Software blacklisting is a tool used by manufacturers of software and music on CD and

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kind ...

to prevent copying. Essentially the software on the disc will audit the user's computer for certain types of

virtual CD A disk image, in computing, is a computer file containing the contents and structure of a disk volume or of an entire data storage device, such as a hard disk drive, tape drive, floppy disk, optical disc, or USB flash drive. A disk image is usua ...

and CD authoring software, or for debugging software used by

warez groups A warez group is a tightly organised group of people involved in creating and/or distributing warez such as movies, music or software ("warez") in The Scene. There are different types of these groups in the Scene: ''release groups'' and ''courier ...

to create patches (known as cracks) that bypass

copy protection Copy protection, also known as content protection, copy prevention and copy restriction, describes measures to enforce copyright by preventing the reproduction of software, films, music, and other media. Copy protection is most commonly found o ...

schemes. If blacklisted software is found then certain actions are taken by the software on the game or music disc. Examples would be allowing the copying of the game to take place, but crashing the copied game when attempting to start it; allowing copies of games that will malfunction in subtle ways and simply disallowing the game to be run while this software exists. This software blacklisting can be seen as a countermeasure to virtual CD/CD burning software used to bypass

schemes such as

SecuROM SecuROM was a CD/ DVD copy protection and digital rights management (DRM) product developed by Sony DADC. It aims to prevent unauthorised copying and reverse engineering of software, primarily commercial computer games running on Microsoft Windo ...

SafeDisc ''SafeDisc'' is a copy protection program for Microsoft Windows applications and games distributed on optical disc. Created by Macrovision Corporation, it was aimed to hinder unauthorized disc duplication. The program was first introduced in 19 ...

and

LaserLock LaserLock is a copy restriction system for CD-ROMs with 32-bit Windows applications introduced by MLS LaserLock International Inc. in 1995. LaserLock is supposed to check whether the original storage medium of a program is inserted. This check can b ...

. In order to copy the CD, the user may have to copy the disc on another computer (real or virtual), uninstall the blacklisted software or wait for an update of the blacklisted software, which will have a countermeasure to the game or music disc's own blacklisting countermeasure. There are also some programs that can hide software from blacklists, such as Anti-blaxx. Examples of commonly blacklisted software are

Daemon Tools DAEMON Tools is a virtual drive and optical disc authoring program for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS. Overview DAEMON tools was originally a successor of ''Generic SafeDisc emulator'' and incorporated all of its features. The program claims ...

Nero Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus ( ; born Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus; 15 December AD 37 – 9 June AD 68), was the fifth Roman emperor and final emperor of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, reigning from AD 54 unti ...

and

Alcohol 120% Alcohol 120% is a disk image emulator created by Alcohol Soft. It can create and mount disc images in the proprietary Media Descriptor File format. Images in this format consist of a pair of .mds and .mdf files. Alcohol 120% can also convert im ...

See also