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Adobe Flaw Allows Full Movie Downloads For Free
webax writes with this excerpt from Reuters:
"[An Adobe security hole] exposes online video content to the rampant piracy that plagued the music industry during the Napster era and is undermining efforts by retailers, movie studios and television networks to cash in on a huge Web audience. 'It's a fundamental flaw in the Adobe design. This was designed stupidly,' said Bruce Schneier ... The flaw rests in Adobe's Flash video servers that are connected to the company's players installed in nearly all of the world's Web-connected computers. The software doesn't encrypt online content, but only orders sent to a video player such as start and stop play. To boost download speeds, Adobe dropped a stringent security feature that protects the connection between the Adobe software and its players."
webax also notes that the article suggests DRM as a potential solution to the problem.
Wow, so even Bruce Schneier is subject to the DRM double think now? What part of this is hard to understand? You have to give the viewer the key so it can decrypt the video stream and play it to the user.. if the user can see it, the user can record it. Game over. No amount of "encryption" can change the facts.
How we know is more important than what we know.
...at how fuckin dumb this all is. If you can see it, you can copy it, maybe it is more difficult, but not impossible. Do these idiots never ever learn?
sadly, axxo and fxg and their black market friends already figured out years ago how to get movies for free to most anyone willing to look for them. it brings the end of an industry in it's current form.
There are better models: allow people, if they choose, to take media without paying for it, but give them credit, additional access, and membership benefits when customers do sponsor/pay for the media they consume. It is really not that complicated... find something you can sell because you can no longer technically control the distribution of your product.
Major media producers cannot change the progression of technology with policy and lawsuits. They would be so much better off to adopt what tech can enable, and build effective business models around providing customers with real value when they do pay for media, instead of using fear and lawsuits to force them to pay when they don't have to.
Normally they overdo security, now they are lacking in basic security that protects legitimate content creators. The question is how long until they fix it.
Restrictions pitting a computer against its owner (and wasting time and energy to further a business model built on distrust) are always a problem, and the proof that some technologies can be inherently evil.
The free demo version of Replay Media Catcher allows anyone to watch 75 percent of anything recorded and 100 percent of YouTube videos. For $39, a user can watch everything recorded.
One Web site -- www.tvadfree.com -- explains step-by-step how to use the video stream catching software.
[snip]
Forrester analyst James McQuivey said he doesn't believe the video stream catching technology will entirely derail the advertising-supported business model used by the networks for online video.
"It's too complicated for most users," said McQuivey, noting that file-sharing services like BitTorrent already exist but only a small percentage of people use them.
See? He (whoever he is...) thinks piracy won't be a problem... it's too complicated to pirate stuff... people would rather pay... something like that anyway. And he's an analyst, so that makes it official, right?
Evolution is a state-sponsored, state-protected religion.
Doesn't everybody know that all flash video is easily accessible? Most of the time it's just a case of dragging it out of the cache. Sometimes you need to jump through more hoops, but I thought it was common knowledge that you could download it all.
You have to re-encode it if you want to, say, burn it on dvd, but that's not too hard. I use winFF (yes, I use windows).
Uh, the pirates were already uploading the full HD rips to Usenet days before the movies were even released. No pirate would want the shitty version Amazon is offering.
My other car is first.
I'm not an advocate of DRM, but as a practical matter I find it works better when you actually turn it on.
Unless the reason you are using it is to satisfy a checklist from hollywood.
Kind of like the TSA at the airport - "DRM theater" to make the frightened hollywood execs feel safe and secure even though they are still just as vulnerable with or without DRM...
When information is power, privacy is freedom.