Monday, May 20, 2002

A magic marker?
Yes, it turns out that all you need to defeat Sony's Key2Audio copy protection (as deployed on the new Celine Dion copy-protected CD -- er, I mean, music disc) is a magic marker. Wired reports:

After an initial attempt to play the disc on a PC resulted in failure, the edge of the shiny side of the disc was blackened out with a felt tip marker. The second attempt with the marked-up CD played and copied to the hard drive without a hitch.

At least, on Windows-based PCs. No word on whether this works on a Mac, yet.

Look, I'm no pirate. I produce intellectual content myself, I've been pirated, and I didn't care for it. But all copying is not piracy. I ask myself which world I'd rather live in: A world where multi-national corporations sell products that cannot be used, or a world where children are taught that stealing is wrong. I'll go with option B.

(Heard it from InstaPundit.)

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