DRM Group Set To Phase Out "Analog Hole"

eldavojohn writes "In yet another bid to make your life a little more annoying, our DRM overlords at the AACS Licensing Authority have released a new AACS Adopter Agreement. The riveting, 188-page PDF will inform you that — in the name of Digital Rights Management — there will be new limitations set on devices that decrypt Blu-Ray discs. HDMI already has the awesome encryption of HDCP between the device and the display unit. But Blu-Ray still has the Achilles heel of analog players that allow someone to merely re-encode the analog signal back to an unencrypted digital format. So if you have an analog HDTV, hang on to those analog decoders and hope they never break; by 2013 you won't be able to buy a new one. Ars points out the inherent stupidity in this charade: 'Particularly puzzling is the fact that plugging the so-called "analog hole" won't stop direct digital ripping, enabled by software such as AnyDVD HD. And even the MPAA itself recommends using a camcorder pointed at a TV as a way to make fair use copies, creating another analog hole.' And so the cat and mouse game continues. On that subject, DVD Jon's legit company just brought out a billboard ad for his product doubleTwist next to Apple's San Fransisco store. It reads, 'The Cure for iPhone Envy. Your iTunes library on any device. In seconds.' So while he's busy taunting Apple, I'm certain there are others who might have some free time to look at Blu-Ray and the 'uncrackable' AACS."

Comments

DRM

[portnux]

That is one compelling reason to not upgrade to Blu-Ray, if you ask me.

Re:DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

That's funny, I've never seen any DRM on the stuff I download ;)

Re:DRM

[qortra]

I haven't upgraded for that same reason - however, keep in mind DVDs had DRM too. It just sucked.

Re:DRM

[tjonnyc999]

Yeah, me neither. Also, what are those "previews" and "FBI warnings" people are complaining about?

Re:DRM

[Abcd1234]

Piracy. No, seriously. These people are creating new rights for themselves, by locking up their content in a way that was never intended by those who invented copyright. Copyright exists for one single purpose: to create an incentive for the creation of new content, and it was structured as a time-limited monopoly, not a perpetual one. As such, I have absolutely no qualms with breaking the laws they've bought over the past 50 years.

Now, if you do have problems with piracy, might I suggest this alternative: by the Blu-ray disc, thus paying the content creator for their work, and then download a pirated copy. At least then you can still avail yourself of the rights (such as format shifting) that they're trying to take away from you. Of course, this still rewards the content creators, thus encouraging further attempts to restrict your use of the material you bought with your hard-earned cash...

Re:DRM

[silanea]

The users of ThePirateBay may beg to differ. It is maddening, really. I can get everything there in wonderful quality, convenient and widely usable formats, and usually in a timely manner. Music in lossless quality, current episodes of US TV shows in HD quality and without any commercials, HD films with both original audio and translations - no regional discrimination, no formats that only Windows Mediaplayer can handle, no forced trailers, anti-piracy propaganda or "you may not do x, y and z with this film" nonsense, no annoying menus that take the better part of a minute to actually present me a button to watch the film, and I can freely convert all of it for my portable devices and take it with me. Plus the catalogue is huge! Even really obscure stuff that no retailer carries is available there. I have yet to see any commercial offering that even remotely comes close to this. The only feature I miss in the Bay is an option to directly send money to the artist(s).

Re:DRM

[SanityInAnarchy]

And that's the problem.

When you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns.

Since they are so late to the game at even thinking of providing legal downloads, and those downloads are still so amazingly technically inferior, they couldn't compete with piracy even if they were free, and they're not.

The sad thing is, it's trivially easy to compete with piracy, but so far, I don't see anyone besides Hulu even making a decent effort -- and even Hulu is questionable, as piracy is still a convenient way to break them out of that player and skip the ads.

Re:DRM

[SanityInAnarchy]

Well, it's not even that...

The fact is, none of these are so much the creator's rights, as their ability to restrict yours. Put in that context, it suddenly becomes very clear whose rights are being violated.

Re:DRM

[Abcd1234]

Maybe it is different in the US than here, but I'm not sure why you expect rights like format-shifting and time-shifting - who granted those rights to you?

Because those rights always existed until the media cartels decided to try and take them away? Again, the VCR is a classic example. It embodies both format and time shifting, and was ruled entirely legal by the US legal system. To be specific, the right is called "fair use", and it's pretty well established in law. In fact, format- and time-shifting is *still* legal, and considered fair use, even in the wake of the DMCA. What's *not* legal is the distribution of a device who's purpose is to bypass DRM... and that's the case because the media cartels managed to by the DMCA.

A better question you should be asking is, why *don't* you expect rights like time- and format-shifting? How dare the owners of the copyright to these works attempt to dictate what you can and can't do with the copy you purchased with your hard-earned dollars? Who are they to decide if, for your own personal use, you should take a CD and rip it to an MP3? Or copy a DVD onto your media server so I can watch it without needing to pop in a disc?

I think the nerd community's expectations of digital rights is tainted by the availability of ripped downloads

And I think your expectations are coloured by the fact that you've just come to expect content to be restricted (heck, depending on your age, you've probably become fully indoctrinated in the idea). But, historically, it's a relatively new phenomenon, and it's one we shouldn't simply accept as not only inevitable, but moral, as it's neither.

Re:DRM

[Gerzel]

You are not a customer. You and everyone else who pays for their content is a potential criminal. The only thing keeping you from being a criminal is your regular payments to them for the content you watch, and you have to be careful only to keep and watch content that you have paid for.

The **AAs have a very difficult job of keeping these maybe criminals from becoming real criminals and all they get is flack and complaints from the people they serve; which just goes to show just how criminal those people really are.

Re:DRM

[Rary]

Yeah, that would be nice. However, because you don't have that option, you /are/ paying for the original product before downloading in this super-convenient format, right? Because you think that you should be paying for products and services you enjoy?

But, by doing that, people would be discarding their ability to influence the market, thus causing the market to fail.

You see, if a producer is providing a product that isn't to your liking, what is supposed to happen is that you turn to the competitor instead, thereby informing the producer through your lack of purchasing their product that the product is not what you want. This, ideally, will influence the producer to change the product in order to compete.

If, however, the black market is the only competitor, and you try to "do the right thing" by buying the product and then getting its more convenient equivalent from the black market, you are telling the producer that their product is what you want, and therefore failing to influence the producer to change their product in order to compete.

So, most people see the choice as this: either buy the product as its offered and accept its limitations, or go to the black market to get what you want and send a message to the producer that their product is not acceptable.

What GP was saying is that he'd like to send the appropriate message to the producer, while still rewarding the creators for their effort (note: creators != producers).

Re:DRM

[Abcd1234]

Well there is no DRM on an oil painting. Suppose I want to format shift it to acrylics. Assuming a device that could do it, would it be ethical?

If you owned the painting, yes, why not?

Would I have the "right" to sell the oil painting and keep the acrylic version?

No, as that would be distributing a copy of the work, a right you do not have (legally and, IMHO, morally).

It feels like petulant children who have been told that they are not entitled to the cookie after all.

Read again. I'm far more concerned with the robbing of the public domain, and the attempt by the media cartels to lock away large portions of our collective culture simply to enrich themselves.

See, your mistake, I think, is that you believe the copyright issue is a small one, unimportant in the grand scheme of things, and really just about people wanting to download things for free. But in that, you are wrong. What we're seeing the the progressive destruction of culture. I mean, imagine if Shakespeare's works had been protected under a DRM layer? The works would likely have been lost to us, and I think it's safe to say that that would've been disastrous.

Sound Familiar

[segedunum]

Presumably, this it the 'analogue hole' that they have talked about 'fixing' for a number of years now with a number of DRM companies coming out of the woodwork to say they can do it, ripping off some money and then disappearing with their directors retiring to some island somewhere with naked women?

Any techology that relies on a device sold and physically owned by a consumer denying access to said consumer is doomed to failure. Rinse and repeat.

It's one of the reasons, but certanly not the main one, why I am totally non-plussed by so-called 'High Definition' and BluRay. I did try setting up a theatre system once for someone with a receiver box relaying video through HDMI to a TV. HDCP refused to play ball because the BluRay player didn't like the arrangement. Hmmmmm. Not only do I get to not watch something because of a DRM system, I also have to buy completely new content that is currently a lot more expensive. Bound to be a success.

Re:Sound Familiar

[segedunum]

On another related note, I was going to say that if BluRay and AACS do end up getting reliably cracked and 'free' copies of films can be made then the bizarre twisted thing is that it might just end up making BluRay ubiquitously popular and give it the critical mass it needs to pull DVD back.

Ignore them?

[John Hasler]

> "I'm certain there are others who might have some free time to look at Blu-Ray and the
> 'uncrackable' AACS."

On the other hand, one could simply ignore BlueRay altogether. Believe it or not, you almost certainly can live without it.

Just wait...

[ThePhilips]

And even the MPAA itself recommends using a camcorder pointed at a TV as a way to make fair use copies, creating another analog hole.

Just wait for MPAA to get a wind of watermarking and demand camcorder makers to embed watermark recognition to disable video capture of the oh-so-precious intellectual property of theirs.

opting out

[viridari]

I don't own a Blu Ray player. I briefly owned an HDTV but went back to the old analog TV. Sorry, but I'm opting out. The digital entertainment revolution today isn't selling anything that I'm buying. If that means I miss out on things, so be it.

When it was easy to back up a DVD, I legitimately purchased over 600 movies. As the copy protections became increasingly difficult to work around, I simply stopped buying. Hollywood stopped getting my money. I took all that money that I was spending on DVD's and bought a motorcycle instead. Now instead of sitting on the couch wasting 90-120 minutes of my life at a time, I'm spending that time enjoying getting around (rain or shine) like never before.

It's been a year since I ditched the HDTV and maybe 2 years since I stopped buying DVD's. I don't miss it.

Don't like the terms they are giving you? OPT OUT!

Re:opting out

[MaWeiTao]

Don't like the terms they are giving you? OPT OUT!

This is a very important point. Far too many people nowadays complain about some service or technology but hand over their money anyway. It reminds me of this idiot post I read recently where people were complaining about a game developer. This guy actually posts that he was going to buy this particular game anyway, but he was going to give them the finger on the way out the door.

Congratulations, what this guy has accomplished is the equivalent of being kicked in the nuts and giving the attacker a back rub in response.

The clearest message a consumer can make is to not buy products from companies they're not happy with. And this means not pirating as well, because by pirating you're merely saying that the demand exists and thus justifying the constant push for DRM. These companies are obviously convinced that some day they're going to develop totally effective DRM.

Don't like it? Don't buy it. Especially considering that none of this is really a necessity for living. There are other, potentially more fulfilling, ways to entertain yourself.

Re:BluRay?

[FredFredrickson]

As somebody who crossed to the other side- I can agree.

I got a nice 50" plasma and decided it was time to upgrade to blu-ray to make sure I'm geting the most out of my set. So I went out and bought myself a nice Sony Blu-ray player and set out for an adventure. At first I was a little dissapointed, I needed a flash drive to get BD-LIVE to work, but none the less I was determined to get everything out of my $300 that I just plopped down. I plugged in my USB drive and started up BD-Live, only to find out it's literally just trailers for other movies. Why is this a feature? There are other "BD-Live" apps, which if I recall correctly, are written in Java. I always thought the idea of Java really opened up the doors for the platform, but it turns out nobody cares, nobody's trying for anything revolutionary. There's a program to Re-Edit a movie with your own notes and captions, and there's this trailer app. And you need the disc in to use them.

To keep this short, I'll say this, the BD-Live features seemed like something the studios should be paying me for. I really don't understand why a new venue for advertising to me is a feature I should be excited about.

Anyway, the picture quality itself was good, but rewind, fast foward and similar features responded so slowly, that they were useless. It felt like the remote just wasn't connecting- but if you pressed the button once and waited five minutes, it would eventually pause/rewind/fast foward.

I decided I didn't like it, and returned it for a samsung with netflix and pandora- oh what a mistake that was. The features were minimal. No animated menus, clunky browsing, impossibly slow, same issues as the last- but this one had tracking off on both digital and analog audio signals. I can't make my audio receiver make the audio faster- only delay. The TV, unfortunately, don't have any such feature for the delay. How annoying.

TLDR; Blu-Ray has been aroung long enough that it should be a stable technology. They're selling shit for big prices trying to convince people it's better, but it's worse than DVD (and dvds and players are cheap). There's no reason to upgrade. Even if the picture is nicer, I don't care.

P.S. I'm returning my last Blu-Ray and not buying a new one.

Re:BluRay?

[CastrTroy]

BluRay really does look better. A lot better than a DVD. However, most people aren't willing to pay extra to get that better experience. Just like everybody could spend $3000 on a computer to play all their games at ultra high resolutions with really high framerates. But they don't. Because whatever quality they get is good enough, and the extra money doesn't justify the cost. If they really wanted to make BluRay catch on, they would price the discs the same price as DVD. A new movie isn't worth an extra $10 just because the resolution better. I'd rather buy 3 DVDs than 2 BluRays.

will blu ray succeed?

[fermion]

I certainly wonder if Blu Ray is going to replace the DVD. The DVD certainly took long enough to replace the VHS, even though the VHS has disadvantages. Though the VHS was infinitely more user friendly, put it in, watch a movie, no 5th grade animation, no unskippable adverts, things like audio commentary made the DVD a compelling alternative. Combine this with the fact that the DVD was simpler to copy than the copy protected VHS that were popular at the time, and it was a reasonable choice.

But the DVD did not have netflix streaming. The DVD did not have online instant download purchase and rental. The DVD did not have the legacy of broken promised that the DVD delivered. Who believes that producers are going to invest in fully utilizing the Blu Ray features.

It seems to me that given the increases in bandwidth and processing power, in five years the movie industry will be at the place that music industry was a few years ago. Desperately trying to protect content, adding increasing layers of copy protection to the media, and losing sales because they made the purchase product so much less attractive than the alternatively acquired product. The reality is that the DVD is easy to crack, but sales are still very strong. Back in the VHS days, the copy protection did little to stop the coping of tapes.

If the copy protection is done right it will be transparent. More than likely no one will care. But I suspect that the copy protection will add costs to the products, which will make them less attractive. I suspect we will see DVDs for a long time, and when they are gone, people will just download the content. I can't imagine that Blu Ray will ever be a major player in the average household. It will be like plasma tv. An interesting plaything for people who can afford it.

Re:BluRay?

[DrLang21]

My biggest problem with Blu-ray is that there's a huge entry cost and the return is little to none. Most of the movies in my collection were never filmed in high definition, so the quality improvements in switching to Blu-ray would be minimal. To get those minimal improvements, I need an HD TV, a Blu-ray player, and then I need to pay the exorbitant extra cost for Blu-ray media. I can understand why the entertainment industry doesn't understand this though. They still have not figured out that originality and quality of story are far more important than special effects and rehashed garbage if they want people to continue to legitimately purchase their product.

Re:BluRay?

[je ne sais quoi]

Most of the movies in my collection were never filmed in high definition

I thought about this too, but I realized something: movies shot with analog film have a much better resolution than the DVDs they were later transferred to. Unfortunately I can't find a nice link right now for it, but ultimately the resolution of an analog film is determined by the size of the light sensitive crystals used on the film roll when it was shot. Regardless of what that is, it's much better than the 720×480 (for NTSC) that DVDs are. A blu-ray is getting closer to the resolution of the original film that was lost with the DVD that followed television standards. E.g., when I watched full metal jacket on blu-ray on a big monitor, you could actually see the graininess of the film. I don't remember seeing the last time I watched the movie on DVD. Maybe it's because they needed to do a restoration and re-master before they cut the blu-ray, but I was impressed.

Re:Not-so-awesome encryption

[TheGratefulNet]

this is another reason to boycott drm that is part of bd.

the 'disable' list.

do you want your video card, tv (etc) marked as 'do not run' ?

its RISKY to even mount a BD disc, given that it has unknown malicious (truly, if you think about it) code.

"a virus with every movie. for no extra charge."