Technology claims to thwart DVD copying

[merwin]

Technology claims to thwart DVD copying

The Associated Press
Updated: 9:04 a.m. ET Feb. 17, 2005
LOS ANGELES - A new technology from Macrovision Corp. claims to block virtually all known methods for making unauthorized copies of DVDs.

The company's RipGuard DVD, launched this week, is designed to thwart cracking programs that get around the encryption system used in standard DVDs.

Macrovision also claims a related system to be used with RipGuard can foil attempts to make analog copies of DVDs. Such copies are made by connecting a video recorder to a DVD player's video and audio output jacks, a method that previous DVD copy protection software has failed to prevent fully.

Attempts to copy-protect DVDs and CDs have often been plagued by hardware compatibility problems or are easily thwarted using something as simple as a black marker or by holding down the "shift" key while accessing the content.
...
---------------


1) I highly doubt that this will work on 100% of the players, as they claim
2) I'd be willing to bet that it'll be cracked within a couple months of release

[tridim]

1. It'll be cracked before it's released

That's a given. When will these guys learn? Every copy protection scheme in the history of digital media has been easily cracked. Hackers are much smarter than corporations.

[makhno]

6. It will suck, be cracked or both

The old "compatible with all players" lie doesn't sound too plausible either. The new format is probably a defective DVD format that will be playable on most low-end consumer hardware, but not high-end home theater components or computer hardware. It could also be backward compatible with older hardware, but require new hardware to be effective. That's one reason I keep a couple of old DVD players around - good DSP chips, good build quality and mod-friendly. There's been no significant (for my needs) qualitative development in the DVD market in the past five years.

Most likely it'll work just as well as Macrovision's previous attempt at denying fair use rights to citizens.

[ElectroPrincess]

30. God Bless American ingenuity to save a buck or two! eom

[realisticphish]

2. some of these

ecryptions can severly reduce disc life...but i guess thats what they want, for you to buy another one


:hippie: The Incorrigible Democrat

[Spacejet]

21. Um... afraid not

if they are using in spec pressed DVDs the life of the DVD is in no way effected by the data on the disc - encrypted or not.

Now your player on the other hand...

[egoprofit]

27. i agree, dvds are very reliable media n/t

[realisticphish]

28. sorry

i was thinking of cds; ive read articles about encoding that reduces the life of them


:hippie: The Incorrigible Democrat

[merwin]

31. Some 'copy protection' technologies actuall do reduce lifespans.

Some of the copy protection methods introduce errors into the disc. Actually, many of the current computer games have those kinds of protection. Basically, the theory is that you're purposely introducing errors, which can be checked for by the software, and also makes it extremely hard to copy anyways (since many copying programs don't like hitting errors).

The reason that reduces lifespan is because the drive is already using a lot of its buffer up compensating for these errors, so it takes much less scratches on a disc to make it no longer function.

[termo]

3. more info ?

an interesting link, it looks more to be a legal protection...

http://www.boycott-riaa.com/article/15541

"They have found the holy grail of anticopy, once again. What might be different in this is the DMCA which basically makes it illegal to bypass."

"The DMCA may restrict breaking of a copyright control mechanism in the USA, but it does not apply to the other 5.75 billion people in the world. Note that "DVD Jon" is Norwegian and the authors of DVD Decrypter are from the UK."

[mpmusicny]

4. a couple of years ago...

Sony came up with what they thought was a water-tight new copy protection scheme for audio cd's - I remember "Up" by Peter Gabriel was going to be one of the first titles to utilise the cutting edge technology. They were undeterred when people playing their CD's on their computers were finding that the CD rendered their drives permanently damaged. The next revelation was that somebody had discovered a very hi-tech way workaround - they found that if you took a magic marker, and drew a thin black line around the outer edge of the disk, this bypassed the copy protection.

Not much was heard about it after that.

[Yavin4]

5. Once and For All, The Industry Answer to Pirating Is....

make the DVDs and CDs more affordable to the public. Allow for cheap LEGAL downloading. Look at the Ipod for crying out loud. It's Apple's 2nd most popular product, and the music industry is making billions off of the $.99 downloads.

People won't pirate something that they can get legally and cheaply. The history of the VCR proves this.

[SoCalDem]

7. In the old days a 45 single cost 75 cents or less

an LP album cost under $10...We spent most of our money buying records.. I don't know how kids can afford it these days..

[TheWraith]

8. Many of them can't.

And even many of those that can resent the insance pricing structure. Hence the downloading. Because it's far cheaper to produce an album today than it was in the era of vinyl, but the music is twice the price.

[Yavin4]

9. What's Driving The Cost of the CDs...

is not the actual mfg of the CD nor is it paying the artist. What's driving the costs is the marketing of the music (getting airplay on MTV and radio) and the display in the retail outlets. IOW, what's driving up the costs of music and films has nothing whatsoever to do with the actual content of the music or the film.

Moreover, the reason why the industry doesn't fully embrace downloading is because they have these long standing relationships with their current distribution chain. IOW, a music industry exec may not get invited to the cool MTV Awards parties if they fully endorse downloading.

[makhno]

12. Kinda like the pharma industry

Both entertainment and pharma companies sink untold billions into pushing their products onto citizens. Replace "artist compensantion" with "R&D costs" and the corporate message becomes indistinguishable between the two.

Mainstream music sucks worse than ever - compare Blondie to Britney, for instance - and yet sales are going up every year.

[merwin]

13. No, what's driving the cost up is huge profits for the executives

of the recording industry. Look at the billions of dollars in hard profit that they're making, and then listen to them whine about how they only made 30 billion this year

[Spike from MN]

25. Most hardcore/punk albums today are $8-$9.

Any by "album" I mean the kind pressed on actual vinyl. By comparison, a vinyl pressing (if you can even find one) of something by a major label artist will generally be at least $18 and maybe more. You can get punk and hardcore CDs too but they're generally a buck or so more than the LP. 7" records (same size as the old 45 singles) generally go for around $3.50 but they usually have anywhere from 3-6 songs per side. 7" splits are also common so you get to hear two bands for the price of one. Why is punk and hardcore stuff so cheap? That's easy. They're generally on indie labels and/or are DIY projects. No money goes to record company execs. Too bad more music genres don't take the same route.

[Occulus]

16. That goes for computer software as well

I'm wondering: if Micro$oft will no longer provide support for nor sell Windows 98 (SE), why can't they sell it to the public for a cash sum and open the source for that? They're going to have a new OS soon that's meant to supplant XP. Similar things can be said for graphics and animation software.

We need to get over the idea that we must retain our trademark on a particular product forever. If the product is still usable, but you're not selling it have have no future intention to do so.... why the hell shouldn't you add it to the (rapidly dying) public domain?

[enki23]

10. isn't it impossible to ever fully encrypt these things?

at some point in the process, the information can be captured, can't it? i mean, if nothing else, you can videotape your television screen, or put microphones in front of your speakers. given that they can't send encrypted information directly into our brains for decoding, there is always going to be an intelligible signal somewhere in the chain, isn't there?

[merwin]

15. From the creators of DVD Shrink comes Brain Shrink, the new DVD decoder!

[Occulus]

17. If the information is on the disc, it can be found and copied.

It's a cardinal rule of computing; no information present is ever completely inaccessible. At some point, somehow, every instruction can be carried out- it's only a matter of the process.

[Spacejet]

22. Problem is

putting a camera in front of your TV would lead to MUCH less video/audio quality. People want a 1:1 copy for quality as well as the content.

[enki23]

32. that wasn't the point

the point was, there's some point in the path of the information where it isn't encrypted. if you can see a picture, it's not encrypted at that part of the path from DVD to brain. all you have to do is move just one tiny step further back in the information path, and you could capture all of it. the CRT (or whatever) doesn't handle encryption either.

[LiberallyInclined]

11. dvd shrink(freeware) + Roxio = dvd copies.

and when blockbuster has all you can rent 3 at a time for 19.95 for a month, it's a great way to expand the home library.

[merwin]

14. Did you read the article? DVD Shrink won't work on the new ones.

At least not until the copy protection is broken.

[TheWraith]

18. Give it three days. Maybe a week.

All commercial DVDs have been encrypted and copy protected from the day the standard originated. It never stopped anyone before.

[merwin]

20. This new one uses a changing key I think. The way I see it working is

that it's going to change the key extremely often. Before, the key was only on the Title, so it made ripping quick and easy. But if it has to break encryption on each video frame, then it will take significantly longer, to the point of futility.

[Spacejet]

23. Each "video frame"...

You don't work in IT do you?

A standard single layer DVD contains roughly 4.7GB of data at max.

With certain (most) DVD encryption schemes near all of that data is encrypted.

When you are talking DVD encryption there is no "frame" encryption. You have X amount of data on disc - it's either encrypted or it's not.

Perhaps you are confusing this with encoding, which would be frame by frame process?

[merwin]

29. Actually, I do work in IT. Do you know how MPEG2/DVD's are made up?

MPEG data is broken up into packets, just like any other video. It's not just one big chunk.

Also, just because the encryption has only been used on the DVD Title leveel (entire VOB-set) doesn't mean that it can't be used in other places as well.

Check out:
http://www.macrovision.com/products/ripguard/index.shtml

and specifically:


That graphic shows that it can be used at the cell level and the video packet level as well which means that it is probably using a different encryption key on each packet. That's a hell of a lot of keys.

I believe that the reason the current CSS encryption can be broken down so easily is because there is only one key for the entire Title.

[egoprofit]

26. you can get a DVD burner HERE FOR $30!!

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=26076&Sku=R888-1002

tiger direct has the best prices (IMO)... $29.99 for 8x DVD-RAM

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

19. Ho hum.... how's their stock price?

bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzttt next.

[sleipnir]

24. All this will do is stop Soccer Moms from copying DVD's

Give it 2-4 months for the new coding to be cracked, if not sooner.

1's and 0's, it can be broken and now they're going to have hundreds of thousands of people competing to be the next DVDJon (for those who do not know, DVDJon is the man who cracked CSS because he couldn't play DVDs on his computer with Linux, the courts have overwhelmingly found him not guilty of any crime.)

It's a never ending battle....

[DU GrovelBot]

33. ## PLEASE DONATE TO DEMOCRATIC UNDERGROUND! ##

==================
GROVELBOT.EXE v3.0
==================



This week is our first quarter 2005 fund drive. Democratic
Underground is a completely independent website. We depend almost entirely
on donations from our members to cover our costs. Thank you so much for
your support.