Sonopress a member of Bertelsmann Arvato AG, is a leading information media manufacturer catering mainly to the music, video, and computer hardware/software and entertainment industries.
Dr. Hermann Heemeyer, Vice President Sales and Marketing Europe, says, We have seen a big increase in the demand for copy protection, which is a very dynamic and evolutionary process. Macrovision is well positioned to evolve the technology and we are delighted to extend our relationship with them. Sonopress can now offer the broadest range of copy protection systems more than any other replicator to match any customer’s needs, and this new agreement forms part of our total commitment to fight piracy and help software publishers increase margins and gain financially.
Tim Heath, Worldwide Director of Safeaudio sales at Macrovision stated, Sonopress has been extremely helpful in helping us to test and bring Safeaudio to market. Their support has contributed greatly to getting Safeaudio ready for production. We are delighted to have a product that protects music CDs against unauthorized copying and file ripping, while ensuring excellent playability across all playback platforms, in particular both Red Book and Yellow Book platforms. Safeaudio accomplishes this without taking up valuable disc space. We have very exciting developments and features that we will be introducing into our Safeaudio releases through this year, which will significantly extend the protection available to artists and labels, and the value they can deliver to consumers. This is a very exciting market to enter. In expanding our partnership with Sonopress for Safeaudio, record labels and rights owners can now take advantage of our new Safeaudio technology through Sonopress’ worldwide manufacturing and distribution infrastructure in North and South America, Asia, Europe and Africa.
Safeaudio is a 100% software-based, Red Book compliant, audio copy protection solution for music CDs designed to prevent unauthorized copying of CD albums, or particular tracks on a CD. Safeaudio provides high compatibility with legacy players, including PCs. It can be combined with Safedisc to provide an authentication option for PC and Internet applications. Macrovision has jointly developed the Safeaudio CD copy protection solution with TTR Technologies, Inc. The Safeaudio process is applied during the mastering process at CD manufacturing facilities.
The advent of low cost CD-R consumer media copying devices, and the concurrent proliferation of the Internet, render content owners increasingly vulnerable to unauthorized use and distribution of their content. Artists, labels, publishers, and retailers lose billions of dollars every year to copying and ripping of music. In some leading economies, the volume of blank CDs sales now exceeds the volume of prerecorded CDs sold. The worldwide installed base of CD-recordable drives is expected to double to over 100 million units by 2002.
SOURCE: COMPANY PRESS RELEASE
