MusicGuard
(TTR Technologies Inc.)

History

TTR Technologies Inc. was established in 1994, and since February 1997 has been publicly traded. The company's US offices are located in New York and Silicon Valley.The company's research & development, as well as sales for the Middle East and Europe are handled through TTR in Israel. TTR has distributors in Japan and China, and sales representatives in South Korea and Singapore.

Product: MusicGuard

MusicGuard™ is an anti-piracy solution that protects CDs from unauthorized copying. It is the only answer available today to the illegal copying of CDs. MusicGuard™ protection is completely transparent to the consumer. CDs protected by MusicGuard™ can be played in CD/DVD players and CD/DVD drives available today. No changes need to be made to the player. If a pirate or other user attempts to make a copy of a MusicGuard™ protected disc by using any of the CD to CD copying programs or track rippers either the copy process itself will fail or the copy produced will be unusable.

How it works?

MusicGuard employs two layers of protection to inhibit digital copying of CDs. The first line of protection is a copy prevention technique that renders the protected CD difficult to copy. The second line of protection is a mechanism that acts to reduce the quality of digital copies of a protected CD. The net result is that a MusicGuard™ protected CD is playable, but is difficult to copy faithfully.

MusicGuard protection is on the CD itself and is introduced as part of the production process. During the glass mastering process, a specially modified CD-encoder introduces selective alternative alterations to the EFM data stream. These alterations do not affect the audio quality of the original CDs in any manner. CDs protected by MusicGuard play normally in the existing base of CD/DVD players around the world.

Music quality is exactly the same, as it would be if the CD were not MusicGuard protected. When one tries to make a copy of a MusicGuard™ protected CD with any of the many CD-to-CD copying programs or "track rippers", the copy is unusable. Either the copying process itself will abort or the quality of the unauthorized copy will be unacceptably inferior to the original music. Similarly, attempts to produce MP3 files from a MusicGuard protected CD will either fail or result in inferior and unusable audio

MusicGuard leverages existing encoder technology used in TTR's DiscGuard software protection product. Glass Mastering facilities worldwide will be able to simply and immediately upgrade their existing encoders to enable the use of MusicGuard. Since MusicGuard protection is applied only during the glass mastering process, once a glass master and stampers have been produced, discs can be replicated as usual by any replicator.

Price: Not avaible (at website)

Does it work in real life?

Since now 2 music companies agreed to use it..Since we don't have seen till now a MusicGuard protected CD we cannot tell for sure that will not be able to copy it..