The Null Device

Straight after their triumph in preventing you from plugging your DVD player into your aging TV through your VCR, our friends at Macrovision have created a CD copy protection system that allegedly prevents evil users from illegally ripping the new CD they just bought to evil, unprotected MP3 files. The scheme has been surreptitiously used on a number of unlabelled CDs, but now, a bunch of European hackers have released a workaround, in the form of a low-level Windows driver. Which will probably be illegal under the DMCA in the US, and equivalent legislation in Australia, and due to be enacted in Europe over the next year or so. Though it raises the question: if the "security feature" relies on Windows' handling of "damaged" discs, will it stop Linux software such as cdparanoia?

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