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CD DRM: Compatibility and Software Updates: "Alex and I are working on an academic paper, “Lessons from the Sony CD DRM Episode”, which will analyze several not-yet-discussed aspects of the XCP and MediaMax CD copy protection technologies, and will try to put the Sony CD episode in context and draw lessons for the future. We’ll post the complete paper here next week. Until then, we’ll post drafts of a few sections here. We have two reasons for this: we hope the postings will be interesting in themselves, and we hope your comments will help us improve the paper. Today’s section will be (in the final paper) the last part of the technical core of the paper. Readers of the final paper will have seen the rest of our technical analysis by this point. Blog readers haven’t seen it all yet — stay tuned. Please note that this is a draft and should not be formally quoted or cited. The final version of our entire paper will be posted here when it is ready. Compatibility and Software Updates Compared to other media on which software is distributed, compact discs have a very long life. Many compact discs will still be inserted into computers and other players twenty years or more after they are first bought. If a particular version of (say) active protection software is burned onto a new CD, that software version may well try to install and run i"