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Blu-Ray to Include New Copy Protection
Lord Haha writes "In an announcement (warning: links to a PDF) last night, the Blu-ray Disc Association, led by Sony, representing one of two competing high-definition DVD formats (the other being HD-DVD, led by Toshiba), stated it will simultaneously embrace digital watermarking, programmable cryptography, and a self-destruct code for Blu-ray disc players. Will this be the continuation of the trend into more and more restrictive DRM? Or something that will fade away like Betamax Tapes? Two articles on the topic can be found at Tom's Hardware and PC World."
I take this to say "We concede all control over this device to the **AA."
Am I the only one that finds this disturbing? Isn't this a violation of fair use? Will the public buy a player with BD+ in it?
- Just my $0.02, take with a grain of salt, your mileage may vary.
The life of hardware manufacturer is tough. You need enough DRM to convince copyright owners to develop/author for your platform yet it's DRM needs to be flawed enough so Joe Six-pack can easily circumvent it.
The former insures there's enough content on your platform to make it an enticing to a consumer. The latter makes your platform doubly as enticing because your customers don't have to spend an insane amount of money getting a large body of content for your platform; they'll just copy it.
The problem is that Sony just can't make the DRM flawed enough to capture public interest because their media division just wont stand for it. So once again, someone else will come along and give the public what they want: media that's easily copied.
Is there precident for this? Absolutely, Why did the Sony Playstation crush the N64? Because you can copy easily for the Playstation. Copying a cartridge is just too much hastle to be worth it. Even better it was trivial to chip a playstation so you could get loads of games for the price of a few CDs.
Rather than learning this lesson they ignored it. Before the IPod, Sony products were the market leaders in portable music. Sony could have got an Ipod like device to market first but the Sony record label were scared so it never happened: Apple did it instead. Far from being a match made in heaven, the symbiosis of Sony media and Sony technology is becoming increasingly schizophrenic and it is punishing them right where it hurts any company: their bottom line.
Simon.
The thing that always frosts me, is whenever The Industry talks about piracy they always bandy about numbers like (from TFA), three billion dollars per year in lost revenue. I would really love to see their methodology.
It seems to me that, people who are going to pirate content, probably come in three basic groups
Has anyone ever done a study on what percentage of users of pirated content, would have purchased that content, had it not been available outside the legitimate distribution channels?
Has that study been done, and The Industry discovered that it is such a tiny fraction as to make no difference?
Of course, I can see how large-scale commercial piracy really does hurt the distribution system. If a retailer buys three dozen copies of a title for sale as the genuine article, and those three dozen copies SELL as the genuine article at retail price, but were knocked off by a Chinese plant, then that represents a true loss of revenue. What percentage of the discs sold world-wide (I know this is a serious problem in Europe and the Orient) as legitimate are really pirated?
How does the Slashdot Effect happen given that no slashdotters ever RTFA?
Eh. First off, according to the Tom's Hardware article, these players would have to be permanently connected to the internet. Where have I heard about something like that before... Perhaps from DivX, which required the players to be connected to a phone line to "phone home" every now and again... and I'm sure we all know how well that turned out.
Besides, what's to prevent a hacker from filtering out this self-destruct code from the downstream content anyway? I mean, it's not like this internet connection is protected or anything. If the content provider sends a packet to reflash the player, just don't let it get to the player. Have something in between to filter it out.
As usual, there are a bunch of fundamental flaws in DRM that will always keep coming back no matter what the content providers try to do. I see DVD Jon cracking this in a week after it's put out on the streets.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
The sun rises, the tides fall and rise, and it becomes cold in winter.
Seriously, you knew this was going to happen. The only surprising thing here is the "self-destruct code for Blu-ray disc players". And that isn't so much surprising as sad and hilarious.
I wonder if they'll be implementing the self-destruct code in the PS3. If they do, if you thought the class action lawsuit over the DRE'ing PS2s was bad, wait until the first moment that some kind of vulnerability-- like buffer overflow in Phantasy Star Online for the Gamecube-- is found in an internet-capable PS3 game. Then watch as everyone playing that game gets targeted by a little bit of wormy executable code that triggers the Blu-Ray destruction tripwire and kills the console permanently...
Having this new copy protection stuff should just seal the deal (great for studios, terrible for consumers). The fact that only one manufacturer is expected to ship a HD-DVD player this year (and for $1000) doesn't bode well. Early next year Sony will be shipping the PS3 which will not only play the blueray discs, but will also play PS1/2/3 games and DVDs. All for $500 (my guess at their "high price", but even at $700 it would be a bargain compared to $1000). There will be so many PS3 sales, it would be hard to beat that installed base even if HD-DVD was in the initial X-Box 360s (now we don't even know if that will happen).
The war is over. The only people who don't know it are the HD-DVD group.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
The only way this scheme is coming into my house is if they give it to me, and I can change them for bandwidth usage.
If TV/Movies are that important to you, then GAFL.
each blu-ray disc (for dvds) had on it's file system a space reserved for a code block to be run by a VM on the player? This code would be loaded to decrypt the content, and you'd use a digtally signed (ala xbox) and TrusedComp platform (TCPM, ala the new x86 DRM) system to choose which CD's to load code from, and limit execution of code to just those disks. They could make players that will only play 'original' media; movies from outside their studio releases could play on it, so by definition anything else is piracy. Use this fact to completely stop the influx of burned CD ****from the analog hole*** (less quality on the conversion = different checksum = unable to hash out a code block that the player will accept (aka has to be signed with that hash in it)
This would set the stage for other manuvers on a strictly cryptographic basis. be forewarned - be forearmed.
jro / whereyou _at_ gmail.com
I'd love to see a virus that teaches the early adopters a lesson in consumer research!
I can't think of a single media playback device that did not enjoy a healthy kick in sales simply because it allowed a buyer to make/playback copies of original media... or from hacks which allowed the machine in question to do more than originally advertised.
Beta tapes and VHS recorders --"You mean I can go to the store, set one deck to playback on channel 3 and set the other to record channel 3, and I have a copy? Schmeet!"
Audio cassettes -- Same deal.
CD Burners -- Again, essentially the same deal.
Playstations -- I can play imported games and as a side benefit, play "backup" games? Where do I get one of these mod-chips? See: CD-Burner sales.
Dreamcast -- Homebrew games and backups? All I have to do is use a special boot-cd? I think I'll pick one up since they're so cheap. See: CD-Burner sales.
DVD Burners -- I can backup my important data plus burn movies and games? I want one!
XBOX -- Relatively shitty sales compared to the gold-standard Playstation2 'til the modders started to have fun with the internal hard drive. Drop some NES/SNES/Genesis emulators on there...
Sony PSP --Aside from the weak (IMHO) "I have one before you!" factor... probably the only thing driving sales... the ability to make it do things it didn't do out-of-the-box.
Anyone denying that the sale of almost every new format's success was riding on the possibly of pirating is damn near delusional. Maybe it isn't the deciding factor for every single person buying the widget, but it's definitely a sizable minority... if not majority.
Frankly, this time around, we're really faced with a stalemate between Hollywood and consumers. Sure, early adopters will buy whatever hits the market... but not in droves.
This time around, if the hardware makers don't follow the wishes of Hollywood, prices probably won't decline, volumes will remain flat, and Toshiba and Sony both will be faced with a format that's dead right out of the gates.
However, without laying the DRM on thick, Hollywood won't play ball with the next generation of video players. Catch-22.
It's silly not to attribute a sizable portion of the success of DVD to the cracking of CSS -- like it nor not.
Good. I say we stop resisting this and let them have what they want. Let these companies create all kinds of complicated consumer-angering technology. Let people be forced into experiencing the entertainment they "buy" only how the providers want. Let the consumer be forced into restrictive pay-per-view models for movies they purchase. Make it impossible for me to let my mom borrow a DVD I "bought." Just let it all happen.
That will give the rest of the entertainment community the chance to create smaller, niche forms of entertainment, while hollywood continues its downward spiral of making worse mass appeal crap. Same for music, TV, etc.
_______
2B1ASK1
Intel and AMD CPUs shipping this year are going to support easy virtualization. Those hardware companies are pouring money into VM software, and that VM software is free, so anyone and everyone will be able to run VMMs on their stock machines. One way to limit some of the damage of viruses/spyware is to make it a habit to run with multiple VMs. Even grandmothers should do this. (on top of security, VMs have a wide range of other benefits that make them hard to sideline)
On the other hand, DRM is becoming more popular. MS will have its Next-Generation Secure Computing Base that will try to have sections of memory that are very secure and protected. Grandmothers are going to want to play their DVD's inside a VM, and play her secure .WMA files, and...
Multiplayer games are often hacked, and hacks can ruin a multiplayer game. Microsoft's new NGSCB promises to have a secure authenticated path from the USB hub to the software. Hackers come out with things like fishing bots that multiplayer game authors would really like to prevent. Normal players would like to play hack-free games, within a VM.
Is there an inevitable train wreck here?
- Users who don't have phone lines or Internet connections? (Yes, there are lots of them.)
- My Internet connection is down... Well, I can't surf the web, so I think I'll pop in a DVD, instead. ERROR - UNAUTHORIZED!
- Invasion of privacy - Please wait while your DVD player connects to Sony Headquarters to inform them that you're watching an illegal copy of Horse Humpers Volume 7.
- Warning stickers? WARNING: This device will stop working if an invalid disk is loaded. Yeah, that's good for sales.
- Headaches for retailers (dealing with returns/repairs of "self destructed" uints).
Not to mention that people just won't like the idea. And it's untrue to say that it won't matter, because the general public won't know the difference, because the first people who are going to buy next-generation DVD players are the tech-savvy crowd. And they won't buy this garbage. It sounds to me like the battle is over... They've showed their hand, and they've got nothing.DRM == egg's in one frail basket.
Cripes, not only is there then incentive to crack the key, but also attack the servers. The last would prove doubly interesting, given you could not only decrypt the content of the media, but potentially send out false destruct messages that would look legitimate.
Hell, a coding error could open up huge liability for them.
DVDs for fair use? pah! Laserdisc is where it's at. Closest thing to corporate stupidity there is the conflict between the various high-end video standards (in that not all of them can coexist on the same disc)
"Because Science" is one step from "Because old book". Try "Because of my experiment testing my falsifiable assertion".
I have at least 6 DVD players in the house, of which 3 are actually connected to TVs, but they haven't been used in years, except to play music CDs (or load computer software). DVD players are becoming irrelivant due to PVRs, cable and satellite services. The DVD copying paranoia will just hasten its demise.
Oh well, what the hell...
(FTFA:)
So, on each protected DVD, they gonna include the code to decrypt it, code that WILL HAVE to be executable by all sorts of DVD players. In order to do so, obviously, it will have to be written in a higher-level language or some sort of for portability.
This will make writing a ripper a cinch, since all one will have to do is to write an emulator for that code...
"Apple has proven people are willing to accept DRM if it isn't noticable for most of the things people normally do."
True, but Apple has not really prohibited the copying of music, which is something that people normally do.
Are the movie studios willing to accept DRM that does let people make copies of their movies? Not according to this article they aren't. They want to lock it down so tight that consumers will squeak when they watch a movie. I don't think people are going to embrace something like that.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Apple has proven people are willing to accept DRM if it isn't noticable for most of the things people normally do.
Apple has sold a grand total of 25 million ipods world-wide, ten million of those in the U.S. While that seems like a lot, the ten million U.S. owners of ipods represents about 1 in 29 people. In comparison, there are 248 million television sets in the U.S., and around 125 million VCRs (despite what some slashdotters think about the VCR being 'dead technology). DVD player figures vary quite a bit depending on who's giving out the numbers, but the upper bound seems to be around 60 million (and growing, as VCR numbers decline).
Geeks tend to lose sight of the fact that their behavior is *not* typical of the population at large. Geeks tend to be obsessed with pieces of technology which simply don't interest Joe and Jane Doe. The ipod is clearly one of those pieces, as only 1 in 29 Americans actually owns one. So while Apple, the press, and the geek set here on Slashdot make a huge deal out of the ipod, market penetration is absolutely tiny in comparison to items which are actually ubiquitous (TVs, VCRs, computers, refrigerators, etc.).
The ipod is not, has never been, and appears that it will never be, a 'common' piece of household technology. It's a toy that appeals to less than 4% of the population. The vast majority of Americans do not own an ipod and never will; they simply don't give a shit about it.
On the other hand, the opposite is true of the TV, VCR, and DVD. Nearly every American household as a TV and a VCR or DVD, which means that Americans *do* give a damn about these items. The one recent attempt to impose DRM on TV-related entertainment - Divx - failed miserably. There's no reason to believe that a similar attempt will do any better.
The only thing that ipod sales have proven is that an extremely small subset of the American population - geeks and college students - are willing to accept DRM on the ipod. It can't logically be extended to any other device or form of entertainment. Although it's amusing to note that the people who complain most about DRM seem to be the most willing to put up with it when it comes to 'hip' new shinies.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?