Ring PROTECH

ProRing logo

General Information

Ring PROTECH, later to renamed to ProRing and sometimes referred to as Ring Protect, was a ring-based copy protection by the Japanese company Ed-contrive and used primarily, if not exclusively, on CD releases from said country from the early to mid 2000s. A version for DVDs have never been encountered and might not exist.

Identification

Single, relatively small physical ring in the middle of a disc covering ~700-800 sectors. Discs themselves also carry hidden dummy files called ".tmp" and ".pro" which are housed in a folder called "Protect".

Releases with Proring will also carry the logo on the back and like most Ringed DRM, both it and PROTECH was tied to a single plant. In this case Optrom with SID IFPI L034.

Dumping

Follow the Ringed Disc Dumping Guide

Additional Information

If a disc is scanned as being protected with Ring PROTECH / ProRing, but does not have rings, it is either remnants or should be reported.

The name Ring PROTECH has historically been incorrectly conflated with several other, unrelated ring protections such as Sysiphus and Copy-X, likely due to misunderstandings about Ring PROTECH being the name of a specific protection and not a generic term. If you see a non-Japanese disc scanned or submitted with Ring PROTECH, it is likely not Ring PROTECH.