News

Efforts to restrict the ways consumers use music they have purchased continue unabated. SunnComm (along with its sales and marketing arm MediaMax) has announced that its "newest patent-pending passive technology makes it even more difficult to bypass or 'hack' the copy protection structure contained on the MediaMax CDs."

MediaMax says its new "passive protection solution" continues to be Red Book and Blue Book compliant, adding that this means that CDs containing the MediaMax restriction technology can also sport the Compact Disc Enhanced CD compatibility logo.

SunnComm's Eric Vandewater admits, "No company has invented a bullet-proof copy protection solution that continues to provide 100% playability on all consumer CD and DVD devices, [but] this patent-pending component will now make it substantially more difficult for those wishing to make unauthorized copies to improperly copy or share protected music on a MediaMax CD, without compromising playability."

Past versions of SunnComm's restriction products have met with limited success. Computer scientists at Princeton University have published their own analysis of previous MediaMax offerings, leading to the well-known "shift-key" hack used to bypass the anti-copying software when a disc is inserted in a PC.

SunnComm's current press release proudly notes that MediaMax can be found on Velvet Revolver's Contraband, which was the first restricted CD to reach the #1 spot on Billboard's Top 200 Album Chart. However, the Princeton scientists write that Contraband contains anti-copying software from SunnComm that is "substantially similar" to the earlier version of the technology. "And like its predecessor, it appears to provide only minimal protection against copying. It can be bypassed by holding the shift key every time the disc is inserted, turning off autorun before using the CD for the first time, or manually disabling the driver software."

SunnComm claims that the new restriction approach requires no additional hardware or other production facility modifications during the replication process.