On 2003-07-06, Major Variola (ret) uttered to cypherpunks@lne.com:
There's a good reason why, viz: it would cost the drive developer to allow or export this flexibility.
But that's just the point. They need to have the raw signal available at one time or another. Picking it up and sending it down the line should be utterly trivial, too. It will have its price, but the price will also be negligible. Especially since the ATAPI protocol has steadily grown more complicated, which would suggest they are making libraries to handle it in a standardised fashion. If they have such a library, and the raw data, why shy away from yielding it to the user? I mean, the cost is far less than, say, implementing digital rippping capability in the first place, with the available chips. I'd guess either because of a) terminal stupidity or b) benefits to scale in making it sure people go with compatibility. As there probably have to be some limits to how stupid engineers capable of making things like writable CD's can be, I'd have to go with the second alternative. -- Sampo Syreeni, aka decoy - mailto:decoy@iki.fi, tel:+358-50-5756111 student/math+cs/helsinki university, http://www.iki.fi/~decoy/front openpgp: 050985C2/025E D175 ABE5 027C 9494 EEB0 E090 8BA9 0509 85C2