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Microsoft Licenses Analog Anti-rip Technology
photojournaliste writes "CD copy-protection specialist Macrovision is to work with Microsoft to ensure their respective DRM and anti-rip technologies are interoperable, the two companies said this week. Sounds straightforward enough, but the deal runs deeper. Microsoft agreed to license a number of Macrovision's patents, in particular those relating to analogue copy protection technology and more recent extensions to that system that cover video-on-demand, pay-per-view content and support for the US 'broadcast flag', which determines whether consumers will be able to record digital TV broadcasts."
from TFA:
"An Internet-delivered movie, downloaded to a PC, can now be protected on analog video playback out of a PC"
They're actually concerned with someone outputting a digital format (MPG, DIVX, WMV, etc.) to an Analog source like a VCR? C'mon
I thought the purpose of ripping the media was to have a perfect (or near perfect) digital copy
Instead of the XBox and a PC in a home, I think they're on the way to the XBoxPC. It would make sense. The XBox plays games at a great speed with great graphics, so what's to stop MS from making their operating system run out of the XBox ONLY? They could drop licenses with other companies and force everyone to beg and pay more if they want a non-XBox version of Windows. Scary thought, but I think they might be taking a hint from apple and I think they're going to try this "digital lifestyle" thing with making proprietary hardware for Windows. Time to move to Linux I guess. *shrug*
Ubuntu, the way linux should be.
Try Ubuntu FREE! --
yet, some are way too many already. as only one is required for something to show up on the P2P networks...
as usual, this is just another way by the tech industry to steal money from the idiots in the content industry that are way too stupid to understand that they really are dinosaurs on the brink of extinction, and that using 30 seconds commercials to finance dubious tv shows is about to be as obsolete as dodos
the other reply talks about only 1 hack needed for p2p so I won't repeat that (oops)
I don't agree that only some would hack. sure not all, but the concept of getting rid of DVD zones is very well established in the general (DVD-using) public's mind. I expect this to be similar - people will almost expect broadcast flag hacks as standard.
This would be the best move ever ... for open source that is. The minute my friends can no longer rip their CD's to mp3's, they'll ditch Windows and move on to something else. I'm serious. None of my friends are techies. They use their systems to browse the web, write email and the occasional word processing document and to manage their music and photo collections. If Microsoft ever were to cripple their OS in such a manner, they'd jump ship in a heartbeat. Especially if the alternative OS and supporting software is free and can be installed on their current systems.
All of this 'sue them until they bleed, and put a coin slot on the very air they fucking breathe' mentality I think will drive people to more live performances. Now unless the MPAA thinks it can license me my own ears we're probably going to be ok.
I would like to weigh in with a comment on these assholes.
Macrovision has been touting their "Secure" tech for a number of years.
It has been broken time and time again.
I have a hard time believing that Microstupid is dumb enough to buy into this.
After the early efforts to get a halfway good anti-spyware package together via the buying of Giant. They have to sink down to the low-lifes like Macrovision.
This is why I keep refusing the DRM "upgrades" to my media player 7.
Firefox just kicks IE up one side and down the other IMHO.
Put it this way, in the big trade shows. Macrovision employs a very humble booth.
I had such high hopes for the Bill Gates security speech.
Oh, well.
Would it be really that hard to reverse engineer an HDTV tuner, possibly enough to be able to flash the card with custom software that ignores the flag? I don't think so, and I would love to have an opportunity to attempt it, just for the mere educational value of doing so...
;-))
Of course doing that would be illegal in the US, so would have to be done subvertly inside the US, or outside the US (no purpose to do it outside the US
*sigh* guess I need to makes plans to immigrate back to the land of my fore fathers IE Europe (though this was affirmed when the American majority showed how stupid they are by electing Bush for a second term, I dunno if I could stand being around the likes of idiots such as that...)
It's probably some kind of watermarking that may be just above or below the audio band or hidden using the spectral masking effect or something. I'm guessing here.
This is probably why MS is key in this. They effectively own most of the worlds home computers so, as far as most poor souls are concerned, they decide what the computer can and can't do on behalf of Macrovision.
This is great news for open source though because no one else's software is going to take the slightest bit of notice of any watermarking in the music or video.
And assuming they somehow manage to come up with a technological miracle and I actually can't rip it (unlikely) I'll re-record it via my amps digital out. Failing that I'll use my DAT machine to do the DA conversion from my amps output and transfer that to my PC.
Hell... in the very case worst I'll rerecord it using my amps analogue outs. And you bet I'll p2p this stuff out of spite if nothing else.
SCMS/DRM/Copy protection etc. etc. etc. What a waste of time.
Still at least I suppose it's keeping some tech people in jobs coming up with this totally unworkable, unnecessary and consumer unfriendly crap.
Sky subscribers are morons. They pay to be advertised at !
The whole reason they're doing this isn't so Windows can do DRM. Both SBC and Verizon are going ot be using MS software on their set top boxes to deliver IPTV. I guess they need some kind of DRM in the box.
This is no different from encryption on HDMI signals from the current crop of HDTV boxes. As far as I know, nobody has turned on the encryption, but the option is there.
Ok so these things called the PC were created and over time consumers really started to dig the FREE, or mostly FREE things they could do with them...
Eventually this PC thing found a way to communicate with other PC things and then something wonderful happened... they all got connected and the internet was (re)born...
Some new things were a little too close to breaking the law but were mostly tolerated because the big players... Microsoft especially were making and continue to make insanely gross amounts of money...
This internet thing really started to catch on and consumers found LOTS of really cool uses for it. Email, games and sharing. Sharing jokes and greeting cards eventually became photos and music... in the meantime lots of folks realized that they didn't need big guys like Microsoft and they unleashed alternatives and Open Source software was (re)born... its mascot quickly became Linux.
Back to the big guys... Most big guys missed the many opportunities the internet could offer their business models and instead turned to the "wise" politicians to see if this "sharing" thing could be stopped... The politicians thought long and hard and after a significant amount of cash-for-thought was spread around the DMCA was born.
Ah the DMCA... pure genius... this gem makes tinkering, copying, sharing and most fair uses illegal... its pretty broad in scope and isn't well defined in intent but the big boys loved it because now they now had the perfect club to start smacking down any innovation that even appears to be threatening their empires.
Well... all the money in Washington was just a bump in the road for free use, sharing and innovation so now the big boys have decided that everything must be locked down from start to finish... back to Washington for more spreading of the cash-for-thought and voila... the broadcast flag is born!
This things is even more genius then most of the other road blocks to innovation any of the big boys could have thought of. The flag (required by ALL recording devices) will be controlled by whomever has the rights at the time... movie guys, software guys, distributors... hell even the cable guys can turn off recording access. Of course the cash spreaders assure this is NOT going to be the case but history proves otherwise. The flag will eventually bring us to the era of pay-per-recording at home... now how fuckin' sick is this concept. Oops... hope the charma cops were blinking!
In the end what the legislators and big boys don't seem to realize is that without free and FAIR use and yes sharing, the internet would not have grow to its ginormous size and influence, without free and FAIR use and sharing the big boys like INTEL, Microsoft, game companies and even the movie boys would not have grow to such seemingly unstoppable empires... so if they take away the free and FAIR use of these technologies consumers will either find or create free and FAIR alterntives despite what laws these robber barons of the 21st century buy from those hopelessly corrupt legislators in Washington.
There just doesn't seem logical that business is going to continue to grow by locking consumers out their right to fair use and by restricting access.
In my country, copying and sharing for personal use is very much LEGAL and we still have BILLIONS made from the consumers herds. Yes, unfortunately there is still and large majority of the herd that doesn't realize the feed is free. Oh well... MOO!
I think that it's about time for Americans to start practicing a little civil disobedience and start using software that subverts the attempts by the government and corporations to limit the information we have access to or the ways in which we can use it. Maybe the slogan for the next revolution should be "The B-Tree of liberty needs to be refreshed from time to time with the Bytes of Evil Corporations and patriots." In that vein I urge everybody to buy HDTV that don't recognize the "broadcast flag" before it becomes illegal to do so.
Just my $.02,
Ron
Impeach Barack Obama for violating the Constitutional requirement to be a "natural born" citizen to hold the office of P
The problem with the broadcast flag is that it will be illegal to sell hardware which does not honor the broadcast flag, so (in theory) any hdtv card you buy after this summer won't be able to be used in a mythTV box.
Of course, any programmer knows that if you can write the decoded video stream to the screen device, you can write it to a disk device just as easily.
A lot of people are buying the new HDTV decoder cards right now because they don't honor the Broadcast Flag, and they want to use them in their MythTV boxes.
Maybe I'm missing something, but, after selling this hardware becomes illegal, how exactly will these decoder cards prevent you from saving a video stream to disk if the flag is set? My impression is that this is not merely a legal threat; the hardware itself will physically prevent this action. But how? If you can grab the data and write it to the video buffer, how would it keep you from writing it to disk, assuming your operating system has no such limitation? Or is this just a threat with nothing behind it?