Idea: The ultimate CD/DVD auditing tool

[Sampo Syreeni]

On 2003-07-06, Thomas Shaddack uttered to cypherpunks:

>If we'd fill this idea with water, would it leak? Where? Why?

It wouldn't leak, and I've never really understood why standard ATAPI
drives don't allow access to the raw data. As you say, that sort of tool
would have quite a number of applications besides piracy. For example,
taking MP3 backups of my CD's, I already would have needed error
concealment, a feature CD-ROM's do not implement when ripping audio. You
can't implement that well without knowing where the error correction step
failed, and that data isn't easily available.

Also, I've always been fascinated by the fact that there's really no
reason to follow the CD specs beyond 8/14 modulation other than
compatibility. A writing drive capable of working at such a low level
could be used to experiment with new encodings beyond what standard CD's
can do -- say, substituting CIRC with RSBC and gaining some extra room on
the disc, getting rid of the subchannels, a more intelligent coding of
disc addresses... Breaking compatibility wouldn't be too useful, but it
sure would be fun. Now you simply can't do it.
-- 
Sampo Syreeni, aka decoy - mailto:decoy at 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