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Custom DVDs & Players For Academy Members
xyankee writes "In an effort to curtail the piracy and bootlegging of DVD screeners, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has endorsed a plan to distribute about 6,000 special DVD players to members that will play specially encrypted screener discs that would be earmarked for a specific academy voter and would play only on that person's machine. The Associated Press has the full story, while Laurence Roth, VP and co-founder of Cinea, Inc., the company behind the technology, says 'the discs, by themselves, cannot be hacked.'"
Cause it's not like the original DVDs were encrypted against hacking either.
Note to self: No more arguing with the faithful.
"the discs, by themselves, cannot be hacked."
Setting themselves up for a MONSTROUS fall there...
oh, this is mandatory:
how long till the "discs that cannot be hacked themselves" will be hacked?
two hours, or two weeks? (remember de-CSS code printed on t-shirts?)
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#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
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I think this has quite a good chance of being secure. With such a small number of players that aren't publicly available, and with no need for backward compatibility, they can throw in more DRM than you can shake a stick at. Heck, it even appears to record on the disc each time you play it.
Karma: Segmentation fault (tried to dereference a null post)
Someone give that Johanson kid a call.
Hate me!
If it has a video-out port, it can be used to copy the disk. Unless they plan on shipping integrated DVD players with a built-in screen it's not going to work.
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
Analog. Plug a VCR into the analog out and a $30 'video stabelizer' and you got a copy.
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
..the discs, by themselves, cannot be hacked..
I hope that quote gets used a little later on down the line, when some 14 year old writes a few lines of code that circumvents yet another uncrackable encryption / protection system...
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
"'the discs, by themselves, cannot be hacked.'"
uh huh.
In related news, "That gun isn't loaded" , "The dog doesnt bite" and "The Titanic is unsinkable"
Don't Tread on Me
You figure they would have done this straight out, instead of just shotgunning the discs out to everybody. Everybody wins - the voters get to watch the discs whenever they want, without having to deal with some crazy 24-hour mission impossible self-destructing DVD, the Academy is reasonably sure that some random relative won't be copying discs to put online, and they managed to do it without having to buy off any new politicians to pass another law restricting everybody's rights.
Yes, it isn't foolproof, but at least they're trying a reasonable solution, instead of poking everybody's eyes out with lawyers.
Of course, they could just say they were doing this, and then send everyone an el-cheapo DVD player with a special decal on the front. That might be enough to psych out someone.
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
Well, actually, if each disc is only meant to play on one specific player that they distribute, it would be incredibly easy to make it "unhackable". Just use a shared key encryption scheme. The only way it could be "hacked" is if you found a way to extract the shared key from the hardware dvd player or the shared key for a specific player was leaked mpaa. That could happen, but it's not to likely. And if you managed to come by one of these disc, it would really be impossible to hack (at least without incredible amounts of time or computing power).
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It is usually easier to control a small number of things, in this case 6000 discs and 6000 players. For example, if each player only had one key, and each DVD one key, and they were properly secured (wasn't it an unsecure key in a Xing DVD application that led to the original hacking?) then it would be pretty difficult to get around the protection.
... then they have no hope in the world.
If they mess up on security for 6000 discs and players for people with low technical knowledge
why hack when they can just get it analogically off the disc in extremely high quality as well?
somebody just invented a good way to milk money off from mpaa..
.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
but, wasn't decss possible only because one software player left its key out in the open? Seems to me you'd need to get hold of one of those special players if you were going to crack their partner discs.
Do you belive you can take 6000 people of any group and find one that isn't just flat out dirty and corrupt, or at the very least, easily corruptable? Or that many Academy members won't want to hook up a special DVD player each time they watch a movie? Remember, the studios want as many Academy members as they can to watch each movie, because only that gives them a shot of getting awarded. Every 'problem' a given member has with seeing a movie will reduce its chances come Oscar night.
These are all bandaids on a huge wound.
I thin this is the beginning of a new stratagem: In principle one could sell DVD players with individual signatures that can somehow burn a tag on an individual DVD, which makes it impossible to be read and played by any other player. Now THAT's DRM for you.
Black holes were created when god tried to divide by zero
whats it now..the alt key or the ctrl key?
They're using private, public key encryption. While this isn't impossible to crack can you imagine how long it will take to decode the data on a DVD? The film will be available to buy by the time you manage to crack it.
If the device is capable of outputting a standard video sognal for display on a monitor, encrypting the disc is almost pointless. The correlation between video quality and bootlegging worthiness is small. People in third world countries routinely rent movies filmed with handheld cameras- audience noise, mysterious shadows and crappy acoustics, etc.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
CSS was a pathetic algorithm written by incompetent cryptographers (after the one compromised key was found, the entire cryptosystem collapsed). Not to mention being hamstrung by 40 bits max.
I'm sure that this time around they use a proper algorithm like AES at 128 bit+. Good luck breaking that with the discs by themselves. Unless you have access to one of the 6000 players as well, it's not going to happen.
With that said, they DO have access to the players, and even if not, they can compare several watermarked copies to find the difference (watermark). It's not over yet...
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Cinea will invest several million dollars to make and distribute the DVD players to academy members and possibly to movie critics and other awards groups.
Your movie-ticket dollars at work.
Just give 'em a private streaming video website...
<grrr>
You might not be aware of this, but one reason for certain pay TV stations being hacked as easily as it was (and I'm not talking about analog "encryption") was that sufficient information leaked.
And as stated elsewhere: There's still the analog output. Sure, they might put have in some watermarking. They most likely did. But I frankly doubt that there is something like *robust* watermarking for audio and video without significantly impair the signal quality, thus causing noticeable artefacts. (If there is, I'd love to see a pointer to scientifical papers, cause I'm quite interested in such methods myself.)
Actually, all a pirate would need is a fastscan wide screen TV and a video camera to make a distributable copy.
They could sit at the end of the room and just rip it straight to DVD-R from the camera.
For the authenticity of a cinema rip however, it would be necessary to have people walk past the TV eating popcorn every few minutes, slurping sprite and coughing regularly through the soundtrack.
It would be a trivial task to add out of focus Japanese subtitles later using a standard mpeg editor.
------
beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his mind he dreams himself your master
DRM... MacroVision... special players & MAYBE one day special TVs... totally useless as long as the ultimate goal is to watch the movie... with unprotected human eyes
just take a digital camera, point it at the TV screen... et voila! Sure, won't be DVD quality, but, in home conditions, the quality will beat telesync =)
http://www.automatiq.se
Because if we know anything its that all dvd encryption is UNBREAKABLE and will protect the data forever and ever.
I don't really see why they need to go to the trouble of making each disc specific to one player, because that would just increase the cost of making a run of discs. There really shouldn't be a problem with playing a disc on another member's player. Adding a unique watermark to each player though, that shouldn't be much of a problem. But watch them screw things up so that the player firmware can be copied to a budget player.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
The studios would be expected to pay for a machine to encode its discs and a licensing fee to use Cinea's anti-piracy technology.
"So you are a small indie studio with that incredible good movie (just picked up all prizes in the european festivals).
Sorry, if you can't pay a few megabucks for the license & machines and some more kilobucks for making a few thousand individual watermarked DVDs, then the academy award is not for you.
We hope for your understanding, but we have to protect the interests of our good clients from the MPAA who are in in for business and have no problem of paying these small academy consideration fees. Thank you!
Best Regards,
Mr. Big Boss of Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
X IMPRIMITE "SALVE TERRA!"
XX ITE AD X
1) No one has ever successfully cracked the scheme. 2) The players could easily be manufactured again 3) The dial-up "feature" can be used to verify the academy award members are the ones watching the movie. I hated DIVX when it came out, but I can understand the studios wanting to protect their content, at least until the movie is out of the theatres. I can wait for the DVD like a good consumer, no need to pay bootleggers for someone elses work. Unless it is the original Star Wars DVD when Han shoots first.
'the discs, by themselves, cannot be hacked.'
You gotta be kidding. If I were some sort of technology bigwig and I wanted to buy a product and someone said those words to me I would do an about face and try real hard to not let the door hit my ass on the way out.
I would be much more impressed with the figures of what it would take to hack the discs. Cause in my opinion - encryption is made to be broken.
Now if he is saying that it cannot legally be hacked. Well that is probably true....
My understanding is that the DVD and player are matched. Each DVD can only be played on one player. This means that even if a DVD escapes, it likely cannot easily be played elsewhere. If a copy of the movie is made, then it was probably off the Academy Member's machine, and there is probably some way to identifiy the member based on artifacts within the movie.. This is quite different from the current situation in which a member can just claim that the disk was 'lost',
And yet one must wonder about the reason to go through such expense. Buying $6,0000 customizable DVD player that are hardened against attack cannot be cheap. Making sure that none of the unassigned DVD players hit the street must be expensive. Producing 60000 custom DVD cannot be cheap. From a bidness point of view, is there a real ROI from these costs? The theaters continue to rack up sales at astronimical rates. DVD sales continue at equal an equal nerve wrenching pace. But for some reason the Academy wants to concentrate on the management of custom DVD players rather than the creative act of making film. Madness.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
#include6 43034b96de9ed60b4e0e4\8 fca8ac21fd999d1004909419 0d898d001480840913d7d35246\4 75dd9dd5044d0d4594dc9cd4054c0 c449559195180c989c11058185\7 074f92da9ad20f4a0a429f53135b8 6c383cb165e1e568bce8ec61bb\6 abeeaee6fb37773f2267276f723a7 a322f6a2a627fb9f9b1a0e9a9e\d 1d5584cd8dc5145c1c5485cc8cc41 5bdfdb5a4edade5f4bcfcb4a5e\1 703878302168286071b7f7bfa2e7a 7eff2bafab2afeaaae2ff";) ^(lf0>>16))b=((lf1 \) \+ 1]]^F[key[tb0[i+1]]]^key [tb0[i]];}void CSStitlekey2\[ i+1]]^F[key[tb0[i+1]]]^key\; i++)im1[i]=dkey[i];l ekey2(tkey,im1);}
typedef unsigned int uint;
char ctb[512]="33733b2663236b763e7e362b6e2e667bd393db0
69b57175f82c787cf125a1a52
d2d65743c7c34256c2c6
081c888c011d797df024
3f3bba6e3a3ebf6befeb
1f0b8f8b0a1e8a8e0f15
cace4f53979312069296
typedef unsigned char uchar;uint tb0[11]={5,0,1,2,3,4,0,1,2,3,4};uchar* F=NULL;
uint lf0,lf1,out;void ReadKey(uchar* key){int i;char hst[3]; hst[2]=0;if(F==\
NULL){F=malloc(256);for(i=0;i>2
>>12)^(lf1>>20)^(lf1>>21)^(lf1>>24))lf0=(lf0>1
|(a>1)|(b>8)+x+y;} void \
CSSdescramble(uchar *sec,uchar *key){uint i;uchar *end=sec+0x800;uchar KEY[5];
for(i=0;i=0;\
i--)key[tb0[i+1]]=k[tb0[i
(uchar *key,uchar *im){uchar k[5];int i;ReadKey(im);for(i=0;i=0;i--)key[tb0[i+1]]=k[tb0
[tb0[i]];}void CSSdecrypttitlekey(uchar *tkey,uchar *dkey){int i;uchar im1[6];
uchar im2[6]={0x51,0x67,0x67,0xc5,0xe0,0x00};for(i=0;i6
CSStitlekey1(im1,im2);CSStit
the discs, by themselves, cannot be hacked.
He let something slip right there. My guess is that they're using a much longer encryption key, and that the key is not stored on the disc, but in the player. So to crack as easily as CSS was cracked you'd have to disassemble the player as well, and even that might not help unless you can read the code out from the inside of the chip, which may or may not be possible.
While nothing's "uncrackable", a disc encrypted with a 256-bit key that you don't have would take a while. And even if you did crack it, the odds are that the contents is watermarked, and they'd know who the release came through, and prosecute him. Then you'd have to get another source for the next disc.
Bottom line would be, you'd not get any more discs, if everyone who supplied a review copy to pirates got busted immediately. And that's assuming they CAN be hacked.
Yup - someone's making a ton of money and it's not the mpaa.
Cinea will invest several million dollars to make and distribute the DVD players to academy members and possibly to movie critics and other awards groups.
So, wait. The mpaa has millions to spend on this new way to prevent piracy? I thought they were losing money out the ass! (they'll have to reimburse Cinea somehow - so the mpaa is really paying the millions for the DVD players and the encryption)
Sounds like they need to read this.
Like sex? Read and write about it! Indecent Blogging
They'll be hacked, as GNAA points out; but as each disk is custom made there will probably be some individual watermarking buried in the film frames somewhere.
Next year we will first hear that the disks were hacked; then we will see a lawsuit against the poor bastard who lent his disk and player to someone else.
This is not a signature.
It CAN contain noticeable artifacts. In fact, lots of movies these days have noticeable artifacts. You might occasionally see something in the middle part of the screen that looks like several little burns or dark spots. Those are watermarks used to keep track of what theater a film is being shown in. If it's good enough for the public, it's good enough for the Academy, who they aren't even trying to make money off of. Remember, we're talking specially coded DVDs here. They could just insert the Academy member's name at the bottom of each frame on the DVD as a "watermark" so they would be able to tell who leaked it.
Isn't it possible to route the output of the DVD unit to another recorder that would burn the film onto [video] tape or DVD? I am sure the graphics guys at the GIMP and MPlayer can find ways arround this new preventive measure.
This is precisely why 99.9% of commercial software is so easily cracked.
There are methods that can make software piracy just about impossible but they'll be disliked by customers because it would involve communication with a secure server.
Can someone explain why you couldn't just record the output from the special DVD player? You would still have to worry about the watermarking, but that's not so hard, if oyu can get two or more disks.
So we have to reencode the movie. Why not take the additional analog step in between. It won't make that much difference if You use decent cable from that special player to plug in Your computer.
It's called a TV tuner card. Simply plug modded DVD player into TV tuner and press record. Presto!
Lets put in GPS trackers in those players so we know for sure that they're in their intended location.
If it has a video out and an audio out, it can be hacked.
If it is a handheld DVD player or the like, with no outs, Hollywood types with huge screens and home theaters will not like it because they'll be seeing things smaller. A bigger-screened player might mitigate that some, but I doubt anything but a set-top box with video outs will be accepted by the audience.
And besides, considering some of the problems they're having, it someone could tape the movie off the dinky screen with a videocamera and it would still sell.
IIRC, that was the main way the Enigma machine was cracked for example
:)
Yes, we've all read Cryptonomicon too. Good book
"the discs, by themselves, cannot be hacked"
In other words it just takes one unscrupulous reviewer with a disc and a machine; to duplicate the film using the audio and video out connectors. Great for the companies that are heralding this technology; but in practice it is going to do little to curtail piracy; lets face it most of the decent pre-release films on the net have come from someone inside the business;
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
someone get busy cracking the new dvd's
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
most hollywood films are either sequels, prequels, historical revisionism (if the USA aren't the heroes, then MAKE them the heroes and damn the history books), franchises, excersises in directorial masturbation or just plain ol' dull as fuck.
give the punters something interesting to see and they might just decide that that something is worth paying for.
It's been pointed out and proven time and again that technology does not stop piracy.
A smarter move would be to offer the customer something extra that the pirates would find much harder to offer.
How about a few little freebies to go with the actual DVD? A free poster or stickers, interactive content such as a mini-game (which wouldn't be copied using the method of copying the film via a video-output or using a videocamera), a username and password to the official website so you can access online content and enter online competitions (the username and password expiring after X access times).
A little imagination from the distributers would entice people to buy the official product since they would get more than the pirates are offering.
Silly rabbit
Someone is seriously underestimating the quality of our geniuses today. If something can be assembled, and can be disassembled. If there is a code or chip or electronic key to make something work, it can be hacked. Anyone who attempts to develop technologies to prevent this from happening is wasting their time and money, because we'll just work around it. They need to start pursuing this from some other angle... like learning to profit from the free distribution of their copyrighted works.
It seems that everyone believes the point is that it might not be completely secure. BIG DEAL. The point is that the DVD's can't just be loaned out. Remember how the hulk was copied. A screener dvd, (one that was watermarked), was lent to a friend who decided no-one would catch him if he uploaded it. He was caught but that doesn't help that the movie was uploaded. I'd say the screeners are probably fairly trustworthy. This will 1: Keep them from loaning their disks out, (which is most likely the primary concern) and 2: make it a little tougher so that if their friend in batswana sais, "Hey, I'd REALLY like to see that", they can't say, "well, ok, let me copy it and send it over". Instead when a friend wants to watch it they'll go, "I'm sorry, it only works on my dvd player. Do you want to come over and watch it?" Yes, if they want to distribute a copy of it, they'll probably be able to, but I doubt thats the problem.
I do security
>> the company behind the technology, says ' the discs, by themselves, cannot be hacked.'
Some people still don't get it. It's now only a question of time, now that the challenge as been throw.
'the discs, by themselves, cannot be hacked.'... Except by a hacker.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
If so, they can be copied...
Sheesh, if these industires would put 1/2 the funds they waste with this garbage into creating better products and lowering costs, their troubles would go away...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
That is why they are passing laws like the DMCA that make certain skills illegal.
Unless they want to pay $millions and millions of dollars to constantly upgrade, re-engineer and upgrade this stuff on an annual (or even more frequent) basis, common PC computer technology will out accelerate it and eventually make it possible for Joe Hacker with his dual-core Athlon 64 PC that he has less than $1,000 in to crack the disc's encryption.
Corporatism != Free Market
from the googlecache of: http://www.crmdaily.com/perl/printer/12273/
t ml
How to Pirate Music and Video Without a Computer
Contributed by Wes
osOpinion.com
July 26, 2001
http://www.osopinion.com/perl/story/12273.h
There has been a lot of concern that people are using the Internet these days to (dramatic chord) "Listen To Music"! People around the world are logging into my.mp3.com and listening to music that they bought previously on CD even though THEY DON"T HAVE THE PHYSICAL CD WITH THEM! This has apparently cost artists and record execs somewhere in the vicinity of 300 bazillion simoleans (a simolean roughly equal to three pounds of bullshit). Less responsible companies like Napster have even written programs that let you LISTEN TO MUSIC YOU NEVER BOUGHT!!!!! While this must feel like a grenade to the groin of all the poor top 40 artists out there, it is nothing compared to the powderkeg that sits in everyone's ghetto blaster, home stereo system, and VCR. I am speaking of the built-in ability of every piece of analogue consumer audio/video entertainment system out there. Welcome, fellow music lover to the secret world of Analogue Music Piracy.
It would seem that the Powers That Be don't want computer users all over the world to be allowed to listen to music they like whenever they want, wherever they want. It makes one wonder why it is then, that on conventional analogue stereo equipment there exists the ability to record not only albums you have legitimately purchased, but also music you have never paid for. Before you read this article any further, please be warned. You are about to enter a clandestine world of secret knowledge, where truths and lies mix like tequila and 7-Up in a plastic cup at my sister's wedding. If you continue reading this article, you have agreed to join the Analogue Piracy League. Abandon all hope ye who enter here.
Good, you've agreed to join. Welcome brethren to the Analogue Piracy League. The following may shock and disgust you, but it is the truth. Many electronic audio appliances contain a secret back-door button that allows you to pirate their precious works, either from albums you have purchased, or even from a "Streaming Analogue FM Ether-verse Transceiver" or "Radio". This button is called the "Record" button, and as a member of the Analogue Piracy League it is your new best friend. It's right there beside the "Play" button, sometimes it's disguised as a red dot. I bet you wondered what that button was for. To start pirating, go down to the local corner store and purchase some "blank tape". Have it placed in a brown paper bag, and return home. Above all, speak to no one.
Once safely ensconced in your Fortress of Piracy, put the "blank tape" into the cassette deck, then press "Play" on your CD player, and press the secret "Record" button. That's all there is to it. Congratulations, you have done exactly what My.MP3.COM does, except without all those pesky passwords or that expensive computer equipment. Should you turn on your Streaming Analogue FM Ether-verse Transceiver and record from that, you will be doing what Napster does. Please remember however, should you record Metalica off the radio and then invite the band over for a beer, it would be best to hide your evil cassette tape recordings or Lärs (or Blóürk or whatever his name is) will kick your ass.
Video is even easier. With a VCR, not only can you record streaming full screen video off of your cable or antenna (from the Streaming Analogue Video Ether-verse), but there is a secret code in the TV guide that automatically programs your machine to pirate TV shows and movies AUTOMATICALLY! What were the fools who made these things thinking? They are practically begging you to steal their valuable television programming. Well big dumb TV guys, watch out! You may have sunk the good ship iCraveTV.com, but The Analogue Piracy League is coming up on your port side - PREPARE TO BE BOARDED!
Sig Return: 204 No Content
Does anyone find it coincidental, that Hollings, Berman (Microsoft), and others are trying to de-facto legislate away the PC as we know it?
The general purpose PC, which gets ever cheaper while getting ever more powerful will always be a match for any kind of static "copy protection" technology in the long run.
The MPAA can't impliment this kind of thing on consumer DVD's. People won't stand for replacing their player every year, or worse, not owning their player, paying "rent" and having to pay for upgrades constantly. Neither will they stand for discs that expire or degrade.
The MPAA/RIAA want to do away with the non-corporate owned PC, their main enemy.
It puts too much power in the hands of an individual.
Microsoft, being what they are, marches in lockstep with them. After all, they are more than happy to provide such a crippled PC, as it's in their own interests. Once something became law, you would never be allowed to own a PC that didn't have a closed OS on it, and you are denied the "root" or "admin" passwords to it. That password is in escrow with a third party, probably Microsoft.
You won't be able to run anything on your PC that Microsoft and their partners don't want you to be able to run. Don't want to pay $20/month to "license" Office, and want to run Open Office?
Tough, Microsoft wont' let you run it.
Busting the hardware and installing Linux or some other FOSS on it would be a felony under the DMCA II.
The MPAA/RIAA wins because they've taken away the power of the PC from the inndividual. Microsoft wins because such a legal climate would make open source software completely illegal, as you cannot have an open system that does not allow the system owner full root access.
Indeed, it may even become impossible to OWN PC hardware... You might have to rent THAT too, like a cable box, from your cable/satellite/phone company...
Corporatism != Free Market
The question is, will they actually be making 6000 different DVDs for each movie that comes out? Or will they just have the DVD player contain the details on that member? 6000 distinct DVDs, even if you only need to create 20 a year per member, is a ludicrous amount (doing it once for the initial DVD players is much less so, especially since you only have to change the code on one chip). My personal bet is that it's the DVD player that contains the info, and cracking the DVD encryption will suffice.
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
Don't forget to drop the camera and exclaim 'oh crap'.
--- "To iterate is human, to recurse divine." -- Robert Heller
1. Each DVD player has a cutom key for decoding.
2. Each DVD is burned with a key which will allow it to be viewed on a particular DVD player.
3. Add watermarking to identify the specific key/DVD player (this is the only gotcha, if the stolen copy of the movie can't be tracked back to the particular DVD player using the watermark).
4. When an illegal copy of the movie is discovered, use the watermarking to determine which DVD player/key was used an no longer encode future DVDs with that key.
5. profit!
Hey, you owe us a journal entry about your kid :)
Sounds to me like this latest make-life-tough-on-your-viewer tactic is a good thing:
And when the Academy tries to force members not to accept unprotected indie DVDs, they lose in court. "Um, your honor... why can't we sent out unprotected screeners? We want people to watch our films. The nice Academy men wouldn't have motives other than protecting their own IP, would they?"
mitch
When you've got people working at the movie studio with unencrypted media, you can expect that most of the leaked movies will come directly from the movie studio.
Albuquerque PC
VirtualDub it's free and does frame cropping if by lopping off the frame with the watermark you ruin the movie it means the watermark was waaaaay too noticeable
"why hack when they can just get it analogically off the disc in extremely high quality as well?"
Let's go back to Laserdisc then. There's no point to all this digital stuff.
on the other hand, all you have to do to remove that watermark is crop the image!
"Has everyone forgotten that all you need to get around it is a TV monitor with video out as well?
KFG"
Speaking of forgetting. The point isn't weither one can, or can not bypass these means. But the effort required to do so. It all eventually reaches a point were people will simply say "to hell with it" and dump the whole mess back in the laps of the MPAA/RIAA. We however haven't reached that point yet, and when is up in the air.
Audio is grabbed via a wired interface into the playback equipment, not by microphones.
Any decent cam rip will contain audio grabbed with a wireless electronic interface into the projector's audio circuitry. Disability-related legislation in the United States has forced theater chains with over x employees to provide assistive listening devices, and many theater chains do this by broadcasting the signal on low-power FM transmitter in each projection room contains an FM transmitter. Then, a Sony Walkman radio picks this up and sends the signal to the Sony DV camcorder pointed at a screen showing a Sony-owned Columbia Pictures film.
Someone says a tech cannot be hacked it creates a challenge. I think you are better off not trying to say you have the ultimate encryption.
Never say never! But still a unique idea nonetheless.
Making a bunch of "custom" disk that can only be played by a specific player can be done fairly cheaply.You just have to use the barcode scheme that's already used in the copy protection scheme of Gamecube disk.
Barcodes on the burst cutting area
Basicly a barcode is burned onto the leadin area of the disk after coping it is complete. You just burn the serial code of the player this disk will play on and the player is equiped to only play those disk with matching serial numbers.
Other vital information could be burned into this barcode such as the decryption key, or the start of the TOC because most players and all consumer DVD burners cannot read or reproduce this data. It renders the disk unreadable.
Well, they tried to block the distribution of all screeners last year.
"They" are seven studios. The independent copyright owner of a film (either a director or a studio) can do what he sees fit. How can studios block another copyright owner from sending 6000 copies to members of the Academy?
*twitch*
I almost have a knee-jerk response that says...
Bring it on!
of course, not like I'm going to get my hands on such a disc, bust still...*grin*
/b
|f(x)dx = F(b) - F(a)
that the members are never going to allow this. First there is the fact that one of the biggest advantages to dvd is that they are highly portable. If they are going to tell the voting members that they can only watch these discs in one particular place, the viewership and voting numbers are going to decrease -- they definetely aren't willing to let this happen.
Second, free dvds is just one of those perks of being an mpaa member. If you can't lend your dvd to your buddy down the street, you're going to get pissed. I predict that within a week this idea will have disappeared.
Unless they want to pay $millions and millions of dollars to constantly upgrade, re-engineer and upgrade this stuff on an annual (or even more frequent) basis
DirecTV was willing to spend this much, and though DTV did play a bit of cat-and-mouse with crackers through the H card and HU card[1] eras, it appears DTV finally won with the P4 access cards.
[1] Isn't there anybody else who sees "HU card" and immediately thinks of PC Engine or TurboGrafx?
Indeed, it may even become impossible to OWN PC hardware... You might have to rent THAT too, like a cable box, from your cable/satellite/phone company...
That won't happen, at least until Congress tries to repeal the Sherman Act. Remember what happened to AT&T in the 1980s and to Nintendo at the end of the NES era.
everytime they say: "the company behind the technology, says 'the discs, by themselves, cannot be hacked." I hear: Ok boys and girls ou there, the Stopwatch has gone off. The first one to hack the 'unhackable' code, wins a brownie! if it can be done, and if you give it to the right guy (requiremente: some intelligence , a lot of free time, the right tools and some privacy to work) certainly it can be undone.It's just a question of time. A nd then... the whole cycle begins again..
What is best in life? To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you and to hear the lamentations of their women.
6,000 people is a lot of people. Statistically one of them will randomly drop dead within a week of receiving the disk and player.
It doesn't matter HOW they tag and trace the individual disks. If that copy somehow makes it's way onto the internet what are they gonna do? Dig him up and throw him in prison? Heh.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
the discs, by themselves, cannot be hacked
Famous last words before shameful resignation.
Schneier's Law states: "Anyone can come up with a security system so clever that he can't see its flaws."
Even although the discs may be individually locked to a particular player, this will not prevent copying and sharing. The fact is that somebody can get access to an unencrypted signal, and it only takes one person to do it before the whole effort is wasted.
Any watermarking they are talking about can be defeated. In fact, it's likely that the recording technique will do this anyway if it lacks the bandwidth to resolve the watermarking signal. Of course, if the watermarking is out-of-band (and injected at the last stage) then this process can be subverted.
And if you can't hack machines, try hacking people -- have you met my alter ego? If so, you told me something useful, so thank you! What's to stop the manufacturers of those 6000 machines making a few extra, "special" ones that will play any disc meant for any of the "real" ones? What's to stop the manufacturers of those special DVDs from making a few extra, "special" ones that will play on any player?
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
You're right, and with the recent addition of HD DVR's, it wouldn't take too long to hank one together to simply record the input.
Is it safe to assume that at least one of those academy reviewers is a hardware geek, or at least has one in his immediate family ?
Why not just mod the player and grab the output post-decryption ? Heck, you could probably devise a buffered digital output right before the RAMDAC, stream it to a PC and reencode it right there. Sure, it won't kill the watermarking, but we can deal with that later.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
In order for the MPAA to figure out where the leak is coming from they have to see which version is beeing distributed. Meaning that on most P2P clients and bit torrent they would have to upload as well as download. Meaning that they would essentially be responsible for distributing these files. Meaning that I'm not really "stealing" anything, cuz they're giving it to me!!!! ...unless of course they were leachers, in which case those slimy bastards should be spammed to hell.
Last I heard, there are no publically known attacks on AES of 128, 192 or 256 bits which solve for the key or a given plaintext faster than brute force, given any amount of data (be it chosen plaintext, chosen ciphertext, or whatever). A French mathematician claimed to have a 2^224 work attack on 256-bit AES, but it's been disputed, and you can't exactly test it out. This was as of several months ago, though, I don't know its status now.
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
2: One person giving access to the player and discs for a de-macrovisioned rip.
3: Outright theft of the player and discs from any of the well known Academy members.
4: These people are involved in acting. And you expect them to all set up their own new DVD players???
5: Theft where these custom discs are being manufactured in the first place. Maybe it already is.
6: Why not just invite them all into the a big vault -- the real kind, not the film kind -- and have them watch it there?
At some point this is easily more trouble than it's worth.
And wouldn't be funny if they find out that interest in movies actually goes down when all the holes in the early release dike are plugged? Wouldn't that be a shocker!!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
It would be much more effective to watermark the disks so they could trace who it leaked from.
All Copy Protections and encryptions can be defeated given that if you can read the information in one way or another, by decoding it in someway, then the information can be easily highjacked inbetween the decoding process and the output.
As for watermarks, especially in the audio, can be almost impossible to remove. But say you got several of the dvd's, you could make a program that randomly takes each chunk of the picture and audio from a different source, effectively destroying any water/sound marks
Except that the watermark is usually in the middle of the screen, so you'd have to just remove that frame--noticeable.
And if they're using temporal watermarking--i.e. different frames are watermarked to designate different Academy members--then removing the frame is just as telling as leaving it in.
Er...that's slightly faulty logic. Even though I don't believe that the movie industry is losing money through copyright infringement* this particular scheme doesn't prove it.
If the convenience store on the corner is getting robbed every week, the owner might decide to install a safe. Aha! you say. He must not really have been losing money; after all, he can afford to install that shiny new safe.
*Escaped screeners may cut into the opening weekend take for weakly-scripted action movies that are trying to be blockbusters...but there's a strong argument that the financial disincentive to produce expensive, crappy movies is of net benefit to society.
~Idarubicin
Seems to me as if the movie industry is beginning to bite the hand that feeds it. While the paying civilians are the ones that pay their living, the academy members are the ones that help hype the film , and provide the aura of secrecy and desireability of the film: seeing it early, seeing it on opening day, and indeed, seeing it in the theatre at all. Granted, this aura of eliteness is minimal, but it counts for something, I don't doubt.
The other thing: the academy members are hardly the most likely to leak it before its release date. You've got hundreds, if not thousands, of people that see, handle, and manipulate a given film's data prior to it being released in theatres, most of them have less to lose than the academy folks. Many of them are the people that worked on the film itself, usually in the finishing process. I have no doubt that some, if not many of them make a copy of the finished production in as-good-as-if-not-better-than-cinema quality for themselves, as a keepsake and for something to tell/show their kids. After all, how many coders do you folks know that keep copies of their finished projects for personal reference?
I seriously doubt that there is that much security involved in post-production of the film. After all, most corporate espionage is done from the inside of the companies. Most problems of this sort come from Inside.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
it's just this little chromium switch here...you people are SO superstitious...
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
I havnt seen anyone talking about it, but I think the new watermarking is less subtle then you think. I have seen several screeners (not cams) recently on P2P networks where there are siloutes of people getting up and moving around. These silutes are brief but dont appear to be real, but rather part of the image (again these where not CAM's but TS and TCs) The image usally is much to large, and it perfectly black, no reflection of ambient light as you would expect of a shot of a person getting up infront of a camera or soemthing. I went to a few movies in the theater and again I saw these. They are usally towrads the end of a sceane, and are carefully placed away from the action. I belive that the studios are plcaeing these siloutes as watermarks, and when you think about it its a good idea and will be difficult to beat. First the a image of a person getting up and moving around can be changed sliglty to encode exactly the print of a film. Second they can place the images in severalplaces in a film. Third they would be hard to remove, we can try and reconstruct them out with some video editing, or we can ditch the frames, either solution would be deteciable after annalysis. Finally most peoples brians tune out this information, your mind see it, diassocaites it from the movie, and then its removed. Sort of like how low frame rate cartoons can still appear to be smooth. I would be intrested if anyone else has been able to detect these. Really I havnt been ablt to *PROVE* it at any theater as I dont have pause and rewind there, but many I have been able to prove it from many screeners found on the net.
Pretty neat actually. Basically, this is a hard lock, or at least close to it.
It's probably only a matter of time before the DVD players themselves becomes disposable, with the DVD or equivalent locked inside.
Have you read my journal today?
Wouldn't it be much easier if they simply did a primitive watermarking technique such as individualizing the picture (content) for each academy reviewer? I mean, if I printed the words "This copy belongs to Hillary Goldstein" right on the movie, scrolling across random places on the screen (top-down, diagonally, etc), but semi-transparent, so as to not disturb the actual viewing of the movie so much), one would be able to locate the leaked source just by examining the copy that's in the wild. No need for fancy DVD players, and more responsibility is put on the reviewers not to leak the films.
...I am proof that intelligent beings are not always intelligent...
Regardless of my personal opinions on any kind of media-protection efforts, for his sake I hope he's right.
You know that the moment someone gets their hands on a disc that they'll try to break the encryption. Whether on principle, for bootlegging, or purely for academic interest, the factr emains that someone will try. So this guy better not have staked his reputation on this unless he's absolutely sure. (And even then, the better assumption is that anything can be hacked eventually)
Tiggs)Tiggs
"120 chars should be enough for everyone..."
Read the quote in the story; "In an effort to curtail the piracy and bootlegging of DVD screeners..." Numerous posts have attempted to make the point that the effort is futile since it is not perfect. The intent is not to make an unbreakable system. That would be too costly and cumbersome. The effort is to curtail. Look it up: abridge, diminish, reduce, restrict, cut back. I have to say this scheme is a rational approach to a complicated problem, and is likely to be very successful in CURTAILING the piracy, and is FAR better than using the justice system to accomplish the same goal. As long as little films are not stopped in the process, this is good for the Academy and good for the justice system. I suppose that little films (unlike blockbusters) might not need this scheme.