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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.
This disc (and player) will self destruct in 5 seconds.
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...
If Blue Ray requires the device to be connected to the internet then that will spell the death of it before it even is sold anywhere. Same thing for HD-DVD. People will not want or be able to run internet connections to their tv area just to be able to play hidef dvd's. If people have to do anything more than plug it into the wall for power and plug the player into the tv and/or receiver then it won't sell.
KIRK: Destruct sequence one. Code one, one-A.
SPOCK: Destruct sequence number two. Code one, one-A, two-B.
SCOTT: Destruct sequence number three. Code one-B, two-B, three.
KIRK: Begin thirty second countdown. Code zero, zero, zero, destruct, zero.
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.
>a self-destruct code for Blu-ray disc players
That's waaaay over the line.
Not gonna buy it.
You think I'd let a mistake by some techie or program destroy a few hundred bucks of my hard-earned money?
I'm tired of people treating me like a thief, when I never pirate ANYTHING!
I've got lots of CDs and DVDs I already bought in the 80s and 90s, and I can always just walk along the street and whistle (or daydream).
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
All these new systems will fail for one reason: Porn.
Porn producers are very realistic, and very saavy. Do you think people are going to buy "Buttbandits 23" if they know that every time they queue it up, some manufacturer is getting a record of it?? Even those without tinfoil hats know this is a bad idea...
My prediction is that the pornographers will use a version of the high-def discs WITHOUT the phone-home feature, or will stick to DVDs.
Pornography: Saving Western Civilization since 1826.
It's not what you know, or even who you know- It's how many people recognize your damn
"Besides, what's to prevent a hacker from filtering out this self-destruct code from the downstream content anyway?"
I'd be willing to bet a month's salary that they are going to use public-key cryptography with a bigass key to protect it. RSA2048 will keep anyone from screwing with it. Hard-code the SSL public key, and the only way you're going to launch a man-in-the-middle attack against it is by rewriting the key.
Disconnect and self-destruct, one bullet at a time.
Reminds me of the old Divx players that they tried to foist on us several years back, when DVD players were just starting to become popular. They had to be connected to a phone jack so they could phone home and let their masters know what you were up to. Ok, they didn't self-destruct, but the potential was there. I was elated to see that crappy technology flop. I remember a Circuit City sales guy trying to sell me one. He failed miserably when trying to explain how it was better for me to have discs that would expire and a player that would inform on me.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Even worse: what about when hackers can start sending these self destruct packets themselves. Imagine how pissed you'd be when someone "destroys" your dvd player!
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.
The HD-DVD peoples published the specs on their DRM scheme months and months ago.
Meanwhile to counterpart Blu-Ray's "interesting" copy control features, at least as the standard stands, HD-DVD discs MUST CONTAIN DRM in order to be played in an HD-DVD player AT ALL. This is not like DVD, where CSS was an option which disc creators could choose to follow or not follow and you could just freely stick into a DVD player a DVD-R you burned. An HD-DVD drive is not allowed, by the current compliance rules, to play ANY HD-DVD disc which doesn't have a digital watermark granted directly by the central HD-DVD authority. Interestingly these watermarks include a "banned" list-- HD-DVDs keep an internal list of watermarks that have been "revoked", and every new HD-DVD printed will contain an up-to-date copy of that "revoked" list which the HD-DVD player must update every time you put in an HD-DVD. If the HD-DVD player sees a disc whose watermark has been placed on the "banned" list, it refuses to play it.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
It'll be worse, the retailers will get in on it. They'll be getting all sorts of returns from people who don't have an Internet connection. Parents whose player doesn't work after little Johnny unbeknownst to them tried to play a disc his friend at school gave him. People whose player got "self-destructed" because somebody at a content provider mis-keyed a serial number. And people won't be happy about having to pay restocking or repair fees when they didn't do anything to break the player. A few consumer complaints later, Blu-Ray players will be anathema to retailers who can't afford to eat the cost of all those returns.