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New Copy Protection to Make Playing DVDs on a PC Difficult
The Cowardly Pirate writes "ZDNet's Hardware 2.0 blog is reporting that new copy-protection software for DVD publishers from a company called ProtectDisc not only makes it difficult to rip movies that you've purchased but also prevents discs from playing in a Windows PC at all. From the article: 'Protect DVD-Video is the brainchild of a company called ProtectDisc. Part of the copy-protection mechanism is a non-standard UDF (Universal Disc Format) file system which results in the IFO file on the DVD (this is the file responsible for storing information on chapters, subtitles and audio tracks) appearing to the PC as being zero bytes long.'"
I love reading stuff like this. I hope that they lock DVDs down so tight that no one can even play them on their regular players. Then, when the next blockbuster movie sell a grand total of four DVDs, maybe the movie and television studios will finally realize how much money this is costing them.
And seriously, can I see a quick show of hands of everyone who thinks that this will keep people from copying DVDs?...
Yeah, that's what I thought, and neither do I.
What makes me angry about this isn't that I won't be able to find movies online; hell, it's usually possible to get them before they're even available from Blockbuster. What's irritating is that I'm an honest customer of the MPAA. I have a huge shelf of DVDs. I'm a DVD collector. The first time I buy a DVD that has been engineered in such a way to not play, I'm going to return it and never buy a DVD again.
Note: This doesn't mean I'm going to stop watching movies. Do the fucking math, MPAA.
It looks like this only effects the IFO on the disc. VLC (along with many other players) can play the VOB files without using an IFO.
Of course the encryption is already broken. From the article:
Nice try. I'll give you a cookie.When are these companies going to learn...every "protected" piece of crap they put out there gets broken. It is inevitable, Mr Anderson. When you figure out how much money the world has put into copy protection, vs how much they have actually lost to piracy...what are they really gaining?
CS: It is all sink or swim...oh and did I mention there are sharks in that water?
It's generally pretty difficult to return opened media these days. You'd probably have to make a big stink out of it at Best Buy to get the yellow shirt to approve it.
I was just involved in a class action (something I almost always disagree with), and the settlement was that the company will reimburse me for the repair I had to make, and will fix the problem if it happens again for free.
So yes, class actions are abused 99% of the time, and the lawyers are the only ones who benefit, but "never" is a harsh word.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Instructions to downgrade the firmware are here:
_ viewtopic.php?46417
http://www.epizenter.net/e107_plugins/forum/forum
I would send a nasty letter to Creative when you're done downgrading too, but that's just me. I know I sent one to Apple when they castrated iTunes' ability to share over the internet, a feature that I had used all the time to listen to my music while studying or working in another building.
Companies need to know that we won't just bend over and let them fuck us with little "upgrades" like that, at least not without noticing.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Everyone in between is better off using a pirated copy, because it is just better.
Agreed. I hardly even watch movies straight from DVD anymore. Even if I'm just going to watch it once, I just run them through HandBrake first. That way I don't have to deal with crappily designed menus, FBI warnings, and mandatory-view advertisements. (Because yes, Virginia, a "preview" is just an advertisement for another movie.)
I've told more than one other person about HandBrake and now they do the same thing. I wouldn't call it quite "Grandma friendly" yet (although the stripped-down iPod version is) but it's pretty close. If the person you're instructing knows the difference between a Phillips screw and a Torx, they can probably deal with HandBrake.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Macs read the data in the same way PCs do. If the contents are messed up, the DVD won't play in a Mac either. it's not a Mac/PC thing it's a smart/dumb thing. Stand alone DVD players are normally "dumb" meaning they know very little about the disc they are playing. PCs/Macs are "smarter" and rely on that information to figure out what to do and where to read things.
I live in the Netherlands, but I know the situation is the same in many other EU countries:
Since the implementation of the EUCD, it is now against the law to bypass "effective technical measures" that restrict what can be done with a copyrighted work, even if these restrictions involves rights you would normally have under copyright law.
At the same time, downloading copyrighted material off the 'net is explicitly allowed. The copyright holders are paid from a levy that is imposed on blank media.
As a result of this, for me as a Linux user, it is illegal for me to watch movies from "copy-protected" DVDs that I bought and paid for, but it is legal to watch the same movies if I download them off the 'net for free.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
There's been a lot of discussion about this over at www.epizenter.net - Creative never forced the firmware "upgrade," and they list the removal of FM recording openly on their site. Thus, it will be really hard to get a successful lawsuit out of it.
Addendum: I just found out that the built in DVD Player of OSX will play DVD image files just fine, with full functionality, just like a real DVD. On an image file, I can fix the region to whatever I want it to be.
So MPAA, if you're listening, please give me one reason to give you money. Not that I don't want to, some movies actually are worth it, but with all this hostility and restrictions you shove in my face, give me one reason not to prefer Pirate Bay.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Not only that, but AnyDVD makes DVD's bearable by skipping all the forced junk that a stand-alone player must show.
That's the widest standardly available slot on a PC case. Media wider than this would require very specific hardware, or an external drive at the least, for every single user.
Ah AnyDVD. Some of the best money I've ever spent. Period.
Creative Zen Vision:M developer here, posting anonymously of course.
Disabling FM Recording is a precautionary response to a copyright infringement lawsuit brought on us by a certain entity, and has nothing to do with DRM or whatever. This will probably remain disabled until the lawsuit is settled. Of course, reenabling it is simply a compile flag and can be done in no time...
Well, the reason the hack works is because of a kind of cheapness in common DVD players: they read the ISO9660 filesystem and ignore the UDF system (as all the player needs is the DVD filenames). As a result, the iso9660 stuff likely reports the correct data, while the UDF does not. Simple hack: mount as ISO9660 in Linux and play via filesystem (rather than via /dev/dvd). As a result, Linux users are actually better off then Windows for once when it comes to DVDs.
Funny stuff. No, really.
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