I read that Sony spent a gob of Cash developing a CD copy protection scheme that is defeatable by the black marker mask around the outside edge of the playing surface. I think I read it in "Sound and Vision," but I wouldn't swear to that. The data dongle confuses CDROM drives so they can't seem to find their way around the disk. The problem is that it also confuses cd players which have drives in them that operate more like CDROM drives than earlier CD players did. I think if it can be played, it can ultimately be ripped. lee writes: