 10 million CDs to the U.S. and Europe. They now claim that there will be no issues playing it but you will lose quality if you try to copy. I'm just wondering how it is that you can play it on a system at perfect quality, but when you copy it things don't sound right. Do they not know about optical output? Lame quotes including comments by the makers of how this is a 'proven technology' can be found at C|NET."

Look in the last 2600

[Drake58]

I'm not sure if anybody noticed, but there's a crack for this in last quarter's 2600. Ta ta.

You just lost your bet, physics wins!

[Romancer]

If I can hear it, I can copy it.
Total Recorder, a program that records data sent to the sound card is wonderfull.

Its the lame trick of a bad second session, TRK 0

[Anonymous Coward]

Its still just the lame trick of burning a second session that defines incorrect track locations and durations for track locations. CD players that are not multisession (CD audio players usually) will ignore the fake second and third sessions. A second lame trick called Track-O is used that furthermore uses the P subchannel to assert a large region of track 1 as "silent" and it is silent and audio player skip over to second index area where begginning of track 1 audio really starts, but computers see data blocks in the first track in the beginning section with the P channel asseting silence. This hidden data area looks like a standard ISO9660 volume and further screws up players. Its an old trick from 1992 used on nearly 80 major titles, before Blue-Book Enhanced CDs (CDPlus) shipped. It only affects computers. A third sneaky trick of putting heavily corrupted data in the track lead in lead out areas to slow down auto-rippping is usually employed. And furthemore, ANY cd driver modified to trust the first session of a audio cd disk will play correctly, especially if it understands how to IGNORE track-zero tricks. Of course a raw copy of the entire disk will duplicate it, as long as the reaw duplicate deliberately ignores copying session information past the first session.

It merely needs to copy track 1 explicitely, all 2774 bytes per block on a Plextor or at least 2352 in raw mode.

Macs and PCs will soon have updated THIRD PARTY cd drivers that will play any of these things. One system will suffer the most... the newest macs... thats because to eliminate EMI audio noise, the macs force users to use digital audio extraction over ATA-ATAPI bus and SCSI bus exclusively. This is fine if the media is not heavily damaged in some sections, but these corrupted disks slow down firware in standard audio extraction modes used on macs. Apple got rid of all their A-D converters, even for audio mics. And now that thier audio D-A out is in usb and uses usb speakers no mother board interference and disk drive head interference emits on speakers cranked to 500 watts.

I miss track-0 tricks, its cool to see the world using it 10 years later.

It explains why some cactus cds can be copied except the first audio track, with older tools.

as for CDDA logo rights being removed by Philips.... Philips abused the tradmark symbol themselves!!! They placed it on some european audio CDs in 1994 that were 79 minutes long. That was in explicite violation of the CDDA logo standard that maintains a maximum of 333,000 blocks of audio allowed (74 minutes)

Even since that day, Anyone is morally allowed to violate the CD-DA standard logo because it MEANS NOTHING now and is abused even by Philips.

I wish there was a manufacturer symbol I could trust to look for that meant REALLY-CDDA not violating *ANY* part of the "Red Book" whatsoever. Then these Cactus abominations from hell could be avoided.

Sony and Universal will soon shut down web sites that explain how a cheap 5 cent resister tied across the leads of a decrypted-USB speaker input can be used as audio in source into a D-A audio card to extract formaerly-protected encrypted limited-access audio.

ha!

long live the resister!

Re:Raw?

[thesupraman]

This system works by making the 'bits' (ie: data stream) on the cd *wrong*, and by expecting the error correction used in *audio* playback (but not data readback!) to re-interpolate the data back to what was intended (they hope), therefore a data read gives the wrong data, and an audio play works.
This makes *big* assumptions about how the cd supplies data in audio versus data modes, and is apparently not true for all cdroms (and very few dvd roms), so does not always work.
it also assumes that an audio cd player uses a 'standard' interpolation method, any that use a different (maybe even improved) method will produce less accurate 'solutions' to their intentionally introduced errors.

hmm, the whole thing is a house of cards, and will no doubt fall over before long.

Re:Sector by Sector Copy?

[ToLu the Happy Furby]

Can any media truly be 'copy protected'? If all else fails I can use a program like Ghost2002 or other forensic-certified disk duplication software to do a bit by bit copy. Basically make an exact duplicate of a disc.
How would this be unplayable?

CDS works by purposely introducing errors into the audio data on the disc. Audio CD players are supposed to interpolate across the errors such that there is supposed to be no difference in sound quality. But CD-ROMs--being designed to read data CDs where every bit has to be correct--don't do this interpolation, and thus they see the disc as having lots of errors and crap out. You can't make an exact copy of the disc if your CD-R can't read it.

At least that's what's supposed to happen. It has since come out that 1) many DVD-ROMs read the discs just fine; and 2) *certain* combinations of CD-Rs and ripping software can manage alright.

Re:Why break copy protection?

[dustpuppy]

So if you have no distribution in CA, what do you care? You weren't going to make any sales there anyway.

But, what happens if someone in CA happens to visit KY and sees your CD in a store in KY? If they liked your music, they may just very well buy your CD. That would *never* happen if it wasn't distributed far and wide.

I firmly believe that artists should be paid for their work and I do agree with you in principle that it is wrong for people to enjoy the fruits of your labor for free. But I also do know that as a result of mp3s and file sharing, my purchases of CDs has jumped by a factor of 3.

So I don't wholly subscribe to the argument that filesharing and mp3s is complete theft from artists or is detrimental to the future of the music industry.

Screwed by BEST BUY

[Veramocor]

No my problem isn't this,

"I bought a 129 GF$ and now they won't honor the price (Offtopic -1) "

Its with their return policy and FF2/cactus data shield.

I thought I'd buy the Fast and Furious 2 to see if the copy protection really works. The "cd" of course said I could return it if defective. I went to return it and it was a no go. I tried to explain that it didnt work, but they didnt get it.

BTW eac is able to fix the defective TOC and then rip. Not sure about the ripped audio quality, i'm not an audiophile.

Ver amo cor

Re:Proven?

[Anthony]

Not if they have been given an "advance" from the distributors. See Courtney Love's Salon Article [salon.com]

Re:am I missing something?

[Anonymous DWord]

There already is a tax on writable media in the States and Canada.

Re:If I can hear it I can record it

[Anonymous Coward]

The fellow you're mentioning is Rep. Rick Boucher of Virginia, and his letter to the RIAA is only the latest step in his approach to Fair Use issues. You can read about the other things he supports in relation to technology legislation on his site [house.gov].

Don't bother waiting to contact your representatives until the record industry makes its move; it's already done it, and their position is quite clear: they do not intend for us to have unlimited duplication rights or probably even limited duplication rights for -any- reason, including Fair Use, in the next generation of music media (DVD-Audio and the rest), and they would clearly enjoy stamping out duplication rights in the current generation (CDs). If this disturbs you, contact your representatives now with a simple explanation of the situation, your problem with it, and a copy of Boucher's letter to the RIAA.

Take a look at CDDA Paranoia website

[Shiny Metal S.]

CDS works by purposely introducing errors into the audio data on the disc. Audio CD players are supposed to interpolate across the errors such that there is supposed to be no difference in sound quality. But CD-ROMs--being designed to read data CDs where every bit has to be correct--don't do this interpolation, and thus they see the disc as having lots of errors and crap out.

Take a look at CDDA Paranoia [xiph.org]. I use it to rip old CDs, full of scratches, which are unplayable on any CD audio player I have. But after I rip them with Paranoia, I can't hear any defects.

One of the answers on Paranoia FAQ [xiph.org] nicely explains all of the problems with ripping CDs, and generally all of the differences between playing CD on audio CD player, and reading audio CD as a stream of bits with a computer. These differences are exactly what is addressed by all of those so called "copy-protection" techniques.

The "copy-protected" "CDs" have to be played by audio CD players (otherwise no one would buy them), but not ripped with computers (like it made any problem with copying them, even if it's possible to make CDs completely unplayable on CD-ROM drives... When will they learn?) so all they can do, is to address the differences [xiph.org] between them. It's very good to know, how it really works.

The legend of characters on Paranoia progress meter [xiph.org] gives a good introduction to what Paranoia can and what it can't fix (yet):

• A hyphen indicates that two blocks overlapped properly, but they were skewed (frame jitter). This case is completely corrected by Paranoia and is not a cause for concern.
• A plus indicates not only frame jitter, but an unreported, uncorrected loss of streaming in the middle of an atomic read operation. That is, the drive lost its place while reading data, and restarted in some random incorrect location without alerting the kernel. This case is also corrected by Paranoia.
• An 'e' indicates that a transport level SCSI or ATAPI error was caught and corrected. Paranoia will completely repair such an error without audible defects.
• An "X" indicates a scratch was caught and corrected. Cdparanoia will interpolate over any missing/corrupt samples.
• An asterisk indicates a scratch and jitter both occurred in this general area of the read. Cdparanoia will interpolate over any missing/corrupt samples.
• A ! indicates that a read error got through the stage one of error correction and was caught by stage two. Many '!' are a cause for concern; it means that the drive is making continuous silent errors that look identical on each re-read, a condition that can't always be detected. Although the presence of a '!' means the error was corrected, it also means that similar errors are probably passing by unnoticed. Upcoming releases of cdparanoia will address this issue.
• A V indicates a skip that could not be repaired or a sector totally obliterated on the medium (hard read error). A 'V' marker generally results in some audible defect in the sample.

So, however the next copy-protection of the week which this time really works!(tm) will work, I'm quite sure that it will be no problem to Paranoia [xiph.org], maybe after few days, because Paranoia [xiph.org] simply interpolates over any missing/corrupt samples, like audio players do. No need to say, thay it will always be no problem to audio input on my Sound Blaster...

Re:Take a look at CDDA Paranoia website

[Quaryon]

The latest version of ExactAudio copy [exactaudiocopy.de] ripped White Lilies Island perfectly using a Toshiba DVD-ROM drive, after enabling C2 error correction.

I don't know if this is the drive or the new version of the software making this possible, but it is definitely one of the CDS protected CDs since it won't rip with anything else (and has the CDS logo on the back cover).

Q.

Copying CD

[Anonymous Coward]

I tried to copy the Linkin Park CD.
I tried so hard, and got so far.
But in the end, it doesn't even matter.

Not with the Secure Audio Path

[yerricde]

If I can hear it, I can copy it. Total Recorder

Will not be signed by Microsoft. Microsoft doesn't sign any audio driver unless it has a way of letting applications disable all digital outputs (such as Total Recorder's waveOut to waveIn redirection) that users cannot override. (Read More... [pineight.com])

My experience with a copy-protected CD

[agent oranje]

A few days back, I purchased The Avalanches' new album, and put in my dvd-rom only to discover that this disc "was unformatted. Would I like to initialize it?" I was stunned. I felt dirty. I had purchased a copy protected CD. And I couldn't even rip the damn thing so as to add it to the massive mp3 collection!

So, I brought the CD over to a friend's room, asked him to try it in his machine, and it worked just fine. In both his drives. Go figure.

Of course, the worst-case scenario is that I had to use analog ripping, and pump the output from a CD player into the line-in on my soundcard. It'd take all of 5 minutes to wire up, and would have to be done in real-time... To the best of my knowledge, there is no way to protect against this kind of copying. And if push comes to shove, I'm sure that mp3s will appear on the net which have been ripped via this method.

-Agent Oranje

The truth is out there

[tuxlove]

I have proven to myself that Cactus-protected discs can be ripped successfully with the right hardware and software. I have heard tons of evidence from others that corroborate my experience. It's useless protection, and serves only as a minor annoyance.

In addition, their "protection" degrades the actual audio quality over time, because they're essentially using up the error correction bits for data. You need error correction to do just that - correct errors. You waste them on something else, like correcting purposefully-inserted errors, and you end up with a disc that is much less robust and able to withstand wear and tear.

This means that you must rip and burn a new copy of any Cactus disc you buy as soon as you open the case for the first time. And you must rip with multi-pass validation to help ensure that you got the correct data off the disc.

Any claims by Midbar that their protection is just peachy are BS.

Re:Not with the Secure Audio Path

[yerricde]

Which means that you'll have to click the little "Install Anyway" button when you install the drivers? So what? It still works.

Secure Audio Path applications can tell whether or not a device's driver is signed and will not open a device with an unsigned driver. If a media player insists on the Secure Audio Path, it will not output through Total Recorder.