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BD+ Successfully Resealed
IamTheRealMike writes "A month on from the story that BD+ had been completely broken, it appears a new generation of BD+ programs has re-secured the system. A SlySoft developer now estimates February 2009 until support is available. There's a list of unrippable movies on the SlySoft forums; currently there are 16. Meanwhile, one of the open source VM developers seems to have given up on direct emulation attacks, and is now attempting to break the RSA algorithm itself. Back in March SlySoft confidently proclaimed BD+ was finished and said the worst case scenario was 3 months' work: apparently they underestimated the BD+ developers."
The fact that it's well done makes it all the more attractive to crack.
The problem isn't that people aren't buying the movie, its because when I buy the movie I can't convert it to use on several devices. For example, say I have 3 desktops and one has a Blu-Ray drive. I don't want to spend ~$400 on Blu-Ray drives for the other 2 of my desktops so it makes more sense to rip the movie, stream it across the network or put it on a high-capacity external hard drive and read it from there.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Next, as a double dare to the Geek community, they'll make Star Trek and Star Wars unrippable! This is war!
"and said the worst case scenario was 3 months work: apparently they underestimated the BD+ developers"
Okay, so they said worst case scenario was 3 months work [presumably in case BD+ was changed in some way]. And the developer said February 2009 was their date for "fixing" things. Let me do the math slowly:
December 2008 - 0.5 month (half-way through)
January 2009 - 1.0 month
February 2009 - 1.0 month
TOTAL - 2.5 months
So since 2.5 months is less than 3 months, how did they "underestimate" anything?
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
I'm no cryptographer, but isn't this like realising you can't crack a safe, and deciding it'd be easier to invent a machine that will undo the metallic bonds that hold its constituent atoms together?
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
I own about 300 movies on DVD, and a number of TV series on DVD. I've probably purchased about half of them, and the other half were given as gifts. Several of these were replacements for VHS tapes of movies. Every one of them is ripped to DVD and stored in h.264 on a large network drive. That means that I can watch it on my TV using my HTPC, or on my laptop wherever I am in the house, or on my desktop in my office while I'm doing something else. I can stream it to work if it's a slow day, and when we're on vacation, we don't have to plan on what we may want to watch and bring a lot of extra clutter. When I'm at home and watching a movie, searching through the list on the HTPC is much more convenient than looking through a bookshelf, and it also means that I don't have to keep all of my DVDs physically accessible. More space in the house, less clutter, and less obvious temptation for thieves.
I hadn't yet made the jump to Blu-ray because of the DRM. I want the same convenience that I have now, and with DRM, I can't get it. My record shows that I'm pretty willing to spend money on my media, and even replace movies I already own with higher-quality versions. All I want is to be able to exercise what I consider to be my fair use rights over the copies of the movies I've purchased.
Technology is progressing at an amazing rate. It's supposed to make our lives easier and more convenient. Everyone should be able to have a box of movies which lets them watch their media wherever they want. It's really fantastic. But for me, it won't be based upon Blu-ray.
Assuming you believe the lie about DRM being to prevent piracy...
That's not what it's about at all, pirates will just watch a lower quality version (DVD, even a camera rip) or wait for the drm to be cracked, they're not gonna suddenly go out and buy an expensive drm'd version just because it hasn't been cracked yet.
The only people hurt by DRM are legitimate consumers, who want to do perfectly reasonable things like put the movie on a media server, make a backup copy so that their kids don't scratch the original and convert the media to play on a portable device like an ipod. The purpose of DRM is to force these people into buying multiple copies of the same media, ie screwing more money out of existing paying customers.
For the obligatory car analogy, consider the codes common on car stereos, if the battery power is lost you have to enter a code... Thieves already know how to bypass or reset these codes, but a law abiding user who lets his battery drain or disconnects it, now has to go to the dealer and pay money to have the code reset. I have been in this situation myself, but luckily i knew a "thief" who would unlock the radio for half as much as the dealer.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
I want my movies on a central server in my house for easy access.
The studios made their views on this pretty clear when they sued a company that designed and installed such setups. They prefer you to pay once for a fragile disc and then pay again after your kids use it as a frisbee. The slog back and forth to a shelf of discs is just a daily affirmation of whose bitch you are.
And do you even have a bluray reader in your Linux machine? If not get a dedicated player and stop making excuses.
Nice solution. I really want to drag yet another piece of hardware with me while traveling.
A dedicated player has another problem, even when I'm at home: My younger kids tend to destroy optical disks. A video server has been a great solution for DVDs, and until it will work for Blu-Ray, I have no interest in buying Blu-Ray movies for them.
Yet another issue is that I like watching movies on my laptop screen, in bed. Can't do that until Blu-Ray is broken. My kids often watch movies on their computers, too, which also run Linux. Can't do that until Blu-Ray is broken.
The bottom line is that while some people -- maybe even most -- have no problem with the studios' idea of how we should watch movies, it doesn't work for others.
I don't pirate anything. Every movie and every song in my house was legitimately purchased, but EVERYTHING is ripped and the original optical disks are rarely used. When I can watch Blu-Ray content the way I want to watch it, then I'll buy it. Until then, I'll stick with DVD.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Your reply is exactly why Thyamine is 'getting old'.
Rewind to the 80's, if you will. There were no DVD players - you'd be lucky to have a CD player - and certainly no computers that would be playing back high quality video (exceptions aside, I know the Archimedes did some pretty nice things, but I wouldn't quite call it 'high quality'.).
So if you had 2 TVs in the house - say, 1 in the living room and 1 in the bedroom - and 1 VCR (let's not ponder where). So you buy a VHS (or beta or Video2000.. 'tis the 80's, after all), get home, and then curse the heavens that The Corporate Man is keeping you down by not allowing you to magically play back that same video on both TVs, just for the pathetic excuse they bring forth that you would need a 2nd VCR? .. probably not. You'd just eventually get another VCR.
If you purchased a CD, would you kick up a shitstorm about not being able to play that back on your walkman? .. probably not. You'd just get your tapedeck and record the CD straight to tape.
Fast forward to 'now'.. instead of you saying "well, I guess I'll just get a blu-ray drive for that machine as well" or "I guess I'll just have to record the video with a capture card / my computer's video-out"... you realize it's well past the 90's, everything is digital, and by jove that means you have the right to duplicate and format shift the media's content as you damn well please, and screw the corporations for making this difficult for you.
I'm not saying that that is a wrong stance on things... but the change to digital has changed how we all view these things as well. The old ways (getting a second drive, or recording to a different media - yes, you may get quality loss) still work, but now we resist due to the changed mindset that came with going digital.
Since when is 'piracy' removing DRM for personal use?
Am I a pirate because I rip my DVDs for portability so that my children can't break the original DVD?
Am I a pirate becuase I ripped Transformers and removed all the adult crap to where it's just a movie of transforming giant robots for my kids to watch?
I paid for my copies. I have a legal right to do whatever I want to the media as long as it doesn't leave my home.
if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
BD+ isn't an algorithm so there's no global crack unless the designers made a serious mistake in their implementation. A movie protected by BD+ is partly damaged ... elements of the video stream are deliberately corrupted, making it unwatchable. The BD+ program runs and checks out the environment it's in. If it's happy it spits out a patch table, which tells the player how to repair the movie. Note that the patch table can alter the movie in arbitrary ways - theoretically, things could change depending on what player you use. This allows the developers to discover which player is leaking video.
Early BluRay discs weren't protected by BD+ at all, and the first titles that were barely used the features BD+ provides. They existed only to detect a buggy software player but otherwise didn't do much. This was deliberate - the BD+ people are playing a long game, and don't want to play all their cards at once. The idea is to reveal their tricks slowly, such that it takes a few months to unravel each time. Because most sales of the movies are soon after they come out, it doesn't matter if a 6-12 month old program is broken.
In theory every title could have a unique BD+ program that takes time to crack, but that's pretty expensive, so they seem to come in waves. Probably there are only a few people in the world who know how to write BD+ programs and then their work is used on lots of discs.
The first round in this game was easy - the BD+ titles simply relied on obscurity to protect them. If they ran at all, they spat out the patch table. After SlySoft and later the doom9 guys figured out how BD+ worked, there were confident predictions that the system was broken, but of course that was never the case. The second round is the one we're on now and it's apparently quite the smackdown ... nobody knows what they've done, but making the new programs think they're in a licensed player is tough.
FWIW I don't buy nor download BluRay movies, I just find BD+ a fascinating battle of wits. I'm sure there'll be a lot of back and forth over the lifetime of the system.
In college I found out about something called MUDs. You know, Multi User Dungeons.
They were against the university's policy though. Play a mud and get caught, they'd shut off your access. Well, that pissed me off. I'm paying for access with my general course fee. I should be allowed to do whatever I want with the bandwidth I've purchased. Right?
So I played them anyways. And got stern warnings from sysadmins. So I started to learn how to cover my tracks. Don't use telnet. Compile some other application that does the same thing.
Eventually they caught on to that by checking netstat. So I moved to the next thing - hacking accounts. I'd snag up on expired lab accounts and use those.
Eventually the bigger and better game wound up being trying to beat the sysadmins. Much more satisfying than the stupid MUD. This was chess. Live and real, pitting my wits against theirs. Way more fun.
The same reason is why people do stuff like hack BD+. Their side has made a move. "Bet you can't beat this."
It's terribly satisfying when you can counter with "I beat it. You didn't allow for X. Try again."
Hacking is one of the best games of wits there is. I'll bet 99% of the people trying to break this don't even watch movies. They just enjoy the challenge.
No, you're not. According to the DMCA however, you're still a criminal. Isn't it wonderful?
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
And worse yet, the ads say 'Own X Movie'. They don't say 'Own a license to watch X movie from a disk'. They advertise the PURCHASE of the movie. The store has a big sign that says SALE. If the movie studios are only licensing you to watch that movie using the disk, they are committing massive fraud, and should have to pay the price for that.
Rewind to the 1780s, if you will. There were no CD players, or tape players, or LP players, or even phonographs. So if you wanted to listen to music on demand, you'd have to hire musicians to play it, or maybe have a little sing-song with your friends and family.
If you hired a string quartet, would you kick up a shitstorm about not being able to get them to come back and play an encore whenever you wanted? ...probably not. You'd just hum the tune to yourself instead, or maybe buy another harpsichord.
Okay, I think you can fill the rest in for yourself. My point, insofar as I have one? Technology does advance, and the whole reason why we bother to encourage technology to advance is that it makes our lives better. So it is not only reasonable for us to expect to be able to stream video around our houses -- that expectation is exactly the right attitude to have. Our distant ancestors didn't put all that effort into evolving opposable thumbs and bipedal posture just to have us slouch back in our sofas and let corporations stifle innovation to protect their business models.
"The technology doesn't yet exist to backup a car."
-The technology does, in fact, exist. It's called a Reverse Gear.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....