Analog hole

The analog hole (also known as the analog loophole) is a fundamental and inevitable vulnerability in copy protection schemes for noninteractive works in digital formats which can be exploited to duplicate copy-protected works that are ultimately reproduced using analog means. Once digital information is converted to a human-perceptible (analog) form, it is a relatively simple matter to digitally recapture that analog reproduction in an unrestricted form, thereby fundamentally circumventing any and all restrictions placed on copyrighted digitally distributed work. Media publishers who use digital rights management (DRM), to restrict how a work can be used, perceive the necessity to make it visible or audible as a "hole" in the control that DRM otherwise affords them.

Although the technology for creating digital recordings from analog sources has existed for some time, it was not necessarily viewed as a "hole" until the widespread deployment of DRM in the late 1990s. However, if high-quality equipment is not used to perform the conversion, the resulting copy may have low fidelity compared to the digital original.

Regardless of any digital or software copy control mechanisms, if sound can be heard by an ear, it can also be recorded by a microphone, and either stored by analog means (e.g. magnetic tape), or recaptured digitally. And if images (static images or video/film), including text, can be seen by the eye, they can also be recorded by a camera. In the case of text the image can be converted back to text using optical character recognition.

In 2002 and 2003, the U.S. motion picture industry publicly discussed the possibility of legislation to "close the analog hole" — most likely through regulation of digital recording devices, limiting their ability to record analog video signals that appear to be commercial audiovisual works. These proposals are discussed in the Content Protection Status Report, Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act, and Analog Reconversion Discussion Group. Inventors of digital watermark technologies were particularly interested in this possibility because of the prospect that recording devices could be required to screen inputs for the presence of a particular watermark (and hence, presumably, their manufacturers would need to pay a patent royalty to the watermark's inventor).

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