CD Copy Stopper

CTho9305 writes "Technology Review has an article about a new CD and DVD copy protection system by Doc-Witness, where the disc itself has a smart card on it. The card checks if a request is valid, and then returns a key to decrypt the contents of the disc. It apparently works with standard drives."

Comments

what?

[supernova87a]

How can this possibly be claimed to work with standard drives?

Our dvd players read the optical stream from the disc, and then decode it video out. What is this chip supposed to do -- decrypt on the fly and send a new optical pattern to the read head? I don't think so.

I think someone is trying to push a new kind of dvd drive that requires the discs to have smart cards...

Re:what?

[Biolo]

You're thinking too linearly. This can't work on audio CD's, but I imagine they are just aiming at
data CD's (and DVD's coming soon if you believe them).

There will be a piece of authentication code in the installer (or whatever). This will be responsible for interacting with the smartcard to send it that initial information pulse. It will then ask the drive to re-read the "smartcard area" of the disk until it gets a response (decryption key), and will use that to decrypt the rest of the disk. Since DVD drives can run code also they will be able to use this same scheme there.

'course all the Warez'ers will have to do is replace the initial installer code once they've accessed the drypt key, so I give new titles a week after they are released before there are cracked versions going about.

One worrying question - are they getting all the power for the smartcard from that laser pulse? Really? Probably means a battery, so your CD or DVD now has an even more limited lifetime. Tinker with the battery size and Hollywood now has a way to program in obsolescence into that new DVD, forcing you to buy a new copy!

Re:what?

[fireweaver]

I am suspecting that the way this works is that there is supplied with the disc a separate authentication key that the user enters into his PC. Software would then modulate the CD-R's laser in a manner similar to a CD writer. The smart card looks for that signal and returns the appropriate response, I.e. the decryption key.

I think that the fancy CD is just -part- of a total programme here.

Gut feeling: It will be cracked in a week.

Re:what?

[Coplan]

One worrying question - are they getting all the power for the smartcard from that laser pulse? Really? Probably means a battery, so your CD or DVD now has an even more limited lifetime. Tinker with the battery size and Hollywood now has a way to program in obsolescence into that new DVD, forcing you to buy a new copy!

It all comes down to a scene in a demoscene demo of years ago. The demo is called "Eden". I can't remember the group that designed it..."Psychic Monks" or something like that. Anyhow...there was a scene where there was an oldskool anti-soviet poster stating "Big Brother is Watching". But instead of Lenin on the poster, it was Elvis. I always thought that was a funny paralelle, as the entertainment industry is always trying to find more ways to charge more for consumers.

I'm still on the fence about this one. Am I happy that Hollywood/RIAA wants to come up with some sort of encryption system built into their media? No. But I can sorta see where they're coming from. After all, if that were your business, you'd try to figure a way around it as well.

However, the gaming industry might have realized one minor fact that Hollywood and RIAA have overlooked -- spend all your money on research, and its likely going to get wasted. It doesn't matter what you do, someone will find a way around your "security". The goal of an entertainment industry is literally just to make more gains than losses (profit). I'd be curious to know (if there is a way to measure it) the difference between the net loss relative to piracy and the cost put into research for anti-piracy devices such as this. I wouldn't be surprised if it came close to balancing out.

The reality of the entertainment industry...with some exceptions, a movie, or a CD or a game or anything of the sort has a life span. It is popular for a certain amount of time, and then people loose interest. They get interested in the next new thing. The industry could take advantage of that.

Re:what?

[oenone01]

Ok so how does the onboard diode get its power?

Comparison to WinXP copy protection

[McCart42]

Granted, Windows XP had nothing this advanced on the disc itself, but the methods of circumventing this new protection device will likely be the same as the ways WinXP's product activation was circumvented. Just reverse engineer the code, find the references to the smart chip, and remove those references. Granted, one won't be able to just "copy the disc", but cracked ISOs can still be theoretically distributed. It'll be interesting to watch.

Re:Comparison to WinXP copy protection

[Erasmus Darwin]

"Granted, one won't be able to just "copy the disc", but cracked ISOs can still be theoretically distributed."

Sure. But remember that copy protection doesn't have to completely prevent copying to be effective. Instead, it merely has to make the legal purchase more attractive than the copyright infriged copy, at least to some consumers.

In this case, it sounds like each and every DVD would have to be cracked by someone with a good deal of skill and possibly some special equipment. Compare that to "cracking" CDs, where you can get pre-made tools that handle all the effort of ripping CDs, encoding them as mp3s, and even naming the files to match the CD info.

Company claims unbreakable copy protection.

[SpanishInquisition]

Film at 11.

They're Destroying It

[KelsoLundeen]

Maybe it's just me, but does it dawn on no one -- at least no one at the RIAA and perhaps the MPAA (Jack "Maddog ... Grrrrrrr!" Valenti in particular) that they (and by "they" I mean the RIAA and the MPAA) are slowly destroying the promise (so-called, of course) of digital technology?

All this stuff -- from half-assed watermarking, to government-sanctioned hack attacks on 14 year-old Kazaa users, threatening to throw them in federal high security lockups -- all this stuff is destroying what it's attempting to preserve.

Re:They're Destroying It

[Colz Grigor]

Would that it were so...

Remember that the 14-year-old Kazaa users tend to still be significantly more intelligent than the average population.

Anyone below average scares the crap out of me and, by definition, that's 50% of everyone.

With Microsoft and Dell making computers that any idiot could buy and use (Jeez... just take a look at Dell's spokesperson!), we'll actually have at least half the population buying these copy-protected CDs without thinking twice about Fair Use.

So much for voting with out wallets. We're going to actually have to vote with our votes during every upcoming election. Our best course of action is to educate those that are educable and motivate them to cast their votes every time they have a chance.

It's society's own apathy that's going to wind up allowing ..AA to kill digital content.

::Colz Grigor

Re:They're Destroying It

[Arcturax]

More like they are doing all they can to stop the inevitable. Their business model fails with today's technology and they know it and are doing whatever they can to squeeze what little they still can from it. Instead of embracing the technology and working the problem of making a new buisiness model around it, they are thrashing to and fro as they slowly die, doing anything to extend their life a little longer.

Case in point... last weekend I was at Conglomeration (nice mid sized sci-fi con held near Lousiville) and attended a panel by the directors of the home made movie "Rock and Roll Starship". I brought up computer technology and he told me that since the advent of things like iMovie and companies like Adobe and Apple making what was once high end movie software cheap enough for the masses, that the number of people who are interested in starting their own independant movie making groups has skyrocketed. He said that anymore, movie making is going more and more independant and it is only a matter of time before Hollywood loses control to groups of kids who are able to make their own films and put them up on the internet or burn them to DVD and sell them at cons.

True, the flashiest looking stuff will always come from big budget Hollywood, but independant film makers are going to catch up enough to make some stuff which looks pretty nice on their own. That and some of the independant stuff is pretty damn good story wise, better so than a lot of Hollywood fluff.

In fact, I was able to see a rough cut of their second movie and comment on it, to influence the final version, which was very cool! Their first movie came out in 1997, had shaky camera work, Dr. Who like special effects and the sound was a bit buzzy.

This next one, though a rough cut, already looked a lot better. The sound hadn't been cleaned up yet and there were only a few "test" effects, but from what there was in there the new movie will look as professional as something that Hollywood might put out.

Times are changing and you will see more and more of this as time goes on. Hollywood had better prepare itself, because the computer is going to bring on the age of the independant film, and nothing they do is going to stop it.

Craziness!

[case_igl]

I have the kids that run around my house. They wake up, eat breakfast, and then go outside and collect all manner of nasty goo on their little fingers.

Then they come in for lunch, "play" computer, and muck up CDs. I'm not talking about my really important stuff that is snuggled away - I'm talking about the games they are alloyed to play...God forbid they get their hands on Warcraft 3!

I always make burnt copies of CDs for the kids to use, so that when they roll over it with the toy car and crack it I can just make a new one.

I know piracy is a problem for the industry, but it just sickens me at how legitimate fair use gets slaughtered for people like me!

And forget the "I won't be buying any of THESE CDs line" -- that only works until Toy Story 17 comes out on DVD....

Case

Re:Craziness!

[mark_space2001]

Hmm, this gadget doesn't seem like something you'd put on a Warcraft CD. Too expensive, and also for the reason you mention (kids getting their dirty mits all over the optical smart card thing, rendering it usless), the customer support would be a potential nightmare for Blizzard.

It does seem like soemthing that Mircosoft would put on a $279 CD of MS Office, to stop IT staff from making a few extra copies or to stop employees from making a personal copy at home. It might work too, as the support costs for high end packages might justify the cost of the smart card dohickey.

Hmm, but you'd have to insert a differt CD every time you'd want to start a different program, and if you want to store your Excel spread sheet on a CD-RW, it'd be a two step process, or you'd need two drives.

Kinda a wash if you ask me. Not suited to low end, and the high end would probably complain too much. Shrug. We'll see I guess.

key management

[russcoon]

How quickly they forget:

If you are forced to distribute the secret in an insecure way, the game's over. Better yet. it only takes one read to copy the data.

I guess it's a nice idea that just misses the point.

this is fantastic

[GoatPigSheep]

(sarcasm)
YES! This is great news!

Thanks to this new technology, the price of CD's should plummet, as it will be impossible to rip them!

Finally, they have solved the problem of piracy and can now lower the price of CD's since they will not be 'losing money' anymore (a slow economy doesn't count)
(/sarcasm)
Yeah, right. I bet those greedy pigs will raise the price of cd's even more citing the need to produce 'anti-theft technology'

Re:Oh boy:: me not worried, it won't work

[gerf]

It is impracticable to crack since it is hardware based and is based on dynamic protection

Sorry to say, but hardware has been 'cracked' and hacked before, and will be done again.

At some point in your computer, the signal must be decoded for regular use. All someone has to do, is find this signal, and use that to copy a CD or DVD (DVD burners are getting out more and more...). I'm sorry, but i really don't think that this, or any technology in general, is going to work perfectly, to a consumer's satisfaction. Problems::

1. As has happened so many times, the media screws up on Average Joe consumer.

2. Those who want to copy/crack/hack it, will. They can't stop it.

Old hardware, like quad-speed CD-roms and the like, won't work. Hardware varies, from year to year, from manufacturer to manufacturer, from country to country, from pc to car audio. Things will not work for someone, and people don't like that. It's just bad karma man!

I think you guys are confused

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of the comments so far are about the RIAA, MPAA, CDs, DVDs, etc. I think you're missing the point of this technology. The idea seems to be that by embedding a smart card in the disc, some piece of software can check that the disc is actually the original. This does not in any way prevent you from copying it. All it does is allow some appropriately knowledgeable piece of software to distinguish the copy from the original.

You know all those PC games that require you to have the CD in the drive in order to play, even though the game itself is fully installed on the hard drive? This is just a more sophisticated version of that. But now, if you copy the disc, the software will be able to distinguish between its original disc and the copy (and presumably refuse to run if the disc is a copy).

Thus it is only applicable to executable content, not to data-only music CDs or DVDs. It could only be made applicable to them with external help-- there would have to be something in the players that knew to check the smart card to determine authenticity.

At least that's the way I read it. But I could be wrong.

Cost of media vs. "cost" of piracy

[dcavanaugh]

I guess this is where we find out if piracy has any real cost associated with it. If piracy really does cause the massive losses that RIAA says it does, then it would be worth their while to try a media-based solution, even if it raises their cost. The retail price of CDs is set by what the market will bear, not by the cost of production. If I can buy a blank for 25 cents, I know the music industry is getting a better deal in bulk.

If RIAA members still want to get $18 per CD and this hardware/media hybrid protects the ability to do that, then they will absorb the cost. On the other hand, if piracy "problem" is merely a smoke screen to attack low-cost/online/non-RIAA distribution, then this technology is dead-on-arrival. Time will tell.

Insufficient.

[Faile]

This wont work. It doesnt sound any different from the protections companies employ now where the CD has a magic key or secret uncopyable section on it. Pirates simply copy the part of the CD that is readable and then use a cracked executable distributed on the CD that doesnt bother looking for the secret section or bytes.

Until it's impossible to copy all the information on a CD this is the way illegal games and applications are distributed. This innovation, however ingenious wont make a dent in the pirate industry.

Re:this is very limited in usability

[Saint Fnordius]

1. This is nothing more than a CD that carries its own dongle. This might be attractive to companies like Quark and Microsoft, but isn't applicable to music CDs.

2. The company hasn't said how much this costs. If the price is much higher than what it costs to mass-produce normal CDs/DVDs, then only a few software publishers will bite. Also, not every CD production facility will be willing to invest in new machines.

3. PR releases tend to hype (and even lie) about how many companies are "interested" in an attempt to lure the others in. We need to shine more light on this subject fast.

That it deems appropriate?

[dinotrac]

Hmmm.

Suppose we presume that this magic card really, really works.
Assume it is the fly, cats-pajamas, Golly-Gee-Whiz-Neato, super deluxe, smokin', king of the hill, rad copy protection of all time.
So perfect it gets canonized in Rome.

So ---
It determines what it considers to be legitimate requests?

How does it tell the difference between a completely legal archive copy and an illegal copy?

How does it know the difference between a completely legal archive copy (a right protected by federal law, BTW) of an archive copy made because the original disk was destroyed?

How does it know the difference between an illegal installation on another computer and a legal installation on an upgraded computer? A legal installation on another computer that replaces the first one?

Is this smart card also a legal scholar, familiar with fair use exceptions?

Unlike many here, I believe in intellectual property rights and have no problem protecting them.

I have a big problem, however, with protecting intellectual property rights by taking away my rights and those of everybody else.

Store owners aren't allowed to protect against robbery by shooting everyone who looks like they might steal something. IP owners shouldn't be able to protect against theft by infringing on the legitimate rights of their potential customers.

Re:That it deems appropriate?

[Reziac]

And what happens when your uncopyable disk gets damaged, and the company is no longer around to provide replacement media? Or decides to charge an arm and a leg for replacement media?

Or worse yet, REFUSES to provide replacement media, and instead requires that you PURCHASE an upgrade? (I've actually seen this happen with copy-protected software. My client purchased a competing product instead.)

Dude, you gatta get a Dell.

[FreeLinux]

You are so right it scares the crap out of me.

These things ARE coming to pass because the general population *is* voting with it's wallet. MOst people buying CD players and CDs have no clue what copy protection or digital rights management is. If you try to explain it to them they still don't get it. What they do get is that, I buy this great CD player and these CDs and I can listen to the latest cool tunes. Their not thrilled with the cost of the CDs but, "hey, what are you gonna do?". "Dude, you gotta get the latest Brittney Spears CD it is SO sweat and did you see that shot of here on the back of the cover?"

Like a dear in the headlights, most people don't even know that they are being screwed, much less care.

Quite right, and possibly a Good Thing

[bbqBrain]

Yes, the mfr. tech page only mentions "CD-ROM/DVD-ROM media". And, if this is the case, I have no problem with it. IMO, companies/people who produce software for pay have the right to collect money for its use. With that said, I do not support (with my pocketbook) commercial software, with the rare exception of a game I really want.

I think something like OpSecure could prove to have a positive effect on Free software. Consider that, as publishers find more effective ways to prevent license violation and unfettered copying/distribution of their wares, many PC users will be forced to make a decision that they have not in the past: 1) Pay for a legitimate copy of a given title, or 2) Use a Free (or free) alternative. Consider how many people today buy one copy of MS Office and install it on several machines or share it with friends and family. If the license enforcement becomes difficult to circumvent, a three-machine Office purchase will suddenly skyrocket from a few hundred to over a thousand dollars--more than the cost of a new PC! This opens the door for low-cost (StarOffice) and no-cost (OpenOffice, KOffice, Gnome Office) alternatives to establish a foothold in the market.

The end result? I guess that depends on the big guys' response. MS, for instance, might dramtically reduce prices for its Office suite, which also has short-term benefits for the public. This may not be sustainable, though. The funny part is this: unlike Wal-Mart, which moves into town and sells (concrete) goods at cut-rate prices until the competition disappears, there is no way to run the competitors out of business when they give their (intangible) goods away for free. How long can MS' Office division remain profitable in this scenario?

To sum up my rambling, improved software license enforcement could, in a delicious display of irony, promote Free software adoption.

Use virtual machines

[cyber_rigger]

It seems to me the you could
install the CD into a virtual machine
and then just copy the entire virtual machine.

I hate it when companies go out of their way
to make something not work.

Well the truth is

[dnoyeb]

The truth of security is that its inversly proportional to the number of people with a desire to circumvent it.

It will NEVER work in any form for the music industry. For the software industry its just a matter of how popular your software is...

that reminds me..

[gimpboy]

I swear, I don't know where they finds the folks who sign on to these deals. Have a problem with piracy? Make your product less attractive than the warez version by saddling it with a bunch of flakey 'copy protection' technology. That'll help your market share!

i had friends who used a program, 3d studio i believe, which used to rquire a hardware dongle. this wasnt really a problem, except they had about 2 or 3 other software packages which required the dongle. finally they started installing the warez versions-even though they had legally purchased the software. it was just easier to deal with the warez version than the big tumor of dongles hanging off the back of their computers.

Re:We've been over this...

[NanoGator]

"Consider this the logical evolution of the hardware dongle that 3DS Max once did, and possibly still does."

This is great for verifying media. However, the dongle comment put a scary thought in my head. I'm not sure if you intended to imply that the media could be used as a dongle, but let's pretend you did mean that:

There are a couple of problems: 1.) The dongle becomes very delicate and 2.) I've only got one CD drive, what happens when I want to run Lightwave and 3DS Max at the same time? (I.e. translating a model...)

If they can solve that, no worries. But I do hope they don't use it (protection/restriction-wise) for more than just verifying the media is original.

Re:Oh boy:: me not worried, it won't work

[ranulf]

You would have to have the program attempting to verify send a random piece of data to the CD smartcard, which signs it with a private key and sends it back.

How is this substantially different introducing bad ECC data on the disk and checking for that? I can see how this will stop no-brainer solutions that attempt to burn the same incorrect ECC signal to a disk when doing a raw disk copy (as I guess the laser needs to move around the disk in a predetermined manner), but it won't stop the "real hackers". Basically it'll be the same difficulty as current systems - just remove the section of the code that performs the check and the system is worthless. Are there any games on the market you can't get wares versions of if you look hard enough?

And it's always the legitimate users of the software that have to suffer. For instance, look at the no-cd hacks for pretty much any game you care to mention. People who paid money for the game have an added inconvenience when playing, people who pirated the game just load it straight from hard disk.

I think it's really about time that companies just started trusting their customers as their attempts at copy protection seem to achieve little except annoying genuine customers.

Silly, silly, silly.

[CrystalFalcon]

Ok, so for all intents and purposes, this is a dongle. It's an active piece of the CD that contains hardware that can be used for challenge/response mechanisms used for copy protection.

Has anybody ever heard of cracks for dongle-protected software? (insert roaring laughter here).

Silly fools. Marketing anything as "uncrackable" is going to shoot you in the foot. This is no more secure than SafeDisc, it just requires a patch to the binaries (don't check that disc) and you're good to go.

If a computer can read it, it can be cracked.

Re:ugh.

[pete-classic]

If it was scratched due to your clumsiness, you need to either invest in a bottle of KlearKote or another DVD.

Bullshit. Media damage happens, that's why backups are part of fair use.

I would gladly buy a new copy of the DVD, but I refuse to by a second license for the movie.

In other words, "they" want their cake and eat it to; when the media becomes dammaged I "own" it, but if I want to act like I own it I'm "just" licensing it.

Fuck that, I deserve either fair use backups OR at cost media replacement. But they have left me with the options of either buying a second license for no reason, or "pirating" it.

-Peter

The idea is a paradox, always were, always will be

[Kynde]

Copy protection is a paradox for one-way media (like CDs/DVDs/TV/Radio/etc... Plain and simple.

As long as the end-user, i.e. the viewer, cannot be trusted in all circumstances, there is no way on earth to protect it, because at some point along the line from the DVD to the TV electron cannon or LCD crystals the signal must be deciphered.

There will always be people that will capture that and put it out as an mp3 or DivX.

Re:I bet $20...

[fishbowl]

"A few years ago I worked for a smart card company and we thought about doing this very thing. We realized very quickly, however, that the key securely stored on the smart card has to get passed out of the smart card and into software to be useable."

If you'd only patented it, you would now be in a
position to either quash the development of this
"technology" or else to collect royalties on all
media sold with your invention.