With First4Internet

May 31, 2005 20:56 GMT  ·  By

Sony BMG is testing a British technology allowing the users to make only a limited number of copies of a CD, and the respective copies cannot by any means be reproduced. The technology comes from the First4Internet company, specialized in producing anti-piracy solutions and is known as "sterile copying".

Sony declares that this solution represents a tough blow on worldwide piracy, seeing that the copying for personal use represents a major problem for the production companies. In fact, the ripping and ulterior rewriting of CDs represents two thirds of the worldwide piracy, and that is the reason why finding a solution to assure the security of CD formats is vital.

The new anti-copying technology has already been included in the CDs' production process, until now about 1 million original disks produced by Sony BMG being protected by it, with the titles yet to be announced.

First4Internet is not the only company Sony will work with, the manufacturer intending to also get other partners involved in this effort of promoting sterile copying. SunnComm is the owner of MediaMax technology, a DRM solution that fulfills perfectly Sony BMG's copyright protection requirements. However, in the past, Sony entrusted MediaMax with several titles, and in a short time the respective contents could already be found on p2p networks. Despite this, there is hope that a procedure by means of which Sony will be able to at least slow down the piracy rate will soon be available, either from MediaMax, or from First4Internet's XCP.