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Custom DVDs & Players For Academy Members

Posted by timothy on from the hubris-is-catchy dept.

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.'"

6 of 266 comments (clear)

  1. is this actually going to help? by pedantic+bore · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Why go to such lengths; didn't they catch someone last year using only simple watermarking? Is there any conclusive evidence that the academy members are responsible for enough piracy to make this worthwhile?

    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?
  2. correct me if I'm wrong by _Shorty-dammit · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  3. 6000 members of the Academy... by jedrek · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  4. On Hacking by condensate · · Score: 5, Interesting
    All the previous posts have been about hacking or not hacking a DVD. Come on, we know that!!! Nothing is ever secure from hacking, so why the fuss about it.

    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
  5. Re:Probably gonna be redundant.. but.. by jb_02_98 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Once I had a video cd that I had made, and when I tried to copy it to a tape using my DVD player, I had all sorts of problems. I looked around for a solution and found that by hooking up a mixer (audio, 2 RCA connections) I was able to "trick" the system into looking correct. So the Macrovision, at least for me, wasn't that big of an issue.

  6. Re:Probably gonna be redundant.. but.. by Petronius · · Score: 4, Interesting

    here's all it'll take for someone to defeat this:

    image:
    - flat screen display
    - tripod
    - good camcorder

    sound:
    - grab stream from the entertainment center

    put them back together... voila.

    --
    there's no place like ~