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DVD Watermarking On Its Way
Cranston Snord writes: "A group of seven major players in the DVD market has come together to form the Video Watermarking Group, which will be submitting a spec to the DVD-Copy Control Association in July. More info is available from this article on Business2.0. With the recent SDMI Watermark crack saga, it's hard not to see the storm clouds looming..." This article has more information about how the waterworking would work.
I do not think that word means what you think it means...
And yet, the method is still effective. Anyone would be able to tell at a glance whether or not a disk was pirated. With a number for an antipiracy put into DVD boxes, this would provide the movie companies with a very effective method of stopping piracy: consumer policing. Believe it or not, most people actually don't want to pirate movies, and most would probably be more than happy to turn in pirated discs, as well as whoever sold the discs to them. And yet, this method would still allow legitimate copies to be made. It's the best of all worlds. It's not as effective at stopping all piracy as Draconian methods like watermarking, but it doesn't punish a single innocent, and in the end that's what is truly important.
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Okay, in case it needs repeating -- and it probably does:
Copying is not theft. Period.
That said, if this watermarking scheme were intended to protect the reputations of the people who created the film, then I'd be all for it. For artists, reputation is what's really at stake here. A watermarking scheme would help thwart someone copying an artist's work and passing it off as their own.
As it is, it's going to be used by the DVD player's firmware to determine whether the user has "permission" to view the content on that disc, which is a pointless exercise.
The central flaw here is that the studios are failing to acknowledge that the users don't give a rat's ass about what the studios claim is, "their property."
I mean, think about this: In the mind of the average consumer, posession is nine-tenths of the law, especially when they have a receipt to back it up. Yet the studio claims the receipt is meaningless -- they believe they still get to tell the user what they can and can't do with it after the fact. Name a single consumer who's going to buy in to the idea that they should pay for the privilege of being bossed around simply to protect the pocketbook of a guy who's already filthy stinking rich. Where's the value to the consumer in such an arrangement?
On the other hand, if the encryption/watermarking were there to preserve the creator's reputation so that it couldn't be usurped, I think you'd get a lot of consumers to heartily sign on to that bandwagon.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
Only if copyright law allows you that fair use, for example in UK copyright law, there is no such thing as "fair use".
In the UK, according to the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act it would be even illegal to make a recording of a song, even for your own personal use. Don't believe me? - look at the section about Infringement of copyright by copying section which states that "This includes storing the work in any medium by electronic means".
If you think this falls under "fair use", think again, there is no such thing. There is a section called "fair dealing" which allows certain exceptions and copying for personal use (as opposed to personal study) is not one of them.
Oh, and one of the clinchers is that if you are unprepared, you can be convicted for copyright infringement on a work that has passed into the public domain, because "it shall be presumed [that it was copied illegally] until the contrary is proved, that the article was made at a time when copyright subsisted in the work."
So, in the UK, you can only legally access a work in extremely limited ways, and you can be found guilty until you can prove otherwise
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Exigo spamos et dona ferentes
No one objects to them trying to minimize piracy. The problem is they are taking it too far and these schemes are interfering with the consumers Fair Use of the product. Under which I have the right to make backup copies in case the original is damaged, I also have the right to listen to/watch the product in any format I choose on any device I choose. For example, I can take a CD I have purchases and record it onto a cassette tape and listen to it in my car or at work. I can make copies of my video tapes and take them to a friends house to watch. I can also use a TV tuner card to convert my video tapes to realvideo and watch them on my laptop. All this is very legal under Fair Use and are by no means a bad thing. The media companies want to deny me the ability to do any of these things with DvD's and this is a bad thing. The media companies and upto this point, the courts, are assuming the only purpose of programs like DeCSS is to pirate DvD movies. The reality is, there are no known cases of DeCSS having been used to pirate any movie, so the correct assumption should be that legal users are using it for Fair Use purposes. DvD Pirates are going to make copies no matter what, so the only people who are being penalized is legal users. This was very likely thier intent to begin with.
Jesus died for sombodies sins, but not mine.
"Our products just aren't engineered for security,"
-Brian Valentine,VP in charge of MS Windows Development
Of all the stuff talked about in the article, the only one that made sense was a holographic image (a la the one on Microsoft product ID cards) that would actually be on the ring on the inside part of the DVD itself.
It won't stop people from copying the DVD's (Which is realistically an impossible goal) but it will make it very easy to determine whether a DVD is pirated or not. That will hopefully protect people from being scammed and buying bootlegs unintentionally and it doesn't require some watermarking or encryption scheme that is doomed to fail.
As the article also mentions it will make it very easy for law enforcement to ID bootleggged DVDs. That's the route they need to take. Go after the scum who are actually profiting off of other peoples work. That's who's costing them real money and frankly, that's a whole lot easier to get a handle on than trying to come up with yet another copy protection scheme that just pisses the customer off...
It says, "...the Content Scrambling System (CSS) decryption key also resides on the physical disc cannot be copied, and without the decryption key, the .VOB video won't play from the DVD or from your hard disk..."
Wrong, wrong. The DeCSS key recovery attack designed by Frank Stevenson can be applied to the .VOB ciphertext directly as in the DeCssPlus application. You can decrypt the .VOB ciphertext without having to access any of the keys on the DVD. The bottom line is that CSS is a very weak cryptosystem, further crippled by the fact that it is based upon the concept of a trusted client.
Further on in that article, they go on to blame Xing for forgetting "..to encrypt its decryption key." What a load. They didn't forget anything. The bottom line is that in order for software to decrypt the DVD, the player key needs to be in plaintext at some point in the software execution.
This just further reinforces Bruce Schneier's valid point about the impossibility of having a trusted client. Watermarking attempts will eventually fail as well.
(Drat, pressed the enter key in the subject line!)
Does not the sheer number of copy protection schemes on a single disc strike anyone as ludicrous?
So, on my copy of Star Wars Episode III, I'll have:
* Macrovision
* CSS
* Watermarking
and none of that can prevent me from making an easy copy in any way. A modified player disables macrovision. It decodes CSS when it plays the movie back, and the watermark is irrelevent to an unaware format (pick one, there's tons of them out there and they aren't magically going away)
If I as an individual person can so easily copy a disc, how are any of those things supposed to stop pirates? As mentioned previously, bit-by-bit copies circumvent any means of digital protection. Copy protection is a huge waste of money that threatens to drive the price of DVDs higher.
That's the best anti-piracy tool that the industry has going for it - most DVD's are priced reasonably. Sure I can make a copy, but why would I want to? I'm going to buy movies that I like. The price is right. That's all they have to do, is keep prices reasonable.
Mike Massee
You bet it was their intent. You see, all the things you say you want to do with your movies are things that can become profit centers for the media companies. You want to be able to watch a movie on your laptop, perhaps while you're on a plane? Sure, we can help you with that. Just plug your laptop into this Ethernet port here, key your credit card number into the seatback terminal, and you'll have your choice of hundreds of movies, all for one low price, to watch while you fly. Did your DVD get damaged? Oh, sorry about that, but don't worry, they're cheap, so you can just buy another one. Do you need excerpts of this film for a presentation? No problem. For a small licensing fee, we can supply you with a package of pre-selected promotional clips. It's the same story for any other form of media. All this furor over piracy is just an attempt to make sure content is locked down, not from pirates, but from anyone who might want to use it in other than the strictly prescribed way. The media companies know full well that this won't stop pirates. All it will do is limit what everyone else can do with media content, providing the companies the opportunity to sell those rights back to consumers. Don't believe for a second that these guys are stupid. They aren't. They know that if they lay out all their reasons for locking down content, it would become clear that they're trampling all over people's fair use rights, so they hide behind the piracy argument. Not only does this obscure their true motives, it facilitates a heavy-handed crackdown on anyone who gets in the way. It's all about the money. For every way you might use media content, there is an opportunity for profit, if the media companies can erect an electronic toll booth. The more of these toll booths they can set up, the more money they can extract from you. DivX was one attempt to do this, but it failed because there was an alternative: DVDs. Sony's plan to authenticate PS2 games and lock them to one machine will be another. Restrictions on when and where you can play SDMI-protected music files will be another, as will the concept of limited-time-use books on CD-ROM. I'll even dust off my crystal ball and predict some others: PPV movies will be un-recordable, unless you pay a higher fee. Actually, SkyPix, a failed DBS venture in the early 1990s, was going to do this using Macrovision. If you paid a lower fee, Macrovision would prevent you from recording the movie. For a higher fee, the Macrovision would be turned off. For anyone who's wondering, this was done by sending instructions to the customer's receiver. You'll become unable to fast-forward through commercials recorded on your PVR. The networks have hated the fact that viewers could zap commercials on taped shows. Now, they finally have a way to stop it. How will they manage it? My guess is they'll say that their schedules are copyrighted material and demand that if the PVR makers want to use them, they'll have to meet their demands. Some shows will, like PPV, become un-recordable. The technology to do this has already been mandated for digital set-top boxes by the FCC. This will let the content owners sell copies of these programs to consumers who would otherwise just tape the shows. Music fans will be given the "opportunity" to buy different listening rights for their favorite songs. For one amount, you can listen on your home computer/stereo system, for a small additional fee, you can copy tracks to your car's audio system, and for yet another small fee, you can download songs into a portable player. But forget about sharing your tunes with your friends. These songs will only play on devices licensed to you. The fees won't be any lower than what you pay for standard CDs, even though the music companies' distribution cost will decrease dramatically, but that's OK because you're paying for the "convenience" of instantly downloading albums from the Internet. Electronic books won't be sold to you; they'll be leased. Are you in college? All you have to do is pay a subscription fee to whichever publisher your school has selected, and you'll always have access to its most up-to-date texts. But don't forget to get that payment in on time, or all your textbooks will suddenly disappear. Oh, and about those used textbooks, it was always a pain to go back to the bookstore and sell them at the end of the semester, wasn't it? Well, don't worry, that's no longer a problem, since you have nothing to resell anymore. Now repeat this aloud three times: "It isn't about piracy--it's about maximizing profits." Careful, though, because I believe that fact is a trade secret, so you might get sued if you say it too loudly.
That light you see at the end of the tunnel might be from an oncoming train.
Before anybody freaks out.. bear in mind that this is not a troll/flame.. Well.. not intended to be anyways.
This article is going to bring out the 'Why this/that' arguments about bad laws and such. I only want to point out that they are going after people that are STEALING movies. If you buy the DVD they are not trying to punish you. They are also doing exactly what many people in here asked for, fighting technology with technology.. Instead of sending waves of lawyers out they are trying to make it less 'plausable' to steal. Now, if they are trying to take away any fair use then I am going to complain, but to make things harder to steal is called security. My personal thoughts on the impact? None.. people will STILL be able to rip movies off DVD'd and download them over the net. It only takes ONE person to destroy there encryption scheme.. it takes hundreds of lawyers to defend the people.