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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.'"
Countdown to DVD Jon hack 3..2..1..
Just the other night we had more DVDs to watch than TVs and players. Our daughter wanted to watch her Smallville (purchased), and we were watching one of our circulating Blockbuster "mailer" DVDs.
She was delighted when I showed her how to watch her DVD on the upstairs computer -- she hadn't known that was possible. Problem solved, everybody happy.
But, now this? What the hey? So now potentially what she presumably knows about watching on an alternative device could not work, and she wouldn't know why -- yes, the article mentions the latest new "tool" that "effortlessly" bypasses the security, but again, What the Hey? She isn't going to know about that tool, or how to use it, and I'm about as sick and tired as I can be of setting up the workarounds for restrictions that shouldn't even exist.
Interestingly, the article mentions (emphasis mine):
I only almost agree with that -- "they" in this case seem to be blurring the line between use-use and piracy. Each day I toss a coin to decide who annoys me more -- media "providers" or spammers. It's a close call.
I used to wonder whether the DVD industry would totally shoot itself in the foot with the HD vs. BluRay DVD wars coupled with intrusive DRM, sending potential customers away in droves. If this new protection technology is for existing DVDs (it's not clear from the article), they could send existing DVD customers away in droves. I no longer about the sanity of the industry -- I worry about the sanity of artists allowing contracts for their "art" to be wrapped in technology like this, I wonder why they allow it.
(Interesting (and I think important) aside: I recently updated the firmware on my Creative Vision:M mp3 player, a player I've absolutely loved for its features, ergonomics, screen quality, you name it, there was hardly a thing about it I could find fault with. As the new firmware was installing I browsed the release notes... looking for the standard blah blah blah on what's fixed, what's new. The very last line of the notes said (paraphrasing), This firmware upgrade will disable your FM recording capability(!). WTF? It was too late for me to stop the upgrade -- sure enough, I now have a Creative Vision:M sans FM recording capability, (a feature which I was quite fond of)! Creative doesn't say whether it's RIAA induced, I have no idea why they did this... but if it IS more DRM crap, what a crock!)
(Other aside: I love that the ad for the slashdot page for the "read more" for me was an HD-DVD ad...)
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.
Movies are actually meant to be watched? I thought they were collectibles!
...mechanism is a non-standard UDF A non-standard anything on a DVD makes it not a true DVD. We've seen this tried before on CDs and the response was that they'd have to stop using the "Compact Disc" trademark because that's only for people who follow the standard.
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.
As I recall, the XBox operating system was based off some version of Windows (although HEAVILY modified). Also, as many (most in the /. crowd, I'd wager) know, the XBox is pretty much just a small form factor computer. I don't own a normal DVD player, I just use my XBox for this purpose. Would this mean that I would be unable to watch movies using this tech with my existing setup?
There is no mod option "-1: Disagree" for a reason. "Overrated" is not an acceptable substitute. Post something instead.
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.
I don't know about you, but the only DVDs I watch on my computer are in DIVX format and come from sweden. GG MPAA.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
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.
Yeah, people who want to copy dvds professionally are smart. Legitimate users are not really. Everyone in between is better off using a pirated copy, because it is just better.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Part of the copy-protection mechanism is a non-standard UDF (Universal Disc Format) file system...
Not very universal if it's non-standard, now, is it?
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?
IANAL, but if Creative, in any way, induced you to upgrade the firmware (i.e., it fixed an existing bug), then they have just handed the class action vultures a nice gift. Can't sell a product based on features, and then take them away.
If you want to see Creative punished (you won't benefit, class action suits never actually benefit the consumer), take a screen grab of anything on their site that still shows this capability, and then email it to the proper vultures.
jh
If it's a non-standard format, then it isn't a DVD....
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
This will lock out people that use their PCs as Media Center PCs to play DVDs, watch TV, etc., and they usually spend quite a bit of money on tvs, dvds, sound systems, so this may not play out too well.
On 10 October 2006, SlySoft released a press release: AnyDVD beats new copy protection "Protect DVD-Video"
With the latest release of AnyDVD, version 6.0.8.0, SlySoft has again confirmed its position as the market leader in providing video DVD decryption software. With this version it is now possible to bypass the new "Protect DVD-Video" copy protection which first appeared on the DVD "Silent Hill" (german rental version).
Among other mechanisms, Protect DVD-Video comes up with a messed-up UDF file system, in which an IFO file appears with a zero-byte length on a regular PC. The unsurprising result is that these DVDs will refuse to run on a Windows PC with Windows Media Player, Windows Media Center Edition or all software players that are based on DirectShow (e.g. the very popular ZoomPlayer).
"With this copy protection the film industry clearly overshot the mark", says Giancarlo Bettini, CEO at SlySoft. "The premium customer who spent a lot of money on his multimedia home cinema and who, for quality reasons, would never even consider watching anything else but an original DVD, is being slapped in the face. These customers with their shelves stuffed with rightfully aquired DVDs, can't watch their videos."
This is incredible nonsense! Any Media Center freak will have no choice but to install AnyDVD on his PC in order to watch his original DVD." "The film industry should actually thank us for taking care of their premium customers so well. Maybe one day I'll be nominated for an Oscar", Bettini adds with a grin.
Background info: The company ProtectDisc is being run by Volkmar Breitfeld, also managing director of ACE (FluxDVD copy protection). Remarkably enough, Volkmar Breitfeld was previously known for creating copy protection circumventing products like InstantCopy or InstantCD/DVD, before he changed fronts to selling copy protection mechanisms.
Gone!
consumers don't like them. And do they really think I'm going to shell out money for an over-priced DVD that I can't even play on my PC?
I could add oh so much more... but I'll leave it at that.
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
After all, it only took the branching features of The Matrix to make several popular brands of DVD player come to a screeching halt until they were updated (which itself required sending the player back to the manufacturers)
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.
More likely they'll blame piracy.
Safedisc. Or Discguard. Or Safecast. Or SecuROM. Or...
Oh hell. Here's the list of those who have gone before.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
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.
As soon as contract negotiations over royalty payments and distribution expenses come into play, I feel they lose their "artist" status and are "entertainers."
Artists to me are people that attempt to share a unique, creative and inspired vision through sound and vision (or the combination of the two.)
(Yes I realize 'art' is subjective, but I'm talkin strictly to the movie/music type here.)
When it comes to the **AA's and their international counterparts, all we get is rehashed, same old same old in order to service a businesses bottom line.
No sig for you!!
When DVD-ROM drives first came out, one could purchase the drive with a card for handling things like encryption for the multi-channel soundtracks, copyright protections and various picture formatting. Having the hardware handle that made it fairly simple to access anything on the disk, even if it was "protected". Granted, that is fairly old technology in today's computer world but the beauty of hardware is that for input, there is output. If you want to see what is going on, there are ways to access the hardware at a basic, sub-system/sub-software level that would allow you to circumvent any measures like this silly stuff to be put in place. The hardware needs commands to run and to build those commands, you need input. At some point, you can extract that input from the hardware, encrypted or not, especially if the hardware is what is handling the encryption.
I suppose new laws could be written to cover such technology and tighten the noose on it for new purchases but the old hardware is out there and there are no current restrictions on it. A creative coder could find ways around it if the incentive was there. I think this just notched that incentive mark up a few notches.
The reason for a standard format is so that anyone can make a player, or perform an encoding that they KNOW will work. Companies rarely want to create multiple copies of their video to different specifications, because they want to be able to reach as wide an audience as possible. Creating a modified format that can only be reached by a subset of your audience is a really good way to fail.
Plus, according to the article, since the DVD still has the chapter info (for the non-PC players), it's not that hard to write a program to obtain that data. Which means you've deviated from the standard for little reason, as pirates will bypass it, and even non-pirate software will probably eventually bypass it, since the information is still encoded on the disc. Which means that suckers who pay them for their 'system' are just throwing cash away.
Come to think of it, I wish I could come up with a buisness plan to get people to give me money for a product that cannot work.
On anther rant, Linux machines won't be affected by this. Even if I bought one of these disks it would only stop me from using it on my work computer, not my laptop, not any of my homebrew computers or my Mac Mini.
So why does anyone care?
We have always been at war with Eurasia!
"Nobody woke up this morning wanting to do less with their DVDs!"
The truth of the matter is, the pirates rule the ports, and if you try to remove ports altogether trade shuts down and the merchants and people are angry - the solution isn't to remove ports, but to create naval armies to fight the pirates away from the merchant vessels (being, DVD's). Or at least that's what my pirated copy of Sid Meier's Pirates taught me. But then when I pirated Pirates of the Carribean I learned instead that if you side with some of the pirates you can get rid of some other pirates. Also I learned that if a pirate falls behind, he's left behind, which explains why I'm still trying to use IRC/Torrents and it seems my fellow pirates moved on to Newgroups/Binaries. All in all though, the pirates have the better ships and are sexier, and you'll never get rid of them - so maybe just accept your losses and stop pissing off your customers so much that they prefer dealing with pirates not just because of the lower prices but because we don't fill their computers with plagued goods in the form of viral DRM softwares and anti-privacy/anti-piracy programs? If I wasn't a pirate, I would deal with them over you, and I am a pirate because you've been pissing me off for years. Soon you won't have customers at all, they'll all be pirates - and there will be panic on the high seas but also much rum drinking and dancing because - yo ho! - a pirate is a friend to a pirate when the only goods in trade are information and can verily be copied and the booty shared by all.
How dumb is this idea?
Your average Joe-computer-user will try it in his Windows PC using WMP and it won't work. So he returns it to Best Buy and (maybe) notes to himself to never to buy a DVD with the 'ProtectDisc' logo. Mark that as one lost and pissed customer.
Your average haxxor-d00d/bright-linux-guy/anyone-with-a-clue plays on on some other player that has been hacked up to deal with the non-standard UDF. It works fine.
Then his buddy, Joe, asks him for a copy since he had to return his 'defective' DVD. And while he's at it, he posts a torrent of it in case anyone else had the same problem.
So the studios end up pissing off and alienating their current customers who are unlikely to be pirating or copying the movie, while anyone who is already inclined to pirate/copy it still has the means and knowledge to do so (and now also has the motivation!). Really dumb.
Is that there are people out there that think this is a good idea. It could be the greed or just misguided ideals. But the fact that there are people out there that think this is both a good idea and worth of working on is just sad.
People rent movies because it beats watching paint dry. All this DRM stuff is doing is making wall paint more and more interesting...
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
"Part of the copy-protection mechanism is a non-standard UDF...file system which results in the IFO file on the DVD...appearing to the PC as being zero bytes long."
Then how does a dedicated DVD player read the data?
Yes, but will there always be video output ports? You are, of course, speaking of the analog hole. Let's for the moment just assume that there is reasonably priced hardware that can capture an analog HD stream (which doen't happen to exist yet.) The problem we are seeing is that content providers are working on DRM that will ONLY play the movie when there is NO ANALOG port. Kinda like Vista won't play HD content unless you have a HDCP monitor.
The answer is of course that some Chinese manufacturer will sell a HDCP dongle that will strip HDCP. As for the keys, it will always be possible to bribe an employee at a legit manufacturer and get some keys. In fact, I would bet that someone will start a distributed.net style crack effort in any case.
bingo, hit the nail on the head. This is what they are doing now anyway, sony says "hm, why aren't people buying our music... PIRACY! release the RIAA lawyers!"... they never seem to see the "our products are shit, you can't use them how everyone would think you should be able to and we rootkit your computer"
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
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."
> These DRM/anti-copy tactics are pointless, ineffective, and prevent the
> masses from doing the kind of cool shit they should be allowed to...but it's
> never going to stop the geeks - which gives us an avenue to showcase that
> smugness we all carry.
They are not very concerned about stopping the geeks. They are not numerous enough to matter. They want to stop the masses, and they are succeeding.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
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."
And since you can already read the disc on your toaster, you can also BURN IT!
I can see it now...
"I tap my 'Ghostbusters' and my 'Stripes' to power my Bill Murray's Sarcastic Comment Attack..."
"Well, I counter with my Renee Zellweger's Pinchy Faced Squint Attack, so let's see, my Zellweger is destroyed, but your Murray takes six points of damage, and I tap my 'Showgirls' to power a Flashbulb of the Paparazzi and finish him off."
"Damn! Your turn..."
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
These days? THESE DAYS? If you think this is new, then you haven't been paying attention. Remember when you had to enter the answers to some questions to play a game? Did that actually stop piracy? Obviously not. It just meant that people had to download the answers, too. Or that a patch had to be developed to route around that code. Whoop de doo.
There is no such thing as effective copy protection. If the data can be viewed by a human, then it can be viewed by something else, too. ALL copy protection is useless. The tools for bypassing it are only getting cheaper (for instance, you can get DVDFabDecrypter for free) and easier to use (a couple clicks, and the movie is ripped.)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
They are not very concerned about stopping the geeks. They are not numerous enough to matter. They want to stop the masses, and they are succeeding.
Oh, I realise...and that's kind of my point. Mainly I find this kind of stuff really bad business behaviour by annoying your customers - but I must acknowledge that this pretty much guarantees that I (and we) will always have the cooler toys.
Running Windows^H^H^H^H^H^H^H OSX and Linux in the home. (I don't have time for Solitaire any more.)
This is mainly a little DVD-Video tidbit to explain how technically this works.
For the DVD-Video spec, the actual file system being used is irrelevant and is mainly used to "boot" the disc and discover where the very first data sector is located at on the DVD disc. From then on, at least in theory, all of the navigation to the rest of the DVD media is handled internally within the DVD-Video files themselves, including the MPEG data, as the navigation within the video data is handled with the use of special navigation packets.
So for a set-top box on your home television, the data scanners ignore the UTF file format and just march through the data according to the DVD-Video specs, not even aware that there might be a problem. Besides, these set-top boxes have just enough of a file system BIOS just to get to the "root" sector and not much more. Sometimes the "higher-end" ones will try to scan for MP3s or other kinds of media files, but that is a bonus and not required for playing the video data itself.
As for PCs, the operating systems are obviously designed to trust in the file system to believe that what the file system is telling you is also correct. Obviously you can mess with the order of the files and make something playable only on PCs and not set-top boxes, but usually you are more worried about the set-top ones rather than some hobbiest with some DVD playback software. The PC-based DVD-Video playback software is usually designed to trust in the file system and does the file requests through normal OS-related file requests rather than doing low-level sector navigation. This is a sign of good programming, not the lack thereof.
What is being done here is a very cheap hack that took the brains of a half-competent software engineering intern who knows just enough about the specs to get him/herself into some serious trouble and doesn't know the basics of trying to stick with known standards. Or to understand the need for redundant systems to try and protect data through multiple means of accessing the information. As has been pointed out, by doing this the file system is essentially corrupted, so normal OS file system requests will not be able to retrieve the data, unless you are accessing information on the DVD drive via individual sector requests instead (that would be the "hack" to break this "encryption" system). BTW, the "file size" of the IFO files is also recorded in the IFO file format itself as well, so "recreating" the IFO files is trivial in this situation if you can access the individual sectors.
I certainly hope that this idiot who designed this system didn't get a patent on the subject. I will go down right now as somebody to contact if you want to break the patent to testify that this is not a patentable idea in the first place. And as has been pointed out by others, this is clearly in violation of the DVD-Video standards and as such you can't claim compatability to DVD-Video by using this system. This is not a copy protection scheme but rather a corruption of the file system, as has been pointed out, and taking on a percieved weakness in the organization of the DVD-Video format.
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.
I thought a lot of people watched DVD movies on their home entertainment systems - a lot of which are based on PCs (Windows Media Center/Linux). Or what about people with just big monitor?
So now i cannot watch this new Hollywood-DVD that I'd buy on my home entertainment system?
there is no issue with my network
Black-clad men entered my house through the windows and shot my Mac and blew my Linux servers with C4 but they did NOT find my NetBSD-enabled toaster! MWA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!
Global warming is a cube.
1.) Stop making DVDs. Distribute the crap by download only.
2.) Put Adam Sandler in every film.
"1" is already happening, although Mal-Wart and the rest of the retailers are not happy about it.
"2" would be a crime against humanity.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
When are the content producers going to stop shooting themselves in their own foot with this kind of stuff? Actually, what REALLY blows my mind is how these companies can be so fricken stupid... I mean they have literally created out of thin air an industry consisting of companies whose sole line of business is inventing ways to take their money without delivering a product that actually works. Every single one of these "copy protection" schemes has been snake oil with NO exceptions. None. Not a single one of them works effectively. The fact that the content owners keep buying them is frankly a pretty harsh indictment on their intellect. Maybe they should start trying to hire executives whose IQ exceeds their shoe size. Or just get a clue as to WHY people want what they want and figure out a business plan that lets them give it to them.
- sigs are stupid
If any of these companies were smart about DRM when they're designing these systems, they could simply invoke some sort of hardware DRM. Like spinning the discs the other way so that they can't be read by computers. Data clockwise, Movies/music anti-clockwise.
I don't see how they can think that they can keep static information locked up easily if it can be read by every somputer.
I (and we) will always have the cooler toys.
... and the stuff that we geeks ought to be doing in the absence of DRM, we'll never do at all.
We always would have had the cooler toys. People who are interested in learning about computers, will always be able to do more with them; this doesn't change whether the computer is a drum-memory beast or the latest bazillion-transistor Intel powerhouse.
What DRM means is that the stuff that we geeks will be doing on our computers, is the stuff that the masses should be able to do
When I think of all the time that really brilliant people like DVD Jon have spent breaking DRM, it doesn't seem like some great technical achievement -- it's just a lot of effort and time that could have gone to actual development of new features, but which had to instead be spent just making something simple work the way it should have.
DRM is like the ultimate broken-window fallacy. In fixing it you feel like you're accomplishing something, but really you're just treading water.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Holy crap! Don't these fools realize that the reason a lot of people download movies is because they don't want the greedy companies telling them how and where they can watch their movie. I've started only watching DVDs on my computer because I have a better monitor and speakers than my TV. So these fuckheads want to take that away from me? I actually don't download movies (I'd rather buy them on DVD or watch them in the theater), but if this happens widespead I'm going alpha-pirate on the MPAA.
Support Liberty, Support Ron Paul
It used to be, back in the 80's, that you had to be careful about putting disks from people you didn't know into your computer because you might get a virus...now in the 21st century, pirates and anonymous downloads on the internet are more reliable and less risky than sticking a CD or DVD from a well known company into your computer...
There's some kind of rule regarding security policy which states that if security is so tight as to be an obstacle to normal work, legitimate users will attempt to circumvent the security measures just so they can do their work at a reasonable level of efficiency (ie. without undue irritation). I think that rule applies to media security as well. Right now, media security measures are still largely invisible and legitimate use does "just work" for the most part. But what will happen if that changes? If the security measures become so draconian as to impede legitimate use, it's extremely likely that legitimate users who had never considered pirating will begin to look for ways to circumvent the system just to continue using the product in a convenient manner. Basically, I think it's quite likely that if media security measures get much tighter then the media companies will effectively create a consumer base of "pirates" as a simple reaction to the inconvenience the new security measures present. And once a person becomes used to the convenience presented by circumvention, it will be difficult to convince them to play by the rules again, even if future security measures are relaxed.
The more I see stuff like this, along with the recent issues brick and mortar retailers are having over the pricing difference from online movie distribution, the more I think the movie industry wants the standard DVD format to die. Without having a phyical product being placed in the hands of consumers, and forcing movie downloads to be tied specifically to a single computer/user, it makes the process of transferring the content to third parties (either by illegal file sharing or through legal after-market resale) nearly impossible for the average person.
Just think, that $14 movie you "conveniently" downloaded from iTunes today won't be nearly as "convenient" to resell to someone else later on, as a physical DVD would be. To resell that one single movie, you'll need to literally hand your entire computer and iTunes account over to the buyer. Otherwise, your only remaining option is to delete the file and eat the loss... and all because you didn't buy a physical copy when you had the chance.
The industry *wants* you to buy downloaded movies instead of DVDs, despite their seeming lack of support for it. As soon as the "trusted computing initiative" is in full effect, it be game over for the consumer.
8==8 Bones 8==8
What it will do is to keep ordinary users from PLAYING the discs on their PCs/Laptops/etc. And at the same time, it probably won't slow down anyone who's seriously copying DVDs at all.
This will get broken just like every other measure, and the break will get incorporated into the same software people are already using to copy DVDs, and within a couple of months you won't even know there's any protection on the disc when you go to copy it.
Another thing it will do is to force people who otherwise would not copy their DVDs to do so, so that the copies will then be playable on their PCs. I already know people who have done this when they unknowingly bought out-of-region DVDs from eBay or while on vacation. They're not pirates, they just want to watch what they bought.
Actually, I have run into several DVDs (mostly Disney) that won't play on my set-top DVD player (says either "bad disk" or "wrong disk type"), but play fine on my computer.
They will, however, play on my set-top after I "process" them on my computer.
Is this what the movie industry wants?
---
"I can't complain, but sometimes still do..." Joe Walsh
Again, the pirated copy has more functionality and actually will play on any sufficiently powerful computer, while the legitimately purchased copy is hobbled. They're actually driving people to piracy who originally didn't plan to go that route.
---------
There is inferior bacteria on the interior of your posterior.
Make it wider than 5 1/4"...
Anything which borks the hardware is going to make practically all of the exsiting SO players useless. Also, since most of the inexpensive players rely on standard DVD drives to keep cost down, it would make the new players far more expensive (being custom and incopmpatible with PC DVDs). Next, we'd need a PC compatible anti-DVD drive so that we could write home movies and content to SO playable dvds, and the whole charade starts over again.
I don't see how that can avoid being read by a computer with the proper drivers and software and yet stay compatible with the vast installed base of DVD players. Note: I have had a DVD-R, burned by a FOAF which would not play in any PC DVD player I owned, and I tried at least 7 different drives. It would play find in all three SO dvd players I tried. It reportedly was readable in the drive that burned it, but that PC was out of commission (don't know the problem). I don't know what was screwed up, but I hope the studios don't ever get thier hands on it*.
*I suspect it was just some odd bit errors or bad tracks that messed with the FS - maybe not unlike the topic system. I did not try to read it with Linux, as I did not have a machine that had it loaded at the time.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I normally take the side of DRM in these discussions, I sell games online for my own 1 man company, so I have a vested interest (and urgent rent-paying need) to combat piracy and make sure that the content provider gets paid for his/her hard work.
But this is a step WAY too far for DRM.
I often watch DVDs on my laptop, its a great feature, and its totally insane to prevent me as a consumer from doing this, with DVDs I have BOUGHT.
We now are in a situation where:
95% of content providers treat their customers ok
5% of content providers act like jackasses, install rootkits and starforce, sue dead people and schoolkids,add unskippable bits to DVDs,and pull stunts like this.
95% of consumers act perfectly reasonably, pay a fair price for a legal product, and dont download pirated content
5% of consumers act like jackasses, pirating everything on principle, uploading hacked copies, and seeding torrents of movies that they enjoy, without a penny going to the providers of that content. Some even start a political party to try and legitmise such activities.
The extremists at both ends are really fucking up the whole digital entertainment industry for the rest of us. This sucks big time. And anyone 'involved' in the issue enough to lobby about it, is firmly in one of those 5% groups. The chances of reasonable compromsie gets further away each day.
I've decided that the best thing I can do is to try and reign in both sides before we end up with something really bad happening.
message to hardcore pirates : "You are acting like idiots. grow up"
message to sony, MPAA,RIAA et al : "You are acting like idiots, grow up"
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
They can now dress casually?
There are side-effects to these content "protection" schemes. Here's one, for your pleasure:
I bought a MacBook Pro recently. It's a great machine except for one thing: The DVD drive isn't region free. What nonsense, my $3000 machine is less functional than any $30 DVD player.
My solution is: I don't buy DVDs anymore. The absolute best movies I'll watch in the cinema, for the rest there's BitTorrent. I'm thinking about putting my DVD collection up on eBay.
So where, I wonder, is the gain for the movie industry? I fail to see any, unless their goal is not getting their movies watched anymore (which I just think might be true, given the crap they produce).
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
The entertainment industry needs to realise it's the entertainment industry. I don't need to have anything to do with it, and if it makes life unpleasant, I won't.
Oh well. I guess I'll have to keep getting my movies from Torrent sites.
I have long ago stopped going to the movie theater on a regular basis. Not because of price, but because I was rather upset the first time I paid to see a movie and got a comercial. One of the things I paid for was to have an uniterupted movie experience. If you want to show me trailers before the movie starts, go ahead, but don't give me a standard commercial. That first commercial was for Nestle Quick. I remember the commercial, but not the movie. If I am in the store, I will now try to pick another brand, just on principle.
Since then, I have become a collector of DVDs. I can sit at home and watch it on my own terms. If the beging has too much stuff other than trailers, I will rip it into a format that I can enjoy. Commercials and piracy notices are not part of your "creative work." That is not what I paid for, that is not what I want, and it is not what I am going to buy. If you wish to send me the DVD for free with the commercials, then like TV, I might or might not watch it if I have the time.
If you are going to take the ability for me to watch a movie that I have paid to watch without commericals, then I will go back to books, then I can tear out or paint anything that I find offensive.
You are trying to do business in a capitolistic society. The intent of that economic system is that people or companies that provided the products that people want at a resonable price are allowed to stay in business. Please quit trying to stretch our legal system to get around that simple fact, and please quit trying to force DRM onto people that do not want it. Provide the general people with what they want, and you will continue to have a thriving business.
Maybe, if many people complain, the rental stores' managers will be the ones complaining that those DVDs are defective, and will demand the studios to send them good merchandise or their money back!
Circumcision is child abuse.
Ah AnyDVD. Some of the best money I've ever spent. Period.
Yes, because it is crass and unseemly when hardworking artists try and look out for their own interests, pay for a decent roof over their family's head, food on the table, have medical and dental costs, perhaps, gasp, a bit of money put aside for when they're older or incapacitated or just want to take some time off from the daly grind.
No, it's all the tired 'n trite MTV bullshit of "we're only in it for the music" crap when any artist will tell you that while they do it for the love of their art they have lives and bills and obligations and aspirations beyond a life flogging their wares every night.
Furthermore there is more to art & performance then a guitar and drum kit and a whiny skinny 20-something pretending to be world weary. There is orchestra and dance and theater and film and sculpture, and those involve specialized venues and contracts and grants and workshops and all the rest, they're not just "Hey let's get the scooby gang in the van and do a 12 city roadtrip! We'll pay for it out of T-shirt sales, screw the recording rights!".
No, some art is not going to be out on the road every night, some art is ephemerial or specialized. But hey, if you think that pulling the revenue from recordings out from under artists is ok then go right ahead. Of course it means that it'll be that much more difficult to mount stage productions, bring in performers from other cultures, pay the lighting bill at the local venue but then apparently the penultimate art form is the indie rocker, right?
Oh, and lastly, being entertaining is not demeaning. Yes, it not every artist's goal, but many an artist does want to reach their audience through entertainment and to disdain such as merely populist and somehow lesser is nothing more then a profoundly ignorant (pathetic, really) attempt at snobbishness. Obscurity doesn't define a great artist, nor does notoriety, nor does public adulation, great art is the only criteria. And that includes great entertainment.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
They aren't trying to invent some technical masterpiece, but rather to make money off of the idiots at the studios who think this will actually protect their content. They are laughing all the way to the bank either way.
Apparently reading for comprehension isn't some folks strong point, so I'll spell it out: "the band" does not define all art.
Wow. Take a moment. Absorb that.
That pop/rock/rap music artists (and yes, that includes your favorite soi disant "indie artist") are getting a raw deal does not justify screwing over all musical artists.
Big big big clue stick: There are other forms of art then "the band".
Even musical art.
Most towns of any size are home to a number of non-rock-act artists. We call them classical musicians, jazz musicians, studio musicians, folk musicians, choral singers, barbershop quartets, harpists, pianists, chanteuses, etc. And those are just in music, there are legions more in other performing arts, including ones with audio recordings (ever hear of a showtune? An opera? A bell performance?)
Some of these folks, and the organizations that they work through, depend on recording royalties. For some no recording royalties would likely mean shutting down.
For a concrete example that was the subject at dinner tonight let's take the world famous Boston Pops. They're made up of Boston-area musicians, including some from the Boston Symphony Orchestra, performing when the BSO isn't in season. They perform for hire, they perform in ticketed performances, they also perform free concerts. Much of their funding comes from, you guessed it, a large recording catalogue. Yes, all of those copies of "The Boston Pops Sing Your Holiday Favorites, Yet Again" add up, and give them a reliable revenue stream to build from.
Guess what? Some of us like their music. The Boston Pops do try lots of interesting things. Sometimes it is gimmicky, sometimes it is inspired. The same is true for classic and popular classical groups in many, many cities & towns. They are contributing mightily to the musical culture and just because they're not performing in grotty clubs to an audience terrified their musical heros-du-jure have somehow 'sold out', become less 'real', less 'street' (or whatever today's legitimacy criteria are) doesn't make them any less worthy of support.
(Oh hey, my house sytem just popped up the Boston Gay Men's Chorus performing Howard Arlen - great voices, great performance, fantastic material! Gonna argue that is any less art then Nirvana?)
This is true for many acts. They can't tour all the time, indeed their touring may be impossible or economically improbable but they can make great recordings and get them out there, use those funds to stage further performances, and continue the cycle.
For these folks the cliche pop/rock/rap-act-narcissistic answer of "tour" doesn't work. All it says is that the advocate for such has a tragically limited understanding of art and music and is unable, or unwilling, to see beyond their justifications.
So next time, before parroting again how musical artists et al are getting a raw deal, stop for a moment and consider that the artists you are referring to don't necessarily represent the entirety of musical arts. And so when actively or tacitly supporting minor acts of "fighting the man" consider that you may well be also hurting other musical artists, ones who have worked just as hard and just as long in their fields, and with their own families and rents and medical bills to pay.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
Good call. This bullshit about "DRM is there to prevent the normal user from pirating" is the most moronic thing I've ever heard. It's a rationalization that content companies come up with to convince their shareholders that they haven't just wasted billions of dollars.
The normal user doesn't pirate. It's the clever user that breaks copy protection and learns to properly transcode. DRM just slows this guy down. Not much either.
KFG, I know you know how DRM works, but some people here don't, so here's a quick primer:
DRM is encryption. Encryption is a simple concept; A wants to send something to B, but doesn't want C (the attacker) to read it. B gives A a key with which to encrypt, having a personal decryption key. The attacker can't decode it because he doesn't have B's decryption key.
In DRM, B and C are the same guy - the attacker has the key. Sure DRM technologies try to obfuscate this key, but ultimately, the key must exist somewhere that is accessible to B - and as such, C.
As a result, there only needs to be one clever guy in the 6.5 Billion people in the world. Everyone else just downloads the program they wrote to do the magic. Result: piracy isn't even slowed by these technologies; they end up being an inconvenience to normal users and a tremendous waste of money in the anti-piracy game.
A better solution: Steganography. Embed the purchaser's customer ID in his purchase. There are some good algorithms that can do this reliably even through a transcode (especially if it's only 16 bytes of ID; the larger the difference between message text and embedded text bandwidths, the more resistant the embedded text can be to lossy compression).
Even for DVDs purchased at a store, add a unique ID to each DVD sold. The buyer's and DVD's info is taken at point of purchase and associated with one another.
Casual piracy would end quickly - the purchaser would be held accountable for leaking stuff into the wild. Professional piracy would move into the realm of credit fraud investigation (as that would be the only way to shift accountability away from oneself), and would thus carry a heavy penalty.
Of course, there'd still be the 'mom-and-pop' hole, but it would quickly get filled; a couple hundred thousand to give mom and pops a cheap little reader is a hell of a lot cheaper than this DRM arms race.
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Or they'll start putting a small sticker on it that says "Not PC Compatible"
My dad bought a fancy Denon integrated DVD player and surround amplifier to get rid of all the different boxes under his TV (yeah I know. I thought it was a silly idea, too).
It absolutely refuses to play copy-"protected" CDs. If he puts one in it will refuse to function in any way until the disk is removed again, due to function locking while the disk is loading. The kicker is that if he copies the disk on his computer (which will luckily read the "protected" CDs just fine), the Denon player accepts the copy right away, every single time.
So the only way for him to play copy-"protected" CDs is by copying the damn things! How's that for ironic?
I would not be surprised at all if it acted the same way with these new "protected" DVDs.
Eat the rich.