Macrovision and Avex Inc. of Japan announced today that Avex had now encoded over 30 million music CDs in Japan using Macrovision’s copy protection. Macrovision produces “dual session” music CDs that contain both Red Book audio files, which play on traditional music playback devices and car stereos, and “second session” data files that can be played on a consumer’s PC. Macrovision’s CDS technology prevents the ripping of the audio files and inhibits unauthorized file sharing and CD burning.

Macrovision is currently manufacturing CDS-protected discs with the 5 major record companies in Europe, Asia, Australia, and Latin America. Macrovision continues to develop and refine dual session solutions that will be compatible with Microsoft and other third party DRM vendors. Worldwide, CDS copy protection has been used to protect over 120 million music CDs to date.