PC CLONING SOFTWARE BURNS PERFECT DVD COPIES FROM DVD

Program’s prowess isn’t confined to Hollywood’s DVD-Video movies: Consumer Electronics Daily evaluated DVD X Copy and found it also made digital copies of Dolby Digital and DTS tracks of multichannel DVD-Audio discs that record labels had touted for superior copy protection compared with oft-compromised CD. Further property of DVD X Copy, we discovered, is that it can make digital copies of DVD copies, and even multichannel CD copies from DVD-Audio music tracks.

Product is from St. Louis-based 321Studios (321), which earlier this year issued software called DVD Copy Plus that cloned DVD-Videos to blank CDs (www.321studios.com). Company in April filed peremptory suit against 9 Hollywood studios, seeking declaratory judgment from federal court that program didn’t violate anticircumvention clauses of Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) but enabled only fair-use copying for personal backups and could be sold legally. Next act in drama plays out this month in U.S. Dist. Court, San Francisco, where Judge Susan Illston will consider dismissal motion filed by studios and Justice Dept. Program developer 321 filed brief opposing motion to dismiss, and has added DVD X Copy to request for declaratory judgment, spokeswoman told us. Company is represented by Keker & Van Nest, San Francisco law firm that also is assisting in defense of Russian software developer Elcomsoft’s trial on DMCA violations this week in Cal.

We obtained DVD X Copy upon its release Nov. 13 and have tested 321’s claims. Program performs as advertised, easily and speedily copying prerecorded DVDs to blank DVDs, with flawless playback on standalone DVD players. Initial tests suggest program doesn’t defeat or circumvent DVD format’s Content Scrambling System encryption and Macrovision analog copy protection, but cleverly avoids and ignores them -- raising possibility DVD X Copy doesn’t violate DMCA’s anticircumvention provisions. Spokeswoman for 321 told us it didn’t use DeCSS hack to copy discs to blanks. At our Fri. deadline, we were continuing independent technical analysis into how DVD X Copy worked.

As for hands-on evaluation, we found it worked as claimed. Movie on DVD is stored as digital code that’s compressed with MPEG-2. Code is encrypted with CSS, and unscrambling is possible only on authorized DVD player or PC-based DVD-ROM drive, each of which contains CSS decryption keys secured in its control chips. Keys in player mate with more keys buried in hidden parts of the DVD to play movie. If PC is used to make a bit-for-bit copy of a DVD, it won’t play because some of keys do not copy with movie. As extra security measure, analog output from DVD player has Macrovision copy protection to spoil copying to VCRs or DVD recorders. Although DeCSS hack can defeat digital protection and black-box “signal cleaners” can be bought to defeat Macrovision, each is illegal in most countries. In U.S., it’s felony under DMCA subject to 5 years in prison and minimum $250,000 fine.

In our hands-on test, we copied Macrovision-protected Shrek DVD-Video and 2 DVD-Audio titles. Selection of Shrek was intentional -- movie’s run-time is longer than capacity of DVD blanks (we used DVD+R/RW format). DVD X Copy software accurately analyzed dual-layer Shrek and split it over 2 DVD blanks. All menus, special features and Dolby Digital multichannel sound copied intact. DVD X Copy dub played fine not only on PC, but also on variety of set-top DVD players of various generations we tried. Machines sometimes needed kick-starting to play clone: It seemed DVD X Copy dub needed to “teach” players that it was legit DVD. As for 2nd-generation copies from DVD X Copy dubs, regular DVD players we have tried won’t play them, although DVD- ROM drives in PCs will. At our deadline, we still were trying to sort out anomaly.

Against likely protests by recording industry, DVD X Copy made perfect dubs of Dolby Digital and DTS multichannel soundtracks of DVD-Audio discs -- including menu playlists and photo-stills. Essentially, DVD X Copy sees original as a DVD- Video, which it is. Point of DVD-Audio was backward compatibility with DVD-Video players -- and that would be its potential undoing using DVD X Copy. Program ignores DVD-Audio’s “advanced resolution” tracks and proceeds to copy multichannel Dolby and DTS. Clones we made played back perfectly on standalone and PC-based drives.

Stunner to labels will be that DVD-Audio clone also was found to be copied easily to dirt-cheap blank CDs. That’s because Dolby Digital tracks on DVD-Audio are compressed-file of only 200 MB -- well within 650-700 MB capacity of blank CDs. At our deadline, we saw mixed results with copying DTS tracks, which use higher data-transfer rate than Dolby (750 to 1.5 Mbps vs. Dolby’s 384-448 Mbps). But ramifications to record labels are obvious and far-reaching: Organized pirates will be able to clone high-quality multichannel DVD-Audio discs to blank CDs that cost just pennies and at higher speeds than current DVD burners permit. DVD-Audio titles now sell at about same price as prerecorded CDs -- $16 average -- but offer more features and, usually, superior sound owning to digital remastering.