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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.
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?
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
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
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.
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
I think this has quite a good chance of being secure.
Anybody that starts with that assumption, or the stated and equally unlikely "cannot be hacked" has already lost whatever battle they imagined they were fighting. There are probably more holes in making the discs than there are in distributing them. How many hands does a film pass through before it even gets to be a master copy waiting to be encrypted?
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