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CD Copy Stopper

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the going-to-extremes dept.

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."

3 of 612 comments (clear)

  1. Re:We've been over this... by Dark+Nexus · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I believe the intent for this is more for software than music or video.

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

    --
    Dark Nexus
    "Sanity is calming, but madness is more interesting."
  2. No hardware changes needed? Really? by Anonymous+Canard · · Score: 4, Interesting
    It seems pretty disingenuous to me for them to claim that their technology is compatible with current hardware. Where hardware and firmware are sold as a single entity, I read that expecting to find some sort of protection system that would interact with current firmware, but they clearly need a trusted client on the device to interact with the smart card since they have to rely on that software not giving away the decrypt key. In other words, these may play on the current mechanical hardware, but they certainly won't play on current CD or DVD players without first getting a firmware upgrade. In all this isn't much different from shipping a separate smart card and CD-ROM.

    At least I can't see any way to trust a client once it has been transferred to the general purpose computing platform; at that point the software is open to inspection and its secrets won't remain hidden very long.

    --

    --
    BitTorrent in C -- LibBT
    http://www.sf.net/projects/libbt
  3. I don't buy it. by BeBoxer · · Score: 5, Interesting

    A photodetector at the edge of the CD turns the drive's laser light into electrical pulses, which travel to the embedded smart card and request the key.

    I suppose it's conceivable that this might be possible with a CD-RW drive. But with a regular CD-ROM drive? I think that's bullshit, plain and simple. It's not like there is any command for sending data to the laser of a read-only drive. Do they send the request in morse code by turning the drive off and on again?

    I think this is just more snake oil being peddled by folks who know the can make an easy buck off of nervous media executives. My guess is, it'll work fine during the dog and pony sales presentation, it'll cause endless support headaches for paying customers, and be trivially bypassed by the warez folks.

    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!