Make Backup Copy Righted CD's

taken from Freedom to Tinker :

Here’s a great gift idea just in time for the holidays: Make your friends and relatives their very own copy-protected CDs using the same industrial-grade passive protection technology built into XCP and Macrovision discs.

Passive protection exploits subtle differences between the way computers read CDs and the way ordinary CD players do. By changing the layout of data on the CD, it’s sometimes possible to confuse computers without affecting ordinary players — or so the theory goes. In practice, the distinction between computers and CD players is less precise. Older generations of CD copy protection, which relied entirely on passive protection, proved easy to copy in some computers and impossible to play on some CD players. For these reasons, copy protection vendors now use active protection — special software designed to block copying.

Discs with XCP or Macrovision protection employ active protection in conjunction with a milder form of passive protection. You can create your own CD with exactly the same passive protection by following a straightforward five-step procedure. I’ll describe the procedure here, and then explain why it works.

What you’ll need:

* A computer running a recent version of Windows (instructions are Windows-specific; perhaps someone will write instructions for MacOS or Linux)
* Nero, a popular CD burning application
* CloneCD, an advanced disc duplication utility
* Two blank recordable CDs

Step 1: Burn a regular audio CD

Start Nero Burning ROM and create a new Audio CD project. [View] Add the audio tracks that you want to include on your copy-protected disc. [View] When you’re ready to record, click the Burn button on the toolbar. In the Burn tab, make sure “Finalize disc” is unchecked. [View] Insert a blank CD and click Burn. Be careful not to infringe any copyrights! For loads of great music that you can copy legally, visit Creative Commons.

Step 2: Add a data session to the CD

Start another Nero compilation, this time selecting the “CD-ROM ISO” project type. In the Multisession tab, make sure “Start Multisession disc” is selected; and in the ISO tab, make sure Data Mode is set to “Mode 2 / XA”. [View] Add any files that you want to be accessible when the CD is used in a computer. You might include “bonus” content, such as album art and lyrics. [View] For a more professional effect, consider adding the installer for your favorite spyware application and creating an Autorun.inf file so it starts automatically. When you’re finished, click the Burn toolbar button. Insert the audio CD you created in Step 1, and click Burn. [View] Nero should warn you that the disc you’ve inserted is not empty; click Yes to add your data files as a second session. [View]

Please goto Freedom to Tinker for the whole article. This is fun and hard all at once. Try it... I did!

Andrew