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Speaking of Apple, has anyone ever noticed that under Mac OS X, there isn't even a built-in function to remove an application? At least Windows pretends to. And before you mention, "just drag the application icon to the trash"-- what about the dotfiles, preferences, tempfiles, and other miscellaneous shit that applications spew around the system? E.g., Dreamweaver, the only application I've found so far to be completely unmanageable with radmind, thanks to these assholes?

VCRs won't last forever and it's low quality. Don't forget Macrovision (had to get a RF Modulator for my DVD's playbacks through my PCs and video cards). :(

I just added a bit of code to my company's Windows domain login scripts to roll out the fix.

You'll need to download Macrovision's fix from the their site here:

http://www.macrovision.com/promolanding/7352.htm

Then extract the ZIP and put it somewhere on a network server where it's publicly accessible.

You could then do the update via login script or GPO or whatever suits your fancy. Probably need admin privs to do this.

You probably also want some code to determine if the system is XP or Server 2003. If it's not, you don't need the update. I use the OS detection routines from here:

http://www.amset.info/loginscripts/os-id.asp

Enough setup, here's my quick and dirty code:

rem
rem Update stupid Macrovision SecureDisc driver, if needed
rem

if exist "%windir%\system32\drivers\safedisc-fix-11-09-07.txt" goto safedisc_driver_updated

echo.
echo Fixing Macrovision SecureDisc vulnerability...
echo.

rem
rem replace location here with the proper location for your Macrovision update files
rem

pushd "\\someserver\someshare\macrovision-secdrv-update\"
rundll32.exe setupapi,InstallHinfSection DefaultInstall 128 .\SecDrv.inf
echo Macrovision safedisc driver updated on %date% > "%windir%\system32\drivers\safedisc-fix-11-09-07.txt"

popd

:safedisc_driver_updated

Upgrade your driver here: http://www.macrovision.com/promolanding/7352.htm
Microsoft Security Advisory(944653)http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/advisory/944653.mspx

• None. Hardest on you, as you have to trust your customer. Offer pricing in reasonable increments to encourage compliance.
• Activation Key. Not much better than none, but still reminds customer of unique nature of each install
• Activation Key, Phoned Home. Deltagraph does this one. You can install the same copy twice, but it will tell you the second install is already registered to "Name". This is also a gentle reminder that you know how many copies they're running under that one license key.
• Activation Key, Node locked. Hash some detail of the machine and license key, store that as a unique, and be done with it. Photoshop does this. Allowing a second install, not running concurrently, is a good policy in case a machine goes down, and they can't contact you, or someone uses both a desktop and laptop, but not both simultaneously
• License Server. Macrovision FlexLM seems to be the dominant one in technical circles. For the end-user, pretty unobtrusive and installs are simple. Someone has to maintain the server of course, but adding new users is just installing the new key and making it reread its database. Note, I tend to despise this one, but mainly because of early experiences on SGIs. It's become more stable, but it's still an avoid where possible.
• Dongle. Never do this. It eats USB ports, and current versions are the size of a chiclet. I get indigestion worrying about the fate of a $1000 chiclet plugged into end-user machines.

Let us not forget that in a recent article, we learned that DRM can add value to Music and other Media, by allowing you to only play media on your Windows-Vista-enable-Dell. Thus, don't simply write off DRM! You don't really think that Consumers want to be trusted?

Most of the anime DVDs I purchase don't have DRM. Why? The Anime companies figured out that [their] customer base is technically skilled enough that DRM is less than an annoyance.

Or maybe they just didn't feel like paying $15,500 to license CSS and $25,000 to license Macrovision.

Nah, you're probably right. They probably did a lot of market research and decided "only nerds buy Anime!"

O-M-G, I see smart people.

We do need to hold ISPs responsible to police their own neighborhoods (fat chance really).
For you that say this will infringe on your privacy ... check your TOS, your DSL/cable contracts are written by people that make mazes seem straightforward.

Brave New World
Corporations, ISPs, Spammers, Crackers - think: circlejerk
No ones gonna do nothing about anything and they'll inforce it too.
ref: scewed-blued-tattooed, NO CARRIER joke

http://www.macrovision.com/

http://www.softsummit.com/index.shtml

Old examples (where do you think you stand now?)

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,2122413~roo t=comcast~mode=flat

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20030922-2852 .html

http://wiki.phoenixlabs.org/wiki/Type's_of_Infring ement_Letters

I hope I'm wrong, this internet thingy could be really cool if we could just find a really good "front door" of sorts and quit chaining down ALL THE FURNITURE, Something we could run *anything* - completely unpatched behind, tele-commute with bunnie slippers on - like God intended.
That freedom alone would contribute to ending dependence on oil.

Incidentally, by reading this you're agreeing to:

just kidding.

"it's only after you've lost everything that you are free to do anything"
Fight Club

Please, get your terminology right. Halfway through your post you switch from Macrovision, the company that provides DVD encryption, to Macromedia, the company that provides Flash. I doubt the latter has a care one way or the other in DVD protection.

It's the DMCA, not the DCMA. Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Not "Copyright Millennium". And, young man, it doesn't fit the music as well. "It's fun to violate the D-M-C-A!"

Finally, he didn't "give all source code to Macrovision." Ignoring the grammatical ambiguity therein, he gave rights to the code, and unfortunately had not previously licensed it under a perpetual redistribution license. If he had simply GPL'd it (or CC-SA or anything), Macrovision would've had all the source code they wanted and couldn't've done a thing about it.

Oh, and if you're looking for an example...

...there'll be crazy anti-piracy attached to all the aquired products.

Macrovision and Macromedia are two separate, very different companies. Macrovision is in the copy prevention business, and has been for decades. Macrovision's products include SafeDisc (popular game copy prevention for CDs), CDS (audio CD copy prevention), and Macrovision (analog video copy prevention).

Sorry about that TiVO choice you made.

Uhhhh... I'm sorry about that anal-sex-with-little-boys choice you made?

Hmmm... were did I get the idea that you have anal sex with little boys? I dunno. Must have been the same random cosmic rays that gave you the odd notion that I had a TiVo.

My replays are still unaffected (54xx and 55xx.)

I don't know the Replay models and dates, but as I explicitly said old units may not be affected and I don't know what (if any) remote update features they contain. Old units may or may not contain it, but all new units certainly will certainly need to.

It is also very possible for you to have a unit with this these misfeatures and not even know it. It doesn't get triggered and you wouldn't have seen it unless you actually record something that has been flagged. The flag is not being used much yet.

Oh, and here's Macrovision press release on Replay contracting Macrovisions DRM systems. TiVo and Replay are including these systems because the Macrovison and DVD licenses require it.

Why would TiVo screw over their product in this way if they weren't arm-twisted into doing so? And what makes you think Replay would somehow not face the same issues?

A good step in avoiding this crap would be not to include integrated CSS DVD playing in the system. Then they can say 'screw you' to the CSS license which allows them to say 'screw you' to the Macrovision license which allows them to say 'screw you' to this DRM crap. You can get a separate DVD player for like $30.

-

I assume, that the algorithm implementation was not theirs to give away in the first place. They probaby licensed it from a third party such as Macrovision or any number of other DRM management tool vendors. I presume that they would be naturally wary of giving that away to an OSS project and probably have contract provisions prohibiting such.

Macrovision has ABSOLUTELY nothing to do with macromedia.

The Real Macrovision was developed by a company called Macrovision and is used to prevent copying of VHS and DVD video streams with data that interrupts the picture.

http://www.macrovision.com/company/directions/newo ffice.html

There's the address (info right from their public website) :)

Well, I can't say why a question is informative, but I emailed the contact at the bottom of the Macrovision press release and he says a "longer version" will be available publically in a week.

This was in a press release from Macrovision last November.
http://www.macrovision.com/company/news/press/news detail.jsp?id=Thu%20Nov%2011%2016:50:07%20PST%2020 04

command[0] = "/usr/local/bin/bash";
command[1] = "-c";
command[2] = "search -i " + catpath + "-m300 -R % " + search;
Process process = Runtime.getRuntime().exec( command );

Until this "feature" is mandated by law (not likely), I don't see it as a concern...

Haha, Did You think You were going to escape Macrovision? And somehow I doubt digital out is going to be considered a feature on these players.

Not true. Take a look at Macrovision: "Macrovision copy protection does not affect video quality when content is viewed, but prevents or degrades copies made on DVD, D-VHS and VCR recorders." I think it plays with the luminence settings that are too subtle for the television to detect but plays havoc with a recorder.

I have an old IBM 43P 7248. Does anybody know if that was supported?

By the way, I think only 2.5.1 was ported, not 2.5.

Curiously, Macrovision still has the FLEXlm daemons and utilities for Solaris/PPC, donwloadable from:
http://www.macrovision.com/services/support/flexlm /lmgrd.shtml#unixdownload

Okay, I messed up. It turns out that the copy-protected CDs still contain audio; they just also contain a data section that behaves as described. If you click on the link in the article (this one), you will see that Macrovision promises it will play on an ordinary CD player.

That means this DRM is lamer than lame, because all you need is decent ripping software that can ignore the data section of the CD, and you can do whatever you want with the audio files on the CD.

So this means that if you use a CD-ROM as a plain old CD player, you would be able to listen to even a Europe-release Beastie Boys CD. I apologize for the error.

steveha

Google Cache

1. There is NO copy controlled software on US or UK releases of Beastie Boys' "To the 5 Boroughs."

2. The disk *IS* copy controlled in Europe - which is standard policy for all
Capitol/EMI titles (and a policy used by ALL major labels in Europe).

3. The copy protection system used for all EMI/Capitol releases including "To the 5 Boroughs" is Macrovision's CDS-200, which sets up an audio player into the users RAM (not hard drive) to playback the RED book audio on the disk. It does absolutely NOT install any kind of spyware, shareware, silverware, or ladies wear onto the users system.

You can find more information on the technology used here:
http://www.macrovision.com/products/cds/cds 200/ind ex.shtml

This is what EMI has to say about it:
Reports that "spyware" is being included on the Beastie Boy's CD, 'To The Five Boroughs' are absolutely untrue.

While the Beastie Boys CD does use copy control in some territories, there is no copy control on the Beasties Boys discs in the US or the UK. Where copy protection is used, it is Macrovision's CDS-200 technology; the same technology being used for the past several months around the world for all of EMI's releases in those territories. This Macrovision technology does NOT install spyware or vaporware of any kind on a users PC. In fact, CDS-200 does not install software applications of ANY KIND on a user's PC. All the copy protection in CDS-200 is hardware based, meaning that it is dependent on the physical properties and the format of the CD. None of the copy protection in CDS-200 requires software applications to be loaded onto a computer.

The technology does activate a proprietary Macrovision player in order to play the CD on a PC, and that player converts WMA compressed files to audio on the fly. It also temporarily installs a graphic "skin" for the player. Nothing is permanently installed on a hard drive. These details can be verified in the 'install.log' file in the computer's root directory.

They did it like this...
They did it like that...
They did it with the wiffle ball bat...

Yes, there IS a regions protection scheme (Region Encoding i.e., NTSC or PALS). But, there is also a copy protection scheme (CSS). VHS tapes also have copy protection (macrovision).

Macrovision works by exploiting a "feature" in VHS that isn't in most TVs. It's all explained here.

Who remembers things like "off disk copy protection", or disks that were purposely damaged to as to be uncopyable? ...most people ... had to put up with looking up codes in manuals or long load times (because of drives choking on bad sectors). There was a backlash, and now you don't see that anymore...

Pretty much every PC game these days comes with a CD you need in the drive when it runs, probably using something like SafeDisc or SecuROM. Admittedly, you can often get round the protection by finding a crack or a program like Alcohol 120%, but not an awful lot has really changed. And these protected discs usually end up breaking the CD-ROM standards, so people can have problems if their hardware is slightly unusual, or they scratch the disc slightly.

The technology described here is probably CDS-100, 200 and 300 from Macrovision.

It used to be called Cactus Data Shields, but Macrovision acquired Midbar, the company that orignally created it.

Here is the current product page:

http://www.macrovision.com/products/cds/index.shtm l

Macrovision claims that CDS is "in use today by four of the five majors".

A number of sites explain how the technology works - along with various ways to crack it.

This is one of the better pages on it:

http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/Articles/PrinterFr iendly.asp?ArticleHeadline=Cactus+Data+Shield+200

It is also worth noting that the copy protection technique appears to make the media less reliable for playback.

Fun stuff.

My CD-players say "Compact Disc Digital Audio" and not "Copy-Controlled CD", therefore, my CD-players are not compatible with these CDs and must be returned. Period.

BTW: Have any of you seen the Copy-Controlled labels on these CDs? It's always on a TRANSPARENT sticker, making it as hard as possible to spot, but just enough to hold in court. Slick! I sure as hell didn't know until I put it in my CD-player on the computer at home, finding it wouldn't play. The CD (Radiohead) was returned. :( The store didn't even make me aware of this, naturally, they just want to sell whatever they have blindly.

As for these Midbar/Macrovision guys (the guys who made these "protections" (*cough* programmers with screw-drivers *cough*)), they must be wizards in the field of business. I mean, managing to fool the music industry giving them false hopes like this.

Midbar/Macrovision

Why the protection is completely useless: if you can play it, you can copy it. I don't see how it matters with copy-controlled CDs in that respect. Especially in the Internet world, where it's enough with one person sharing it, and given the fact that audio compressions are lossy means that it doesn't matter much what the heck your source was when recording it quality-wise.

Geez. Wake up!

Yeah, whatever. But this article really made my day. At least someone pays attention to this open injustice.

Its cumbersome and somewhat crackable but not widely distributed. Plus if it is cracked, you'll have Macrovision to fight the battle for you, and maybe to hold accountable. But it's probably way overpriced.

That's got to be some spin -- An anonymous reader points to Eric Hellweg's Tech Investor on CNN, which suggests that the backlash which triggered Intuit's copy-protection reversal may have cost the company $100 million.

Can I use my Go Phone there?
An anonymous reader writes ""In a follow-up to the Slashdot article 'CDMA vs GSM in Post-war Iraq,' The Reg has a story about how MCI has won the contract to rebuild the mobile phone system with GSM. This is a good thing for the people of Iraq that GSM is being used, GSM is the world standard and several U.S. companies (AT&T for one) are switching to GSM."

Adding Money to Insult.
Neophytus writes "Remember the 'Star Wars Kid' that waxy.org found a couple of weeks ago? Well after over a million downloads the guy has been found. His name is Ghyslain, a 15-year-old tenth grader living in Quebec. Jish contacted him and got a brief, but interesting, interview."

No unlimited copy privileges in jail.
the-dude-man writes "As reported here A 19-year-old pleaded guilty to costing DirectTV for leaking information about the secrets of DirectTV's most advanced anti-piracy technology to hacker websites. As part of the plea deal, Serebryany admitted to copying and distributing 800 megabytes of scanned documents from DirecTV, costing the company $68,000 in investigatory costs. Both sides stipulated to sentencing factors that carry six months to a year in prison under federal guidelines -- assuming no prior convictions. The sentencing court can depart from the guidelines only if the judge finds that the proposed sentence doesn't adequately reflect the facts of the case. According to court records affidavit, Serebryany's adventures began when he found himself with access to some of DirecTV's most coveted technological secrets while working for his uncle at a document imaging company at the office of a Los Angeles law firm, Jones, Day, Reavis and Pogue. The firm was representing the satellite TV company in a lawsuit against NDS, the makers of the smart cards DirecTV uses to control access to its signal."

For every 11 discontented customers, there's one of these happy oddballs!
RedWingsSuck writes "A few weeks ago, I asked /. users what they thought about the

That's got to be some spin -- An anonymous reader points to Eric Hellweg's Tech Investor on CNN, which suggests that the backlash which triggered Intuit's copy-protection reversal may have cost the company $100 million.

Can I use my Go Phone there?
An anonymous reader writes ""In a follow-up to the Slashdot article 'CDMA vs GSM in Post-war Iraq,' The Reg has a story about how MCI has won the contract to rebuild the mobile phone system with GSM. This is a good thing for the people of Iraq that GSM is being used, GSM is the world standard and several U.S. companies (AT&T for one) are switching to GSM."

Adding Money to Insult.
Neophytus writes "Remember the 'Star Wars Kid' that waxy.org found a couple of weeks ago? Well after over a million downloads the guy has been found. His name is Ghyslain, a 15-year-old tenth grader living in Quebec. Jish contacted him and got a brief, but interesting, interview."

No unlimited copy privileges in jail.
the-dude-man writes "As reported here A 19-year-old pleaded guilty to costing DirectTV for leaking information about the secrets of DirectTV's most advanced anti-piracy technology to hacker websites. As part of the plea deal, Serebryany admitted to copying and distributing 800 megabytes of scanned documents from DirecTV, costing the company $68,000 in investigatory costs. Both sides stipulated to sentencing factors that carry six months to a year in prison under federal guidelines -- assuming no prior convictions. The sentencing court can depart from the guidelines only if the judge finds that the proposed sentence doesn't adequately reflect the facts of the case. According to court records affidavit, Serebryany's adventures began when he found himself with access to some of DirecTV's most coveted technological secrets while working for his uncle at a document imaging company at the office of a Los Angeles law firm, Jones, Day, Reavis and Pogue. The firm was representing the satellite TV company in a lawsuit against NDS, the makers of the smart cards DirecTV uses to control access to its signal."

For every 11 discontented customers, there's one of these happy oddballs!
RedWingsSuck writes "A few weeks ago, I asked /. users what they thought about the

Read the text and watch it spin!

Any video or audio that is decodeable on a PC can be hijacked from that same PC

You sure about that? Because that seems to be exactly what Safedisc does. Somehow a key is pressed onto the CD in the mastering process, and although that key can be verified by the software, it can't actually be burned onto another CD by a standard CD burner.

I don't know how it works, and it seems like it ought to be impossible, but the proof is on every CD that EA has pressed in the last year or so. For more information, visit their web site.

I ran into the same problem with Archon published by Electronic Arts. The copy protection was incompatible with the Epson Equity I BIOS. Electronic Arts "support" suggested getting another computer to play the game (which wasn't realistic for me at the time). Instead, I found a cracked version of the game where the copy protection was skipped and the game played fine on my existing computer.

More recently, I have found that I need to crack any games that use SafeDisc v1 to play them on my DVD-ROM drive. For whatever reason, it treats using the original CD as if it's a copy but the crack version will use the DVD-ROM drive for playing just fine. Neither Macrovision or the game publishers provide any useful help in getting these older games working with DVD-ROM drives.

The question becomes, if the long term solution is to get a cracked version then why pay for the original version in the first place?

Well it seems that at least in some situations the record labels are in a very funny cycle of self-flagellation.

Agreed. To see just how far this can go, take a look at this article (yes, I edited it) illustrating the situation in Germany. The Germans are currently dealing with near 100% corrupt disc releases, and people really are not at all happy. Perhaps this is worth bearing in mind considering Arista's recent announcement re US corrupt disc releases. Does the record industry really want to create the same destructive downward spiral in the US as there is now in Germany? At least Sony appear to have seen the light and have given up with corrupt releases, but EMI still appear to be believing Midbar/Macrovision propaganda.

Let's just hope these folks don't start getting any new ideas...

The real reason VHS was better than betamax.. and all /. editors know this: Better Copies.

Why does this merit a "sigh"? They're not talking about another DRM implementation here - apparently Roblimo doesn't understand this.

Asset and License Management Software has been around for years. In case you're confused, Macrovision is NOT talking about the product activation you see in Windows XP or TurboTax. Rather, they're talking about something like KeyServer, which allows large organizations to buy one copy of Photoshop or something, and "Key" it, so that it can only be unlocked by talking to a KeyServer. This allows you specify the number of concurrent users on the network, and any other number of restrictions (which workstations can use it, etc). This is extremely cost-effective for companies - they buy, say, 5 licenses of photoshop, key it, and then make sure only 5 users can use it at once. Thus, when the BSA comes knocking on the door and says "Hey, you have 100 computers - we demand 100 licenses", they can say "sorry, we enforce concurrent use of no more than 5 copies of the app. Have a nice day." It also prevents employees from stealing a copy of Photoshop and taking it home with them (it won't work). However, this solution is only available on Windows and Mac (and, for the longest time, it was Mac only). I don't see why this is such a problem that it now runs on Linux.

What this means is that WidgetCo, which uses, say, Matlab, and has 200 workstations, can save a ton of money by only purchasing 50 licenses. The MathWorks (matlab makers) won't have a problem with this as long as they can be assured that no more than 50 copies will be running concurrently. (And no, the honor system doesn't work anymore). FLEXlm software (what Macrovision is offering) can help assure this. This setup is what many colleges or large institutions use to assure that commerical software on UNIX is abiding by the terms of their licensing agreements or package deals.

So now WidgetCo can save even more money, because instead of having to buy costly Solaris licenses to run a platform that supports licensing software, they can now use Linux, and yet another big institution will be running GNU/Linux.

I know it would be nice if everyone using Linux also used other GNU software to get their jobs done, but really, there's always going to be commerical software. We should be cheering the fact that there is one less obstacle for large organizations to adopt Linux and still maintain their licensing agreements with the big commercial software firms. In fact, FLEXlm has been around for a long time (at least since '91), but it was only for certain flavors of UNIX (read: Solaris). All that happened is that Macrovision bought out the company, and released a version that runs on Linux. Good for them.

Your thinking of Macrovision.

Its not a modulation, but a false colour burst in the composite video signal.

This works by fooling the Automatic Gain Control systems in VCRs so the gain of the recorded signal wobbles - on playback this produces the effects you see.

Its also in DVD player chipsets to stop you recording DVDs.

"If DRM could be implemented without restricting access to memory in my own computer I probably wouldn't mind it so much. The problem is that DRM cannot be implemented without this restriction."

Wrong! DRM could be implemented in hardware in the soundcard. So the music never gets decripted by the CPU.

Or even the music could be decripted by digital speakers so the only way you'ld have to make a copy is with a microphone. That only until a system like Macrovision is made for sound.

I recommend reading this essay

Music CDs as well, for at least a year. You can read more from here. Obviously Europe at least buys more than copy protected DVD's and software.

(k) CERTAIN ANALOG DEVICES AND CERTAIN TECHNOLOGICAL MEASURES-

(1) CERTAIN ANALOG DEVICES-

(A) Effective 18 months after the date of the enactment of this chapter, no person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide or otherwise traffic in any--

[. . .]

(iii) Beta format analog video cassette recorder, unless such recorder conforms to the automatic gain control copy control technology, except that this requirement shall not apply until there are 1,000 Beta format analog video cassette recorders sold in the United States in any one calendar year after the date of the enactment of this chapter;

Hey kids, look! FUD!

I wonder if they're going to attribute increased sales to "strengthed" copy protection schemes. You know, those strengthened schemes that force legitimate users to find and download the NoCD crack.

Don't know about you, but I'm looking forward to a 2003 chock full of games whose copy protection scheme isn't compatible with my CD-ROM. I'm sure it's stopping pirates, though!

Today, I have a failed install of MathCAD 2001i. This is a professional tool for people who do math-heavy engineering calculations. It's about as far as you can get from entertainment content. MathSoft made the mistake of using Macrovision copy protection technology. That protection scheme involves creating CD-ROMs that violate the CD-ROM spec, then recognizing them during installation. So it's similar to the "flawed CD" protection scheme for audio CDs. And, sure enough, it doesn't work reliably.

The installation required a reboot of Win2K (a violation of the Windows Logo Program requirements). Then the program complained that I had a debugger installed.

Now that's scary. Macrovision apparently thinks that anybody with development tools (in this case, Microsoft Visual C++ 6.x) is trying to pirate software. The Macrovision program wasn't running under the debugger. The debugger wasn't even running. The debugger was merely installed on the machine.

A call to MathSoft tech support made it clear that this is a known problem. MathSoft suport admits to using Macrovision copy protection, and admits that they've had considerable problems with their protection scheme. They're trying to get Macrovision to fix it, not with much success.

This rather expensive product comes with a 90-day warranty. I told MathSoft support that I want a fix by Monday, or it goes back. I'm also going to try to get Microsoft to pull MathSoft's right to use the "Designed for Windows" logo for nonconformance with the logo standards for nonintrusive, compatible installation.