Sony DADC announced today the availability of SecuROM™, its CD-ROM copy control solution, at the UK based replicator, Disctronics. The license agreement reflects SecuROMä's increasing popularity with European games publishers since its successful June 2002 launch of its new security enhancements, Trigger Functions and an upgraded disc encryption signature.
"Due to its unique security features and reliable performance, SecuROM™ has become very popular with UK based games publishers," says Johannes Stegfellner, Director SecuROMä Licensing. "We are excited that SecuROMä will also be available at Disctronics, a major player in UK's replication industry."

David Mackie, CEO of the Disctronics Group, said "Disctronics is pleased to add SecuROM to the range of copy protection systems for CD and DVD, particularly as there is a growing demand from our CD-ROM clients in Europe and the USA."

With the tremendous market penetration of consumer CD-Recordable devices and the Internet, software piracy has become an enormous problem that keeps getting bigger. In the UK alone there are industry estimates that the retail sales value of pirated goods may be close to double that of the legitimate market. For this reason games and software publishers need an effective way to protect their intellectual property and investments against casual CD-R burning and professional piracy.

SecuROM's Trigger Functions allow the games developer to program multiple and fully customisable authentication checks throughout the entire application to prevent Internet piracy and reverse-engineering attempts. The enhanced SecuROMä encryption signature also protects against illicit digital cloning by raw data copying tools -a protection no other copy control system can provide.

SecuROM is developed at Sony DADC's dedicated copy control technology center, the "Virtual Factory", in Salzburg, Austria. SecuROM™ mastering and replication is available at authorised CD manufacturing plants worldwide.

Disctronics is the largest independent CD and DVD replicator in Europe. The Disctronics Group has replication plants in the UK, France, Italy and Texas. The company offers CD and DVD pre-mastering, mastering, copy protection, on-line order tracking, replication, fulfilment, CD cards, custom CDs and e-commerce services for the music, software and home video industries. Disctronics is ISO 9001 registered, accredited by IRMA and FACT and is a founder member of IODRA. In 2001 Disctronics became the first company in the world with all its replication plants certified under the IRMA Anti-Piracy Program.


Taken from cdrinfo.com

Yucky... But SecuROM still can't differ between original and copy, at least the latest one used on UT2003...

Can you expand on this?

Well I was over at the official UT2003 forums and there alot of people nagged about not being able to play the game with their original... So the latest version seems to go back to basics...

I saw the same on a forum talking about No One Lives Forever 2, the complainants had the following which wouldn't verify an original.

ASUS-CD-S500/A 50x CD
Phillips Combo RWDV-1610B

I'll add more as I see them, hopefully the LTD-163 won't be among them!