How do copy protected CDs work?

boom boom etc.

There's a regular TOC, which your ancient CD player will happily read. This TOC also contains a reference to another TOC elsewhere on the disk. Modern CD drives honour this reference and go wandering off down the disk to find this second TOC, only to find crap there and get hopelessly confused. Special software included on the CD is then needed to succesfully read this disk on a PC, and that special software can intervene to prevent nefarious activities. That software can't be installed on regular CD players. It's nothing to do with their ability to play MP3s.

Old CD players just don't see any TOC other than the first.

Like I say, this is old info and based on a hand-wavy understanding (at best). Doubtless things have moved on.

The UKCDR's page may be of use (http://ukcdr.org/issues/cd/) as may Fat Chuck's (http://www.fatchuck.com/z3.html)

x-post: yeh, that.

Another technique, an older one, exploited the fact that a CD actually contains like triple the amount of information it actually needs to compensate for read errors and worked it so a ripping program would get the noise rather than the signal. This isn't very technical I realize but it's early.

Hold down shift key on PC
Insert copy-protected CD
Copy contents of CD
Burn new copy onto CDR
Play CDR in incompatible player

It's insane that manufacturers have resorted to breaking their own product in order to implement copy-protection that is so easily bypassed.

regular CD players ignore the data section of the disc, and play fine -- mp3 players notice the data section of the disc, try to read it, find garbage, and freeze or crash.

some copy protection actually writes garbage bits into the audio portion of the disc -- little glitches and spurts of noise. audio CD players contain built-in error correction that filter out the noises when you play back, but if you rip or copy the disc, the computer faithfully copies over the glitches, so you get little full-code noise bursts in your clones or mp3s. but error correction doesn't always work, especially in discmen, cheap players or car stereos, so you'll often get dropouts or failures when playing back these discs in those players.

from http://ukcdr.org/issues/cd/quick/:

Reduction in scratch-resistance with corrupted discs:

Some of the corrupt or modified CD formats achieve their aim of failing to play on computer CD-ROM drives by overloading the error-correction on the disc. Normally, the error-correction codes help a CD player to deal with scratches, fingerprints or any other problems on the CD's surface. The CD player can fill in over the problems by error-correcting, so that you don't hear the problem (unlike on a vinyl record player where you would hear pops or crackle). However, if the error-correction codes have already been overloaded to "copy-protect" the disc, then there is nothing left to deal with problems if the CD gets scratched at that point. This means that over a CD's life, as it suffers wear and tear, it is likely to stop playing correctly much sooner if it has been "copy-protected" in this way, and so it will have a shorter life-span.

Philips have backed up this technical point completely in their statements in this article.

A long time ago, I heard that coating the outer edge of the cd with a black marker will work. Is it true?

Holding the shift key prevents whatever the CD is set to autorun autorunning (on Windows). The autorun usually installs some software to read the broken data (as Eppy describes). Holding shift will prevent this being installed, which should also prevent you playing the CD.

Doubtless there are some sufficiently brain-dead schemes where this still works though.

Record companies are working on this right now; God knows how, but they are.

This is correct, but it shouldn't prevent you from ripping the CD with a program like EAC. Maybe if you're trying to rip it with software provided by a company that's in bed with the record industry (Microsoft, Apple) it won't work, but why would you do that?

Though I haven't run into every copy-protection scheme out there, I haven't owned a copy-protected CD I couldn't rip. The last one that comes to mind is Sony's Johnny Cash boxset, The Legend. Ripped all 4 discs to make my own one disc version, no problem.

I have 6.0.0.18 and it's had problems with a couple of discs recently (Beck's Guero and/or Kraftwerk's Minimum-Maximum - can't quite remember); no problem with CDex on the desktop.

that first spiritualized compilation is the only thing that's eluded me so far. i didn't buy the second.

* it uses different smilies to tell you how it's doing:
OUTPUT SMILIES:
:-) Normal operation, low/no jitter
:-| Normal operation, considerable jitter
:-/ Read drift
:-P Unreported loss of streaming in atomic read operation
8-| Finding read problems at same point during reread; hard to correct
:-0 SCSI/ATAPI transport error
:-( Scratch detected
;-( Gave up trying to perform a correction
8-X Aborted (as per -X) due to a scratch/skip
:^D Finished extracting

Obviously this was some sort of weird glitch, but I thought: wow, this could be a more awesome kind of copy protection, or at least a more spectacularly emphatic one.

FWIW, the iTunes version that was around at the time of Guero's release ripped my US copy fine.

I've tried coloring the outer edge with black marker, but it didn't work either.

I don't have any other song ripping tools, 'cos I hate those spyware that comes with them.

So, with my situation, is there any way that I can rip a song out of my cd?

when you look at an audio / data hybrid CD, there's usually a thin stripe between the audio section and the data section. you have to take a marker and actually write a line through the data section (which is the outer ring) on the flat side of the disc, not the 'edge' of the disc. if you draw the line too far in, it'll have problems reading the audio as well, but you can also do this with scotch tape, or with a dry erase marker.

(on CDs the audio data is written from the center on out, unlike a vinyl LP)