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Macrovision Wants Old DRM to Work Forever
Grv writes "Macrovision's best-known form of copy protection inserts noise into analog video signals to make it difficult to get a good copy of the DVD or VHS recording. A company named Sima has products that eliminate this noise when digitizing such video, as any good digitizer would do. Macrovision argues that this is a violation of the DMCA, and a court sided with them in June. Now the injunction is being reviewed, and several organizations are siding with Sima and Fair Use, including the American Library Association, the Consumer Electronics Association, the Home Recording Rights Coalition, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. If it isn't overturned, this decision could make it illegal to develop products for making copies of commercial analog recordings."
This story selected and edited by LinuxWorld editor for the day Saied Pinto.
I don't know how good it is at color corrections but it did a fine job of removing macrovision before my new DVD player came into the picture.
I for one endorse this product if you have the need.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Basically this was sold as a way to prevent anyone from using two VCRs to copy a rented videotape. It (Macrovision) was placed on most commercial videos of Hollywood product from the mid-1980s to the present. Since the 'owner' of the video content had to pay a stiff license fee to Macrovision company, almost no porn tapes from that era had this nonsense added.
Macrovision is a burst of noise added to the vertical sync in the brief period after the current frame has ended and the next frame (a single 'photograph' or still image on the television set) begins. This burst of noise happened about once every ten to fifteen seconds. It caused the picture image to lose sync and 'roll' and/or 'tear up' for a short period of time until the vertical sync stabilization circuitry in the recording process
kicked in and made the picture stable.
This is how Macrovision was able to mess up the video copy without destroying the video integrity when watching the original commercial video tape. The sync stablizer circuitry only was active during the recording period, not during playback. But the video copy was polluted by tearing and rolling every ten seconds or so.
The way to defeat this pollution was/is to use an 1881 sync seperator IC, a track-and-hold circuit, a 4053-type analog 1-of-2 switch IC, and a timer on a microcontroller (or a 555 one-shot timer IC). Use the sync seperator to detect the beginning of the vertical sync pulse. At this time, sample the black video level using the track-and-hold. After sampling, switch the video signal to the recorder (for the content being copied) to the sampled black level for the period before the actual video image analog signal begins. Then switch the recording back to the analog video signal of the original. Your copy will be solid and without tearing and rolling.
Oh my goodness!?! Did I just break your fucking law by explaining this? Oh my, I am sooooooo sorry! Oh well, to quote Emil Faber, "Knowledge Is Good". That's from the first video that I thought was worth copying.
What Macrovision does is to mess up the automatic gain control (AGC) on the vcr. A tv also has an AGC but it reacts fast enough that the visible picture isn't affected. Old VCRs are either not affected or can easily be adjusted so they aren't. Any VCR made in the last fifteen years is pretty much tamper proof with regard to the AGC. Macrovision tricks the AGC by deliberately messing up the "black level" during the vertical sync period. It's not noise per se. As the parent points out it is easy to defeat. In fact, every decent video studio or tv station has equipment which, as part of its normal operation, removes macrovision from a video signal.
Your analogy is fundamentally flawed. If you make software, and you haven't yet sold it, it has a certain value to you (how much it cost to develop) and it has a certain value to say, the business that wants to buy this code (how much return on investment they can get).
However, the value to the buyer is MUCH MUCH less than the value to the producer: it's certainly not worth the $2mill development cost to the buyer. So you charge what the buyer is prepared to pay, say, $5K.
But with no concept of licensing instead of ownership, the second you sell one copy, there's no reason the buyer won't just put it up on BitTorrent. As far as they see it, they're saving everyone else $5K and doing everyone a favour. And since they're not taking anything away from you, it's not stealing either.
Suddenly there's no incentive to produce expensive software that has a wide appeal anymore.
Enter copyright, and LICENSING - whereby the producer sells the right to use the code, not the ownership of the code. Along with that license comes restrictions, and now the producer is more likely to be able to recover their costs and turn a profit.
Don't get me wrong, I'm no DMCA fanboy, in fact making it illegal to sell software purely on the basis that it has the abililty to help people infringe copyright is a terrible move. All I'm saying is that you can't have ownership of intellectual property, no licensing, and expect everything to come up roses.
As classic video (magnetic) tape only lasts 10-20 years, you cannot expect anything on tape to still be around in 100 years. Without killing the macrovision, there will be no archives other than what might be on (real/reel) film.... Not that I expect congress to leave the dates alone.
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
Apparently, Macrovision must have successfully scrambled item number 3.
Navicula hydraulica plena anguilarum est. Omnes castelli tuus nostri sunt. Ed elli avea del cul fatto trombetta.
Make no mistake, analog copyright protection systems are protected under the DMCA. The DMCA makes it illegal to create an anticircumvention device of any kind, with few exceptions (fairly well explained on Copyright.gov's DMCA overview, page 5 (Warning: PDF)), none of which apply to breaking older copyright protection methods. If you're going to enforce the DMCA anywhere, you must also enforce it here, and against every other technological copyright circumvention scheme ever conceived.
Which, of course, is why the DMCA is so stupid, arbitrary, and completely one-sided.
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
My Phillips Matchline VCR from factory removes macrovision from my DVD player. The same DVD player into another VCR generates distorted macrovision colors etc. I wonder if the Phillips DVD Recorders also strip macrovision?
In my web-search to better understand what the heck HQ is, if it isn't some sort of stealthy copy protection scheme, I came across an interesting site (US dept of Labor: http://www.bls.gov/cpi/cpivcrp.htm). The following tidbit was embedded within their report:
... mfg's reporting was inconsistent ... Maybe that's because it wasn't about improved video quality. Maybe it really was a way to get the MPIA off their backs by giving them a "feature" that could be exploited to copy protect tapes. Wrap some sneaky marketing around it (High Quality - improved video, sharper picture) and voila, problem solved. It's probably no surprise each manufacturer's claims were inconsistent ...
"There seems to be no discernible difference between VHS and VHS-HQ. Manufacturer reporting of this information was inconsistent, and it became clear that consumers would have difficulty in discerning if the units they were purchasing were equipped with HQ."
Hmmm, so there was no discernible difference between HQ and non-HQ
I would still love to see a technical description of what HQ is, beyond "spec tightening".
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
If these are analog signals, does the DMCA apply here? Is cleaning noise out of a signal considered "hacking" now?
Macrovision is trivially defeated with a simple, off-the-shelf, $10 video switch that you can buy at any big-box electronics store. Video switches do not have automatic gain control, because they are not "analog recording devices" under the DMCA. Lacking this feature means they are immune to Macrovision. The video output from the switch can then be routed to the recording device of your choice, with Macrovision stripped away.
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I built macrovision defeating electronics way back when I was still a minor, as I'm now 30 that should put a date on how long ago macrovision was broken.
-- To dream a dream is grand, but to live it is divine. -- Leto ][
After installing ATITool 0.24 or newer, four clicks is all that it takes to get rid of Macrovision.
Click "Settings", then choose "Miscalleaneous" tab and from there check "Remove Macrovision detection from analog input driver". Now you can use the card's analog inputs and outputs as you wish.
I disabled mine so long ago I don't remember if you'll have to reboot afterwards.
Does anyone know a similiar procedure for Nvidia cards?
Capitalization is the difference between "Helping your uncle jack off a horse" and "Helping your uncle Jack off a horse"