Studios OK Burning Movie Downloads

SirClicksalot writes "The DVD Copy Control Association has released a statement (pdf) announcing that it will make adaptations to the Content Scramble System (CSS) used to protect DVDs. The association, made up of Hollywood studios, consumer electronics and software companies, licenses CSS to the DVD industry to protect content. The changes will allow home users to legally burn purchased movie downloads to special CSS protected DVDs, compatible with existing DVD players."

Comments

If it works with existing DVD players...

[squiggleslash]

...then it probably involves some revision of the actual writable DVDs rather than CSS. The problem with burning a writable DVD at the moment with CSS encoding is that you have nowhere to store the keys. These are kept in a part of the DVD that has deliberately been unwritable on writable discs.

The articles I'm reading suggest the service will be limited to kiosks. This makes sense, as any consumer based DVD burner that can burn CSS discs will be ultimately possible to modify such that it can copy regular DVDs too.

Sadly encouraging, but....

[Utilitygeek]

While, sadly, it is encouraging that the MPAA is trying to find ways for end-users to have fair use of the media they purchase, I still have to wonder what sort of DRM and restrictions they will place in/on this new technology. Will I be able to burn multiple copies? Watch without burning? Or, if I misburn myself a coaster, am I simply SOL?

#!/usr/bin/perl

[guzugi]

s''$/=\2048;while(){G=29;R=142;if((@a=unqT="C*",_) [20]&48){D=89;_=unqb24,qT,@
b=map{ord qB8,unqb8,qT,_^$a[--D]}@INC;s/...$/1$&/;Q=unqV,qb2 5,_;H=73;O=$b[4]>8^(P=(E=255)&(Q>>12^Q>>4^Q/8^Q))> 8^(E&(F=(S=O>>14&7^O)
^S*8^S>=8
)+=P+(~F&E))for@a[128..$#a]}print+qT,@a}';s/[D-HO- U_]/\$$&/g;s/q/pack+/g;eval

Re:"special" discs?

[lordkuri]

right, so how again are they going to update the firmware on countless thousands if not millions of dvd players?

as for reading the article, I quote:

"Soon, people will be able to copy a digital movie onto a specially made DVD"

What it sounds like to me is that they plan on distributing discs with CSS keys already burned on them instead of the discs that exist now having the CSS ring zeroed out.

Re:"special" discs?

[Mr2001]

From the PDF (emphasis added):

Under rule changes now in the works, commercial vendors could create protected DVDs on kiosks and in small custom runs. Individual consumers could legally record a variety of selected content. Both would require special blank DVD discs that will use the Content Scramble System (CSS) for encryption and will be compatible with the millions of existing DVD players in the marketplace today.

This isn't just a software change. See, the whole reason CSS is effective (to any extent) is that DVD burners and blank DVD media are designed to prevent you from writing CSS keys to a disc. The media comes with the key area pre-burned with zeros (or physically embossed, for RW discs) and the burners refuse to write there anyway. Even with the expensive DVD-R for Authoring format, you can't burn a CSS protected disc today, AFAICT.

Re:Further evidence...

[Yvan256]

The RIAA's members continue to sell unencumbered media for the most part.

Because the CDDA specs were done a long time ago, when nobody thought that if would be economically viable to copy 600-700MB of data for a single 20$ music CD. When MP3 came out, it was too little too late to change the CDDA specs: they didn't want to break the billions of CD-audio players available world-wide.

I'll also add a comment to your "for the most part" argument: look at how often and in how many ways they've tried to put (sometimes artificial) barriers to CD-ripping. With the iPod and other MP3 players being so popular now, too many people stumble upon those limitations, the RIAA can't get away with it.

Re:"Special" DVDs

[badfish99]

The PDF linked from the article clearly states that this will need special blank disks.
Actually, CSS is hardware as well as software, because the key is stored in a spacial place on the disk, and existing disks do not allow that special place to be written. So it is impossible to make CSS-protected disks with current domestic DVD writers.

WRONG

[Anonymous Coward]

According to TFA, they're changing the CSS spec, not creating special discs. So you should be able to take the DRMed movie you legally downloaded, and burn it to a standard DVD. The only difference is that the DRM would not be "broken" to create the disc as Music DRM is when a CD is created.

YOU need to read TFA:
http://www.dvdcca.org/data/css/DVDCCArecordrlsFINA L.pdf
"Both would require special blank DVD discs that will use the Content Scramble System (CSS) for encryption and will be compatible with the millions of existing DVD players in the marketplace today."

If you had a clue about what you're talking about, you would know that CSS keys cannot be written existing DVD blank media, which is what makes CSS semi-effective in the first place. Otherwise, you wouldn't need to decrypt a DVD to copy it; you could just copy the whole encrypted disk, including keys, which would kinda defeat the entire purpose of CSS.

Re:WRONG

[dreamlax]

Think of it like this; imagine the entire DVD is a zip file with a password on it, and the password is in a place that is only writeable through pressing the DVDs, not burning them (and by pressing, I mean manufacturing them, not pushing on it with your thumb). This would stop a straight DVD copy from working in a conventional DVD player. The content remains scrambled because there is no password with it. This cuts out the easiest copying solution, which existed in conventional audio CDs.

The second problem is, only authorised/liscensed software were given the technique to get the password. This would mean that they could still be played on a PC through special software that had proprietary code built-in, such as PowerDVD. Such software was probably only allowed to perform a certain number of tasks, such as playback and seeking. I would imagine that any program that wanted to use the technique for anything other than playback was denied the necessary proprietary code.

Now, if the password to the DVD was stored somewhere where everyone could see it, that would make the previous two implementations invalid and unnecessary, but we know them to be true, and because of this, you don't need sources, just evidence.

Re:Further evidence...

[AKAImBatman]

MODS: You can mod me back down. It seems I should have read the PDF rather than relying on the explanation given by the article. I think others have quite well explained where and why special DVDs would be needed.

Re:"special" discs?

[b1t r0t]

Even with the expensive DVD-R for Authoring format, you can't burn a CSS protected disc today, AFAICT.

As I understand it, that was the whole point of DVD-R for Authoring. They did let you burn CSS to Authoring discs ("authoring", after all, means making an exact image of what is going to be pressed at the factory), but they made sure that Authoring discs wouldn't be burnable in regular drives, and (for some reason I can't comprehend), Authoring drives wouldn't burn regular discs.

The original intent was that the only people with Authoring drives and using Authoring discs would be the few pros who needed them. And they would pay big bucks for what was esentially a drive with different firmware, and a blank disc made with different header info, further limiting use to pros only.

Re:"special" discs?

[Mr2001]

It looks like Authoring blocks CSS in the burner's firmware, but the media is physically able to hold a key (link, also see this PDF):

DVD-R General media ships with the area where the CSS information is stored pre-blocked by the manufacturer. While DVD-R Authoring discs are not blocked in this manner, the area is unconditionally prewritten with null data when a first recording session is performed on a disc by the only available DVD-R Authoring drive (Pioneer's DVR-S201). Indeed, DVD-R's inability to handle CSS information almost single-handedly rules out DVD-R's use as mastering media for DVD-Video in the studio entertainment space where most DVD-Videos to date have fit.

Re:Further evidence...

[MBGMorden]

CSS is an encryption standard, but for a player to *decrypt* that file it has to get the key off of the disc. That key is stored in an area that is not writeable on DVD-R's. So if you burn an encrypted DVD-R (or +R), it's just fine, except that your player doesn't know how to play it.

Popular DVD "ripping" tools that make the ISO's actually decrypt the content first so that you can burn it to another disc in an unencrypted format.

Major(s) costs saving

[olahaye74]

The aim of this move is simple: costs saving for the majors:

- They don't need to edit a DVD structure with bonuses and such
- They donc have to create the media, the jacket and such
- They don't have to manage media storage
- They don't have to manage media transportation

But you pay the same: They earn 35% more.

Same for downloadable manazines and news papers: same price, but the company saves paper, printing costs, transportation, unsold idtems, ....