Guide to Copying Copy-Protected Music CDs

Because I don't usually copy CDs, I found it a little ironic that the ‘copy control technology’ required me to make a copy of the album in order to use it. Since my experience with the 80s Alternative album, I have bought many other CDs, and the ones with copy control technology are the only ones I have copied. To figure out whether this was legal or not, I wrote an open letter to EMI, who are the publishers of the 80s Alternative album. In the letter, I pointed out this paradoxical situation and asked EMI if they would consider what I had done fair use of the album. I also sent the letter to a couple of newspapers, but I don't think they published it. All of this was in March 2004. As of February 2008, I have still to hear from EMI, but I will update this page with details as soon as they get back to me.

Because I don't usually copy CDs, I found it a little ironic that the ‘copy control technology’ required me to make a copy of the album in order to use it. Since my experience with the 80s Alternative album, I have bought many other CDs, and the ones with copy control technology are the only ones I have copied. To figure out whether this was legal or not, I wrote an open letter to EMI, who are the publishers of the 80s Alternative album. In the letter, I pointed out this paradoxical situation and asked EMI if they would consider what I had done fair use of the album. I also sent the letter to a couple of newspapers, but I don't think they published it. All of this was in March 2004. As of February 2008, I have still to hear from EMI, but I will update this page with details as soon as they get back to me.
In the meantime, I hope this guide will help people who are in a similar situation. Until I hear from EMI, I suggest you make up your own mind about whether you think following these instructions is legal or not.

Step 1: Download IsoBuster

The first step is to download and install IsoBuster, a program used to salvage data from damaged CDs and DVDs. IsoBuster is a commercial program, but you can run it in freeware mode, where it has limited functionality, which is fine for our purposes. I used IsoBuster 1.6 for this guide.

Step 2: Create a Folder for the Audio Tracks

The idea is to use IsoBuster to extract the hidden audio tracks from the protected CD and burn them to a normal CD, so the first thing to do is create a folder somewhere to store the audio tracks. I suggest your Windows desktop.

Step 3: Open the Copy-Protected CD with IsoBuster

First, start up IsoBuster and hold down your shift key while inserting your copy-protected CD.
I recommend that you hold down the shift key because it blocks the Windows ‘autorun’ feature, i.e., prevents the CD from launching programs automatically. The reason this is necessary is that some copy-protected CDs (for example Contraband by Velvet Revolver) automatically install suspicious Windows drivers, which people have reported cause problems when you later want to play normal CDs. If you don't want to hold down the shift key every time you insert a copy-protected CD, there is also a way to disable autorun altogether.
After inserting the CD, you should now see something like the following:

As you can see, the CD has two sessions, unlike a normal audio CD, which only has one. The actual audio tracks are stored in session 1. Session 2 contains files, which are used when you insert the CD into a Windows box or a Macintosh. For our purposes we are only interested in the audio tracks, so we'll ignore session 2 completely.
To get at the audio tracks with IsoBuster, click on session 1 on the left in the IsoBuster window. You should now see the audio tracks displayed on the right:

Step 4: Extract the Audio Tracks

Use your mouse to mark all the audio tracks in the right part of the window, then right click and choose ‘Extract Objects’ from the menu:

IsoBuster will ask you for a destination directory; choose the one you created previously:

Now wait for the files to copy...

When the copy has finished, you can shut down IsoBuster.

Step 5: Burn the Audio Tracks onto a Blank CD

Now open your favourite CD burning software and use it to create an Audio CD. Drag the tracks from the folder where IsoBuster placed them into your Audio CD project, make sure they appear in the right order, and then burn. When you are finished, the resulting CD will contain all the tracks from the original copy-protected CD, but in a non-protected format. It should play on all players and can be MP3-encoded for use on your portable MP3 player.


Enjoy!