Afrayem used our newssubmit to tell us that altough Macrovision is not the developer of Key2Audio, it has made a statement on their website on the recent bypassing of the protection (developed by Sony) with a felt-tip marker.
On their website Macrovision states that their protection SafeAudio is resistant to the trick and that using a felt-tip marker on the surface of a CD could be damaging to the data that is on the CD:
The felt-tip pen hack may work on audio copy protection products that rely on the single data index copy protection technique. Macrovision's SAFEAUDIO™ V3 is resistant to this hack approach because we have implemented a tunable multi-layer security solution, which is based upon multiple patent-pending technologies. |
It should be noted that using ink of any sort on the playing surface of the CD can cause loss of the entire contents of the CD. Introducing ink or foreign materials on the playing surface of a CD can also damage the CD player reading device. Consumers should be aware that any damaged media or corrupted media files caused by this hack may void any warranties for such media, the content contained thereon, or the playback or recording device.
Attempted use of this hack is also likely to prevent access to entertainment content (such as videos, photographs, lyrics, pre-compressed audio tracks for export to PCs and portable players, etc.) stored on the 'second session" of multi-session CDs and protected by Macrovision's SAFEAUTHENTICATE™ product. Macrovision strongly discourages consumers from attempting this hack on any CDs enabled by SAFEAUDIO and SAFEAUTHENTICATE.
Also note that for now SafeAudio doesn't seem to be widely implented (Key2Audio is) and more information on the protection can be found here.
Source: Macrovision
