pirates, do you COPY? PROTECTION schemes from industry heavy-hitters COMPETE for market attention

With lawsuits pending against sites like MP3.com and MP3 player vendors like Diamond Multimedia, many key industry players are joining forces to propose alternative copy protection schemes for digital audio and video content. Meanwhile, providers like TTR are improving antipiracy technologies on the ROM side.

Though current proposed methods successfully protect music recorded by studios, the Internet--combined with accessible CD production--has paved the way for many fledgling recording artists to circumvent the studio recording and distribution system.

Sony leads the way in rallying support for protecting CD, DVD-Audio, and DVD-Video, but other segments of the industry are taking a stand as well. At the forefront of industry concern is the surge in MP3's popularity. Indeed, the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI) has prompted industry leaders to test new methods in combating unauthorized duplication.

Sony's approach consists of two different copy protection systems, Magicgate and OpenMG, which scramble music files during production and subsequently unscramble them for listeners. Magicgate embeds a special chip in recording and playback devices. OpenMG--intended for PCs--requires users to attach a dongle to their serial port, which ensures that an encrypted music file be copied by an approved digital recording device before it can be played.

With the objective of controlling music downloads, IBM and all five major record companies are currently testing a secured downloading system, the Electronic Music Management System (EMMS), in up to 1,000 cable modem-connected broadband homes in San Diego. Participants in the trial have been asked to purchase EMMS-protected, CD-quality albums from the Internet and then burn the files to CD-R discs. The test is expected to last more than six months and seeks to ensure interoperability with existing and future devices and to prevent further piracy of music. Though there isn't any safeguard to prevent numerous analog copies, EMMS will include the Serial Copy Management System, which prevents additional CD copies from being made from the download.

According to Bill Krepic, president and COO of Macrovision, the video industry is not as pressed to find a quick solution to piracy due to the Internet's current bandwidth restrictions. However, as the digital video market grows, the industry is struggling to agree upon a protection method.

Currently, both Sony and Macrovision are heading groups that have proposed copy protection schemes to the Copy Protection Technical Working Group (CPTWG), an industry standards group established by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Both factions have proposed digital watermarking solutions, which marks an image during encoding that are then readable by DV devices during decoding. The CPTWG will be evaluating the methods on several criteria: robustness of the watermark; imperceptibility of the watermark itself; and the cost of decoding. The group also expects the solution to offer a copy-once solution, which would allow the consumer to make one digital copy of the protected disc.

The CPTWG has also received a proposal from Macrovision, Philips, and Digimarc, which have banded together to develop and market a solution that merges the companies' respective patents and technologies. Macrovision's latest invention, SafeCast--developed in collaboration with C-Dilla--can be implemented as a "try and die" solution where the encrypted discs expire on a predetermined date. Macrovision already has an effective solution in place for preventing DVD from being copied to analog, but the newer watermarking technologies are designed to prevent unauthorized digital-to-digital duplication.

According to Macrovision, a key difference between its group's solution and Sony's is in how they solve the copy-once requirement. Sony's solution requires a signal to be embedded into the watermark that permits a copy to be made. This means the decoding device would have to be equipped to alter the watermark in order to prevent further copies. Macrovision's solution places a separate marker--or "ticket"--on the video that will be permanently removed if a copy is made.

TTR and SonoPress also have joined forces in an effort to protect copyrighted CD-ROM content. Specifically, they have signed a licensing and marketing agreement for SonoPress to promote and sell TTR's DiscGuard antipiracy solution to its clients in the software publishing and CD-ROM replication industries. DiscGuard embeds a nonreproducible digital signature (transparent to the end-user) on CD-ROMs during mastering, which distinguishes an original from any replica. Software linked to the protected application can detect and validate the signature before allowing the application to run successfully.

TTR says its DiscGuard signature can be used to enhance CSS (Content Scrambling System) copy protection by replacing one or more of the CSS keys with non-reproducible signatures. The CSS firmware derives a key from such signatures, then implements the rest of the CSS process as usual. SonoPress sees 1999 as a transitional year in the growth of the market for anti-piracy protection and believes its allegiance with TTR will effectively protect the CD-ROMs they manufacture.

(Macrovision Corporation, 1341 Orleans Drive, Sunnyvale, CA 94089; 408/743-8600; Fax 408/743-8610; http://www.macrovision.com. SonoPress, Inc., 850 Spice Island Drive, Sparks, NV 89431-7103; 702/353-7000; Fax 702/353-7008; http://www. sonopress.com Sony Electronics, Inc., 3300 Zanker Road, MD: SJ2A2, San Jose, CA 95134; 408/955-4469; Fax 408/955-5111; http://www.sony.com/ storagebysony. TTR Technologies Ltd., 2 Hanagar Street, P.O. Box 2295, Kfar-Saba, Israel 44425; +972 9 766 2393; Fax +972 9 766 2394; http://www.ttr.co.il)

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