According to an article on TechTV.com the Cactus Datashield protection can be bypassed with the right DVD player:
It turns out that the DVD drives in the systems we tested see through Midbar Tech's copy protection. The drives don't see the files CDS installs on the audio CD, nor are they confused by the table of contents tweaking done by the CDS. |
We tested the DVD drive, an NEC DV-5700A, on a number of different Windows 98 and XP systems. None of the machines had any trouble seeing or ripping all the tracks, or playing tracks 2 through 14. NEC doesn't normally sell retail, but it supplies DVD drives to Dell. In fact, all of the Dell systems we tested saw through the copy protection.
And, of course, none of them can play the first track on the CD, no matter what program we tried. Also, you can't find the CactusPJ player on the audio CD to play the tracks the way Universal prefers.
This is copy protection? Here's a better question: Are all Dell owners with DVD drives who buy CDS copy-protected discs in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act? Perhaps, if they purchase the NEC DVD drive just for the purpose of circumventing the copy protection.
I don't have any explanation why this drive has no problems with the protection, do you ?
Source: Techtv.com
