Editing Digital Compact Cassette (section)

=== Copy protection ===

All DCC recorders used the [[Serial Copy Management System|SCMS]] copy-protection system, which uses two [[bit]]s in the S/PDIF digital audio stream and on tape to differentiate between protected vs. unprotected audio, and between original vs. copy:

* Recording digitally from a source marked "protected" and "original" (produced by a prerecorded DCC or Minidisc, for example) was allowed, but the recorder will change the "original" bit to the "copy" state on the new tape to prevent copying of the copy. CDs do not have SCMS bits as the format predates this system. However, the recorder treats the absence of SCMS bits as "protected" and "original". Consequently the DCC recording cannot be further copied.
* Recording digitally from a source marked "unprotected" is also allowed; the "original/copy" marker is ignored. The "unprotected" bit is preserved in the copy.
* Recording digitally from a source marked "protected" and "copy" is not allowed: the record button will not work and any ongoing recordings will stop, and an error message is shown on the display.

Analog recording was not restricted: tapes recorded from analog source were marked "unprotected". The only limitation to analog recording on DCC as compared to that on DAT recorders is that the [[analog-to-digital converter|A/D converter]] was fixed to a sample frequency of 44.1&nbsp;kHz. On the DCC-175 portable recorder it was possible to circumvent the SCMS protection by copying audio to the hard disk and then back to another tape, using the DCC Studio program.