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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.
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.
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.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!
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.
"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.
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."
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
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
Make it wider than 5 1/4"...