In June, Ç-Dilla Ltd. announced the
release of its SafeDisc CD-ROM copy protection solution to six
facilities in the Asia Pacific region, including EastGate and
DataPulse in Singapore, Toshiba-EMI and Memory-Tech in Japan; Jeil
Records in Korea; and Intramedia in Taiwan. That same month
Macrovision, Inc. acquired Ç-Dilla and will control the
distribution of SafeDisc among the international electronic media
marketplace.
"The Asian facilities have
been established in order to support the growing demand for
SafeDisc from content providers," says Brian Dunn,
vice-president of the computer software and copy protection at
Macrovision, Inc. Indeed, Dunn confirms that Ç-Dilla has already
signed multi-year contracts with Microsoft, Electronic Arts, and
Eidos and will begin to copy-protect software titles on a
worldwide basis.
Each of Ç-Dilla's Asian outposts
includes one production line that replicates and encodes CD-ROM
discs featuring the SafeDisc protection system, but Dunn predicts
rapid expansion of SafeDisc capacites at all six new locations.
"When the multimedia industry adopts this product as widely
as we expect it to," Dunn says, "we are certain these
plants will add additional production lines that can provide
SafeDisc technology." Ç-Dilla is currently negotiating
contracts with other content providers, and Dunn anticipates that
they will secure several new clients by 2000.
Other Macrovision representatives
agree the Asian market requires the SafeDisc solution, given that
region's astronomical Piracy problem. (Japan, for instance, lost
US$597 million to Piracyy in 1998 alone, according to the Business
Software Alliance and the Software & Information Industry
Association.) "We have requests from a large number of
replicators worldwide to become SafeDisc approved," says Toby
Gawin, vice president, business software division. "This is
partially a result of replicators approaching Ç-Dilla and partly
a result of publishers deciding to use SafeDisc and pushing the
replicators."
Gawin speculates that SafeDisc has
gained popular acceptance in Asia and elsewhere because of its
comprehensive and layered approach to copy protection. "It
combines encryption technology with a digital signature process to
provide dual level security on a CD-ROM," he says. The
signature process marks the CD just prior to replication so that
the software can only be run from that disc, and so that its
contents cannot be copied to another CD or to a hard drive.
"Anti-hacking code is also included in the encryption, but
the process is transparent to the end-user," he continues,
"and it only becomes apparent if an attempt is made to
illegally copy the disc." And, according to Gawin, a new
version of SafeDisc is released approximately every six to eight
weeks to stay ahead of the hackers.
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