US Patent 7193916 Apparatus and method for determining erasability of data

A recording apparatus for facilitating data erasure operations involving data recorded on a recording medium. Each piece of data recorded on the recording medium may be examined to determine whether it is re-recordable by determining whether the data is already stored in another storage medium. When data erasure is requested, erasure processing may be controlled in accordance with the result of the determination. For example, original data based on data captured by a microphone or a camera (namely, non-re-recordable data) may not be erased (without specific approval by the user). Conversely, re-recordable data copied from another recording medium such as a CD may be erased.