AUTHENTICATING A DATA STORAGE MEDIUM USING PREDETERMINED INTER-SECTOR RELATIONSHIPS

摘要

A data storage medium (230, 400) and associated method (500, 520), apparatus (250, 430) and application routine (110, 524) for authenticating the medium as an authentic copy. The medium (such as a prerecorded or recordable optical disc) is formatted so that a predefined relationship is established (502) between physical locations of at least first and second addressable data sectors (220) prior to recording of data to the sectors (506). The predetermined relationship will be present in an authorized copy of the medium (330) but not in an unauthorized duplicate (332), allowing an application routine to grant or deny access (532, 534) to remaining portions of the medium based on the presence or absence of the detected relationship. The predetermined relationship is further used to embed a forensic data payload to serve as a digital fingerprint on the medium.