Slashdot Mirror
SVP : More Video Anti-Copying Technology
rkroetch writes "NDS, STMicroelectronics and Thomson have announced they will develop a new anti-piracy technology called SVP (Secure Video Processor). This will require a special SVP processor in the box to play the encrypted video signal. All those licensing fees for our DVD-ROMs for nothing?"
Why they always have to call it piracy. Why not something like, "Copyright Control Device/Software".
Oh well, I suppose I do understand why. I just don't like it.
tv out anyone?
fuckin' bastards....
i'll be sure to avoid anything that has this in it until it's easily bypassed.
of course, given past techniques, that shouldn't be too damn long...
someone's probably already hatching a plan..
...but people don't believe me when I say that we currently have the technology to create a total lockdown of digital content.
Sure, the analog hole is still there, but we don't want to be limited by that, do we?
Stop the world; I need to get off.
Satisfies and exploits the proven consumer demand for high value content that is accessible and distributable over a variety of media
Thanks, but no thanks. I don't buy from people who exploit me.
Yet another waste of resources that could of gone in to making the technology better.
It's was never designed to do that...
How long is it going to take for some malaysian company to make a PCI card with the required chip on it?
From the article...
NDS, 78 percent owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, has developed the anti-piracy software component for SVP. Beginning next year, Thomson will embed SVP-enabled chips developed by STMicro into its video playback devices and set-top boxes.
American satellite TV operator DIRECTV, a News Corp affiliate, is the first to use the new technology, the companies said.
Now, let's think about this for a second. Even though DirecTV has about millions units in circulation now, the actual decryption part of the operation is done in the form of a single smart card that is very easy to swap out. Therefore, DirecTV doesn't have to make everybody get new boxes to apply this tech, they just have to send out new cards.
I am curious as to how they will manage encryption with this, and if it will be yet another encryption through obfuscation.
It seems the smartest approach is to publish and patent the encryption scheme, but make it so time consuming, that you will need hardware to do the decryption properly. That way any one who tries to get around the protection scheme and not pay royalties will be easily sueable.
The upside for non-mainstream OS users, is that it will most likely mean non-OS dependent solutions (maybe).
Of course programmable logic chips could potentially be a threat, but not a major one, as most people don't have that type of hardware.
" A rise in piracy has accompanied the explosion of digital video players. Crafty programmers have discovered ways to crack into DVD players, for example, to make copies of Hollywood movies quickly and cheaply." Yup, and this will be cracked too. It's a game of cat and mouse. Remember how DVD's were supposed to be iron proof? And they certainly haven't locked down CD's. Create whatever technology you want but in the end, unless we change the greater system of licensing media, none of this will matter and piracy will continue.
What licensing fees? We didn't license anything. We bought copies of copyrighted works. Those copies are our property.
At this point the general befief is that pirates of legend merely sought to share homes, villages and governors' daughters.
That's because people who are technologically adept and who have sufficient resources are quite rare. Only someone who can hack the hardware would be able to grab the original digital content from a properly-designed black box.
I suspect that hardware like this will, in time (if not immediately), be used to enforce pay-per-view or something like that for permanent media. From the info page:
Yep, sounds like pay-per-view to me.
It really is only a matter of time before everything that's available falls under the control of something like this...
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
When we finally do get those implanted Nikon eyeballs, they'll probably come with anti-piracy chips. (The country-code would be a bitch on business trips.)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Yet another waste of resources that could of gone in to making the technology better
Don't forget the roughly equal amount of effort that will go into cracking it.
AKA the analog hole..
What is your penile percentile?
....that the only difference between this processor, and the old style processor, is that they put "secure" in the name...
Before you mod me funny, think, perhaps I was insightfully funny?
Both the summary here, and the article, call it anti-piracy technology.
In "ye olden days" pirates were people who would go to great lengths, working against heavily armed opponents and risking incarceration or worse in order to obtain something that, nine times out of ten, wasn't worth having in the first place.
Thus their ledgendary rum consumption.
Now-a-days it's closer to ninety-nine times out of a hundred, but the principle is the same.
-- MarkusQ
Sure, they can have make the media unplayable without the chip, but:
If you can see and hear it, you can copy it.
If you can make a raw copy of the media, you can pirate it without loss of quality, even if you can only play the copies in an SVP device.
This sort of technology has no use in preventing piracy, only in making money and killing competition. Manufacturers must license the "technology" or else they can't make devices that will play the latest media. Consumers must purchase new DVD players to replace their perfectly functioning old players (most won't, you can bet). There will be no interoperability with other devices. And PC users will simply be out of luck, unless they decide to license it for software use to companies like Microsoft, which will completely defeat the cryptographic advantages of embedding the DRM in hardware and make it as useless as DSS.
if only people could protect their private data from corporate databases, like banks selling customer information to marketing firms or third parties. too bad nobody wants to protect people the way the movie industry wants to protect their content. :(
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
With Moore's Law still in effect and multi-core processors coming, what requires dedicated hardware today may easily become software doable in three years. Which would be about the time it hits mainstream, given that the public buys into it.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I'm one to say "suck it up" when terms change, like with hacker becomming a bad term. However this is one I say the media industry should get nailed for. Why? Because piracy is still very, very real. In North America and Western Europe we tend to forget about it since we have powerful navies/coast guards that keep our waters essentially free of it.
Well that's not the case in much of the world. There are still real pirates that really do raid ships, rape, kill and steal. We also aren't talking like once every 10 years or something, we are talking about a reasonably common occurace in relation to other violent crime.
Thus I think it is quite stupid, and unfair to those that suffer from real piracy, to equate digitally copying a song to violence on the high seas. When real piracy is dead and gone, then maybe I'll accept the transformation of the term.
Think of how low they could cut the costs of production and distribution which would allow them to sell their products at a lower price, which would make them more attractive to the groups most likely to pirate their goods. I guess I just don't understand why the MPAA's members would rather sit around and piss and moan about piracy instead of trying to defeat it. It's not like it's impossible to make a good deal of extra money off of it.
Personally, I blame the fascist culture of "right to profit" that has developed. If I build a house that looks identical to yours, have I stolen your house? Do you have a right to tell me to pay you a royalty on the sale of my house? How about the original developer, does he/she?
If corporations affected by technology would invest their money into researching the new technology and finding ways to update their business model, they'd do well for themselves. But that would require effort and a pretense of competition. It's easier to make the small companies earn their place in the market than make the big ones justify their size and reach.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
With the advent of cheap memory, cheap drives, cheap screens and nifty cool players, WHY is hollywood still stuck in 1989?
.. I paid for it, it's MINE to do as I please .. are they going to give me my money back when I want to de-license it? No? Piss on them) could be on a little teeny little drive that isn't going to fail because the "shiny disc looked pretty" as a mirror.
Why do we have to have obsolete 8 gig plastic discs, when our movies (I dont give a shit what they say about you're only licensing it
Piss off, Hollywood - I paid you my ransom money now leave me the hell alone.
Oh yeah, and for that BS copy protection? As long as my eyes see it I'll find a way to get past your POS scheme.
= Grow a brain...
All those licensing fees for our DVD-ROMs for nothing
Simple solution - stop consuming the 'property' of these robber barrons.
Its not like this is food, shelter or clothing.
Come on...I can stop complaining because this week I got a satnd-alone DVD player, and when I went to watch a _legal_ movie on it, because it was connected to an old TV-set, and the only way to do that is to have a VCR to modulate the signal, Macrovision Protection(tm) kicked in, and I could not enjoy the movie at all.
We are _already_ slaves to the Media companies. Perceive that none of this crap will stop some "Pirate Cappo" who cashes in 100.000 East Asia Bootleg Disks a week - this guy can pay people to bypass wahtever protetcion they put in it.
It just stop us - ordinary people - from making perfectly legal things, like quote some seconds of a video to a lecture, or whatever.
-><- no
Back in the 80's, a lot of people were hyping copy-protection schemes for software. It was basically snake-oil; none of it did any good, and any software which used it soon died because copy-protection doesn't help the consumer.
Now, here in the 00's, we have the reincarnated version of this. The ONLY people who care about it are the Media conglomerates. Again, not the consumers.
Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
So, my big question is this. Does anybody have any actual numbers on how much money has been dumped into these snake-oil schemes?
A fool and his money are indeed soon parted. It really beats me why spends their time developing this stuff, let alone funding it. Clearly it is self-delusion.
Erm, how about: Okay, how about: "I don't buy from people who try to squeeze out every last bit of comsumer surplus..."
Hehe, sorry about that, but I'm sure none of us mind minimizing the producers surplus. Refresher:
- Producers Surplus - The area above the supply curve, but below the price
[RANT]What makes the whole discussion stupid IMHO is that we're all this anti-'piracy' crap is by definition not talking about internal market features. Attacking 'fair use' on the other hand is, if anything, going to lower the demand curve- we are talking about reducing the marginal utility of the widgets here.
If you were not willing to purchase the product at the 'market clearing price,' then the producers are not losing revenue.
People downloading free copies of various titles does not directly affect the relevant portion of the demand curve**! Nor does it cause translation along the demand curve! Think of it as 2-tier price discrimination, where a subset of the people who exist to the left/below the market get it at marginal cost :) Crap, that means some consumer surplus. I highly doubt there is a significant cross-elasticity of demand between .torrent's and movie tickets/DVD sales.
Bootlegging is an entirely seperate discussion. IANAL, but isn't there already a body of legislation that addresses that?
** The market externalities involved can in fact shift the demand curve. The marketing exposure can be priceless (bandwagon effects, knowing the product exists, being familiar with a product/brand, etc.), however it also has the [perhaps all too oft] effect of lowering the percieved utility of a product to it's actual value... If you know how much that InternetPrivateDick software [or the-other-12 tracks-on-the-cd, CuteNFuzzy-Jedi-Episode-2 1/2, etc...] suck, you're less likely to pay as much for it ;)
Naturally, anything that causes consumers to act more rationally or with more complete information might make Economics more workable, much to the distress of all those other social sciences... And likely most politicians...
And I won't even mention the fact that most restrictions that insulate producers from the market are bad for both society AND the producers, nor that these markets are already far from perfectly competative... Ok, I guess I did mention them...
[/RANT]What?! We can do that?! Well where's my governor's daughter!?!
Oh, I mean.... Shiver me timbers! Whar' be thar scurvy landlubber who's fair lass I may be hav'n ta tup? YARR!!
*Ahem* Now if you'll excuse me, my download is just about finished here... time to watch a movie! Now where I put me dish o' popper-corn and mug o' ale? Yarr!
Crafty programmers have discovered ways to crack into DVD players, for example, to make copies of Hollywood movies quickly and cheaply.
You can crack a DVD player to burn discs? That's gotta be one of the sweeter hacks I've heard about. Or maybe by 'crack' the reporter means 'buy professional DVD duplicating equipment'.
It's almost a peaceful feeling to watch the heat death of one's society.
Literalism isn't a form of humor, it's you being irritating.
Great! The more incompatible "standards" there are, the less likely this stuff will catch on.
This is of course the real reason they are so up in arms about P2P, etc.: not that stuff they control is being distributed "by word of mouth" but that stuff they don't control will be. If a band can make it without ever signing with a label, if an independent film can reach the audience without a distributor, a lot of middle-meddlers are going to be very, very unemployed.
-- MarkusQ
Copy protection blocks both legal and illegal copies. There is nothing wrong with copying a DVD, especially for backup (or active use in the case of backing up or archiving the original).
Really, it's the distribution of the copied DVDs which is illegal, something which the movie companies (and music companies in regards to CDs) generally leave out when mentioning the "terrible hackers" and their circumvention of copy-protection.
I wonder if all those people do not have principles. What are they seeking for? World domination? I think people with such invasive ideas should be publicly humiliated until they learned.
Usually I feel compelled to follow the rules and not copy stuff, but this kind of protection makes me kinda think about doing the oposite, not because I need, but because of their intentions to limit my freedom, 'cause I HATE to be forced!
I like to be told what the rules are and what can happen if I don't follow them, but I also appreciate my freedom to choose not to follow them if I wish.
Those thieves BLATANTLY STOLE THE TERM, and probably didn't pay the originators of it for the use of their linguistic properties. It's plagiarism at the very least - why next thing you know, people will be appropriating the narratives of Brothers Grimm and claiming their fairy tales are now "intellectual property".
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
The issue of copying music isn't IF you can copy it, it's HOW WELL you can do it. No matter what you do to protect your media content, it has to be playable on your standard TV, stereo, or whatnot. I mean, I can easily copy any movie you give me with a camcorder, right? :)
;)
The industry would be better off figuring out how they should be selling their products instead of how to gouge the general public. Ventures like this have always proven to end in failure, and always make things more inconvenient for the people who actually pay for it (usually the less technically-savy too)!
Isn't it funny how you can copy an Aerosmith CD and steal from Sony Music, with your Sony CD burner and CD-R and support Sony Electronics? Who really loses?
As previously mentioned, with each copy-protection system tried, they are broken, worked around, or otherwise caused to fail. The recording industry (and collective associates) have spent big money on bigger/better ways of troubling their coustomers... I can't imagine suing all of your [potential] customers is good for business? Personally, I could see myself downloading a song that I might have heard a bit of on the radio or something, likeing it, then buying the CD... but if I were to be sued for the mentioned download, fscked if I'm gonna give them any *more* money. I really wonder how long it will be before this industry spends all it's money on troubling their customers and none on actually producing/marketing worthwhile media, and simply dies.
Mak'tal shree lok'tak mek'ta sa'tak Oz! - Daniel Jackson
unfortunately, many parts of the entertainment industry, including parts of Hollywood, are engaging in what can only be characterized as greedy practices. There is a certain degree of price fixing going on, not to mention that the media would be less expensive if they stopped wasting money on copy protection technology.
I understand that it costs lots of money to make CGI and other things, and this is also part of the problem, part of the lack of any real choices for the consumer.
It would be better if it were acceptable to make movies on lower budgets; it would be better if more talented artists, directors, producers, etc... could have an opportunity to express themselves to a wider audience, and if these types of things were to take place, naturally, the price of a DVD would go down somewhat. Maybe not a whole lot, but somewhat - and it might also vary from movie to movie.
I cannot help but to think that there is greed occurring on the part of the entertainment industry - that greed is just as unethical as what is called "piracy" today. Of course you still have probably some areas of the world where people make illegal copies and sell them - that's something else entirely. These days, piracy and copy protection are really aimed at the consumer. That's greed - it's greed because it's unnecessary to aim it at the consumer. Maybe Spock would say, "Greed isn't logical."
So circumventing the copy protections is nothing more than bringing the greedy companies to justice - in a way. Circumventing copy protections is a necessary evil, so to speak. But of course it would be better if it wasn't necessary at all. Perhaps many people wouldn't even mind purchasing two copies, in case one gets scratched up or something - it's just that they are too expensive, so no one does that.
PART ONE
Copy prevention which permits legitimate use whilst denying "other" uses is impossible. Not just supremely difficult, actually impossible. That is not a limitation of present technology that will be resolved by a sufficiently clever invention; it is a limitation of the Universe, like nothing being able to exceed the speed of light or a system never being able to put out more energy than is being supplied to it. Human beings will walk naked upon the surface of the Sun before copy-prevention is made to work.
The Secure Player is designed to render digitally-encrypted content into a form that humans can appreciate. In other words, analogue audio and video. Such signals can always be copied and re-recorded in an unencrypted form, and there is no way for the Player to be certain what is happening downstream of itself. Any form of distortion applied to the signal in a blanket attempt to prevent recording must be imperceptible to humans watching the signal. Any attempt to detect the presence of a recording device {time domain reflectometry?} can be defeated, since we have the advantage of knowing what measurements are being made.
PART TWO
The publishing industry -- and whether that be books, records, movies, CDs, videos or DVDs, the rules are the same -- has always depended for its very existence upon a simple idea: that the initial cost of the wherewithal to package-up content in a form that will be acceptable to consumers is great enough to prevent anybody from entering the industry. It should have been obvious that this situation would not persist forever. The moment that the printing-press had been invented, someone had already begun work on making a portable version.
Now let us compare and contrast the situation of the publishing industry with two other almost universally disliked industries: the fossil fuel industry, and the meat industry. The fossil fuel industry continues to extract coal and oil from the gaping wounds in the flesh of Mother Earth. One day there simply will not be any more oil or coal left down there. Even before that day dawns, there has to come a time when non-fossil fuels are the cheaper option. At least the meat industry has the foresight to breed enough animals to replace the rotting corpses upon which its supporters gorge themselves. There is nothing inherently unsustainable about feeding an animal and using its body to rearrange amino acids. With careful management, it is perfectly possible to obtain a supply of meat which is limited only by the amount of fodder available; and turning plants into burgers this way is less wasteful of resources than artificially texturising proteins (though it does rankle with the prevailing creed of mortality-denialism).
It is my contention that the publishing industry today is in the situation that the fossil fuel industry will face very soon. Everything that the publishing industry depended on for its business model to function has been annihilated. Today, the cost of the equipment required to manufacture DVDs, CDs, books and so forth is close to negligible, and entry into the market depends only on the willingness of customers to buy the wares you are selling.
PART THREE
Copyright violation is not the same as theft. If I steal a CD from a store, the store no longer has that CD to sell. If I make a copy of my friend's CD, my friend has their CD back once I am done. The store cannot sell that CD to me, because I already have another copy of it; but so what? There might be a million and one other reasons why a store might lose the ability to sell me a CD, not the least of which is that I might not even like it.
I see a CD recorder as being somewhat analogous to a breadmaker. I buy my own blank CD-Rs [flour, yeast, salt, sugar and water] and use my own effort, together with electricity I have paid for with money I earned by my own graft, to make bread for my consumption [CDs for me to listen to].
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!