Has Plextor stopped blocking Safedisc 2

[Jokester]

I heard that Plextor was using firmware to block copying of Safedisc2 software. is this true?

[crispy]

There is a school of thought at the moment, that Plextor has deliberately changed the more recent firmware so to make copying SD2 discs impossible. This is based on some research done by some peeps which demonstrated that upgrading firmware caused a Plex drive to be unable to copy SD2. Downgrade re-enabled SD2 copying.
Whether you believe this is up to you....there is a lot of evidence to suggest that failure to burn SD2 titles is based around the EFM encoder in the hardware of the drive. And not the firmware.

[tonyG]

the above is based on a rumor that the paranoid creator of ddump has been spreading around.

I have done a bit of testing with my friends cdrw and my own...

So far i have only ever made a distributable (ie works in any cdrom) copy of a sd2 game in an acer burner (correct emf encoding).
[disc tested b&w--difficult for most to copy]

early versions of sd2 where easier to copy (ie hitman)
I seems to me that sd2 changes significantly with every new realease ie (emp. of dune) has setup files protected

My personal opinion (for what its worth-- nothing to some people!)
Safedisc 2 is not a standard as safedisc 1 was:
This is not a weapon but an armory of different tools designed to change with every new title. If you think about it it make sense, if you want to make the ultimate copy protection you can make it the same every time, because if you did crackers need only crack one game and the protection is useless, better create numerous smilar non-standardised protections and sell them individualy as the safedisc protection scheme.
If you feel this is bullsh*t feel free to say so, im not hear to impress anyone just to state my interpretation.

[ana_geo_s]

I agrre with crispy. It's a hardware limitation, NOT Firmware.