Klarinet Archive - Posting 000641.txt from 2002/05

From: "Kevin Callahan" <kionon@-----.com>
Subj: Re: [kl] Copy protection and pirated copies.
Date: Fri, 24 May 2002 13:10:19 -0400

----- Original Message -----
From: "Oliver Seely" <oseely@-----.edu>
Subject: [kl] Copy protection and pirated copies.

> I've been mystified by the brouhaha over copy protection. It seems to me
> that the obvious way to pirate a copy-protected digital CD is to play it
> with the analog signal coming through "line out" and going into a digital
> recorder through "line in", creating the WAV file and/or MP3, MOV, MPG,
AVI
> or other file with no copy protection. One digital to analog to digital
> cycle when well done will be undetectable to the human ear in my opinion.

Having done that myself, I can assure you this is the truth. Such is also
the case with video. It is possible to make video so crisp, so clean, that
it's actually crisper and cleaner than it needs to be. A slight reduction
won't even be visible, or if it is, it'd take a trained professional to see
it.

> Admittedly, I was surprised to discover when I created my web page with
the
> 1/1000 second clip of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik -- "Cylinders, 78s, LPs and
CDs"
> ( http://www.csudh.edu/oliver/smt310-handouts/cylinders/cylinders.htm )
> that the sonogram from my digital editing very definitely showed the step
> functions one would expect, on reflection. But my feeling is that those
> step functions get smoothed out even with the smallest capacitance in the
> analog part of the audio system and subsequent digitization will simply
> start with the smoothed analog functions. Sometimes this is the ONLY way
> to do the job because occasionally cheaply made CDs hang up in one's
> computer for reasons other than copy protection, but they don't when
played
> through a regular audio system.

Yes, and if you've paid thousands of dollars for your audio system, the
analog isn't going to sound more than a few percents lower. So, again, what
you record is going to sound (to you and to most humans) like what you heard
not a few moments before, even if it's only 98.5% the same.

Kevin Callahan
Student SFASU
School of Music

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