COPY PROTECTION

Software that makes it simple to bypass any form of anti-copying technology used to protect music CDs has been released by a computer magazine and a software company in Germany. The program exploits the so-called "analogue hole". Music companies have introduced a range of "copy protection" technologies as part of a drive to stop unauthorised CD copying and the sharing of digital music online. The industry blames these practices for damaging music sales. But the tactic has angered many music fans for a number of reasons. Copy protection means music cannot be transferred to digital music players, or backed up, and some protected discs do not play at all in certain CD players.

Now, the magazine c't (Computertechnik) and RapidSolution Software have developed a program called unCDcopy to enable computer users to get around any copying restrictions. Sven Hansen, an editor at c't, says the program was produced because music fans are being treated unfairly. "It's a strange thing to punish the people who bought the CD's," he told New Scientist, rather than those who copy music illegally. Hansen says it is unclear whether the program could fall foul of the European copyright regulations introduced in 2001. The EU Copyright Directive makes it illegal to sell any device that circumvents copy protection technology. A similar law, called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), exists in the US.

All CDs can be copied by recording the analogue output from a regular CD player, but reconfiguring the recorded data into a useable digital file can be time-consuming. UnCDcopy performs this task automatically. Once the analogue output has been captured, the program then checks with a database hosted by c't to determine where the digital file should be split up, in order to make separate tracks for each song. The quality of this recording will be significantly less than that of a digital copy. Jim Peters, a representative of the UK's Campaign for Digital Rights, agrees that the technique is low-tech, but says it should be effective.

"This is like CD to tape copying, only brought into the 21st century," Peters told New Scientist. "It will let you defeat any copy prevention system, but in an obvious low-tech way." A common copy protection trick is to modify a CD so that the original tracks refuse to play in a computer's disc drive. This prevents users from making replica CDs or compressed digital copies of the music that can be posted online. But this is not the only weapon the industry is using against music pirates. Through the Recording Industry Association of America, music companies have taken legal action against individual users suspected of downloading copyrighted music from online file-sharing networks such as Kazaa and Morpheus.

The latest statistics on global music sales, released by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), indicate they fell by 7.3% during 2003. "Global music sales had another difficult year in 2003, under the combined effects of digital and physical piracy and competition from other entertainment products," said IFPI chairman Jay Berman in a statement. A spokesman for the British Phonographic Industry defends the use of copy protection, saying "There are very good reasons why record companies have installed it on CDs. The fall in record sales seems to be directly correlated with the rise on music piracy." However, a recent US study suggests that the opposite may in fact be true, and that the most copied music also became the best-selling music.

Internet music piracy is not responsible for declining CD sales, claim the researchers behind a major new statistical study. Felix Oberholzer-Gee at Harvard Business School in Massachusetts and Koleman Strumpf at the University of North Carolina tracked millions of music files downloaded through the OpenNap file-trading network and compared them with CD sales of the same music. The music industry frequently claims that illegal file-trading is responsible for reducing legitimate music sales. The industry says this argument is the reason for their legal campaign of suing individual file traders over the past year.

However, the researchers conclude: "At most, file sharing can explain a tiny fraction of this decline." Oberholzer-Gee and Strumpf monitored 680 albums, chosen from a range of musical genres, downloaded over 17 weeks in the second half of 2002. They used computer programs to automatically monitor downloads and compared this data to changes in album sales over the same period to see if a link could be established. The most heavily downloaded songs showed no decrease in CD sales as a result of increasing downloads. In fact, albums that sold more than 600,000 copies during this period appeared to sell better when downloaded more heavily. For these albums each increase of 150 downloads corresponded to another legitimate album sale.

The study showed only a slight decline in sales as a result of online trading for the least popular music. "From a statistical point of view, what this means is that there is no effect between downloading and sales," say Oberholzer-Gee and Strumpf. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), which represents the world's largest record companies, point to a number of studies suggesting a between declining record sales and the growth of illegal file-trading. For example, a series of surveys conducted by Houston-based company Voter Consumer Research have indicated that those who download more songs illegally are less likely to buy music from legitimate retailers.

"Countless well respected groups and analysts have all determined that illegal file sharing has adversely impacted the sales of CDs," says RIAA spokeswoman Amy Weiss. But at least one other survey has already suggested precisely the opposite. And the new UNC study differs from previous work in its focus on individual album sales and its large scale. During the data gathering stage, the researchers tracked a total of 1.75 million downloads, or 10 per minute on average. The RIAA has led recent efforts to crack down on illegal online music trading. The association's most dramatic tactic has been to track down hundreds of individual file sharers and sue them for copyright infringement.

The approach was adopted after a US court ruled that the companies providing file-trading networks could not be held responsible for the actions of their users. Opponents of these legal tactics, including some consumer groups, musicians and academics, have accused music industry of failing to recognise the potential of file-trading as a legitimate music distribution method. In their paper, Oberholzer-Gee and Strumpf suggest that falling record sales may be partly explained by a weak US economy as well as increasing CD prices. Or the fact that most music produced today is crap! (Source: New Scientist)

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