Serial Copy Management System

The Serial Copy Management System or SCMS was created in response to the digital audio tape (DAT) invention, in order to prevent DAT recorders from making second-generation or serial copies. SCMS sets a "copy" bit in all copies, which prevents anyone from making further copies of those first copies. It does not, however, limit the number of first-generation copies made from a master.

SCMS was an early form of digital rights management (DRM). It was also included in consumer MiniDisc and DCC players and recorders.

History

SCMS was created as a compromise between electronics manufacturers, which wanted to make DAT machines available in the United States, and the RIAA, which previously hampered the availability of DAT machines in the US via lawsuit threats. The RIAA did not want low-cost digital recorders readily available, since it felt that such technology would result in widespread piracy. These lawsuit threats resulted in a chilling effect, which prevented DAT decks from becoming readily affordable.

In 1987, a member of the RIAA proposed a system where DAT recorders would have copy protection in them. The copy protection would look for the presence of frequencies in a particular high-frequency band; if there was no audio present in this band, the recorder would assume that the music in question was copy protected, and would not allow recording of the music. The record companies would then release all music with this particular frequency band filtered out. It would be illegal to manufacture a DAT machine with the presence of audio in this frequency band; the RIAA was lobbying Congress to make this the law of the land.

The reaction to this proposed scheme was very negative. The Home Recording Rights Coalition orchestrated a letter writing campaign opposing this scheme. Editorials in musician's and home stereo magazines attacked this scheme. The proposed law never made it out of committee.

Even after this law was shot down, the RIAA still threatened to sue anyone who released an affordable consumer DAT recorder in the US. No one made such a recorder available.

Finally, in 1992, the RIAA and the electronics companies compromised by passing the Audio Home Recording Act. In this law, blank digital media (including DAT tapes) would be taxed, with the money going to the RIAA, and a new copy protection scheme, SCMS, would be enforced. Blank analog media, such as cassette tapes, were not subject to the tax. SCMS was compulsory in digital media because there is zero deterioration of quality from copy to copy. SCMS was universally disliked by home musicians who used DAT decks to record their own music; it obtained the unfavorable name "Scums".

Technical details

The copy protection looks for some bits written on the subcode data. There are three states of these bits: copy allowed (00), copy once (11) and copy prohibited (10). If the source has the copy bits 00, and you make a copy of this, the copy will have the bit set as 00 too, allowing copies of the copies. If the source has the copy bits set as 11, every copy of this material will have the bits set to 10 and the copy from the copy would be prohibited. These bits are transferred over digital links, not over analog links.

Defeating

Software and design defects in certain models of consumer Minidisc player allow SCMS to be defeated. Professional-grade Minidisc systems come with SCMS disabled, but these run at several thousand US dollars.

European electronic hobby magazine "Elektor" published a construction project in the 1990s. The project when completed was designed to be inserted in the digital link between SCMS enabled devices (the article was designed around the optical TOSLINK interface, but it would have been easy to adapt it to the S/PDIF coaxial link). The project intercepted the SCMS control bits, 10 and 11 and substituted the 'Copy Allowed' (00) code. Similar functionality is often also included in commercially available bitrate-converters, like the Behringer Ultramatch.

There is another way that SCMS can be defeated, but it requires copying the Table of Contents from a blank disc that allows copying, to a recorded 'copy disallowed disc'. The method is laborious, and suffers the disadvantage that the track marks and titles are lost in the process.