The First HD DVD Movie Hits BitTorrent

Ars Technica reports that the first HD DVD movie has made its way onto BitTorrent, showing that current DRM efforts to prevent illegal sharing of copyrighted content are still futile and fighting an uphill battle. From the article: "The pirates of the world have fired another salvo in their ongoing war with copy protection schemes with the first release of the first full-resolution rip of an HD DVD movie on BitTorrent. The movie, Serenity, was made available as a .EVO file and is playable on most DVD playback software packages such as PowerDVD. The file was encoded in MPEG-4 VC-1 and the resulting file size was a hefty 19.6 GB."

Serenity.HDTV.720p_Dual_x264-CLT-HD

[A beautiful mind]

I might download it.

Which, I'm perfectly legal to do as I'm using direct FTP so the sharing is done by the uploading side.

Oy!

[Aladrin]

"It's so big they'll never have enough storage space!"
"It's so big they'll never have enough bandwidth!"
"It's so big they'll never have enough ... !" -- Fill in whatever.

These are no serious impediments. Pirates routinely download 5GB (and 9GB) DVDs all the time and they don't have problem with that. Their ISPs don't suddenly cap them. They don't suddenly find their quality of life has depreciated because they can't download enough porn.

It doesn't happen like that.

ISPs increase bandwidth. Hard drives get bigger. Writable media gets larger. Compression gets more advanced.

It's no big deal.

Definitive Proof-of-Concept

[mandelbr0t]

I was skeptical when I saw the first article about HDDVDBackup, but there's definitely a posted title key on the Doom9 forum to correspond with this release. I guess the other 2 keys they posted should be released soon as well. The only way to truly implement volume encryption that can't be beaten is to avoid the software player altogether, as the title key needs to be in memory, if only briefly. The posts on the Doom9 forum claim that this is the way that title keys are extracted, and I'm inclined to believe them.

Good job beating the DRM MAFIAA again! Information truly was meant to be free :)

mandelbr0t

Codec

[Anonymous Coward]

"The file was encoded in MPEG-4 VC-1"?

MPEG-4 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPEG-4_AVC [wikipedia.org] and Microsoft's VC-1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VC1 [wikipedia.org] are different standards...

There already are software BluRay players

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

Better get used to watching Serenity over and over because you're not likely to see any more movies released with PowerDVD keys. That takes care of software players for HDDVD and there will definitely be no software players for Blu-Ray.

There already are BluRay software players. Both PowerDVD and WinDVD have versions that support BluRay. Guess that's what happens when you talk off the top of your head with no facts or research to back things up.

Re:All discussion of pirating aside

[TheoMurpse]

Actually, fair use [wikipedia.org] is not Constitutionally guaranteed. It comes from the common law, and the first codification of it was in the Copyright Act of 1976. Additionally, it's an affirmative defense, not a right. I only point this out because, if Slashdotters want it to be a right instead of a defense against criminal or civil penalties, they should lobby for it instead of assuming it is already a right.

I'd really like to see you get modded down because you're spreading falsehoods, not being insightful.

Re:What's the news?

[SScorpio]

The rip on Pirate Bay is off an HDTV signal. This copy is directly off an HD-DVD and likely includes the interactive menus and all of the other content off the disk packaged in a single file.

Re:Serenity.HDTV.720p_Dual_x264-CLT-HD

[A beautiful mind]

I'm hungarian btw. We have copyright fees installed into cd/dvd/memorycard sales, so downloading audio/video is perfectly legal. Software is a different category. There is a sharp distinction between uploading and downloading though, as by hungarian law the one who shares the material commits the copyright infringement in this case.

What I'm talking about is pretty solid, because apart from the clearly phrased law even the hungarian equivalent of RIAA is reluctantly admitting this in a FAQ on their home page.

Re:Piracy isn't the main issue

[mikael_j]

I love how you managed to mention Canada but not the Soviet Union when listing the major players in WWII..

/Mikael

Re:Codec

[Anonymous Coward]

AVC is not the only mpeg-4 codec. Divx is another one, as is Xvid, 3ivx, etc. You are right, though, that saying MPEG-4 VC-1 doesn't make sense.

Re:The size will be the limiting factor not DRM.

[BarlowBrad]

If you're going to complain about the quality of the content just buy it yourself at your preferred quality level. As the saying goes, "Beggars can't be choosers."

Re:Probably not a good idea just yet

[TheoMurpse]

Just wait until the movies are compressed. An XviD encode of a 20 minute episode of The Office which is 960x544 is 350MB (290MB is video data, 60MB is audio). Double each dimension (to get approx. 1080p), and the filesize will grow, with 4x290MB+60MB=1220MB as an upper limit (of course, it will be smaller than this). Thus, two hours of XviD at 1080p would be, at most, 7320MB. Factor in 5.1, 6.1 or 7.1 audio, and you still won't exceed the size of one dual layer DVD. Then, use the x264 codec instead of XviD, and you'll get an even smaller filesize at near the original source's quality. All on one dual layer DVD. With optimizations, the file size will shrink even further (multipass encoding, adjustments of the quantization, etc.). Presumably TV shows released online are only singlepass, as the competition seems to be who can get the show out the fastest (typically a few hours after the show comes on).

Re:The size will be the limiting factor not DRM.

[DragonWriter]

100 HD-DVD movies at $20 each = 2000 dollars.

A quick look says that newegg has 500 gig drives for $144. If each movie is 20 gigs, then you'd need 4 of those drives to store each movie, which comes out to 576 dollars.

You mean, you'd need four of those drives to store all 100 movies, which is $576 vs. the $2,000 to buy all 100 movies, rather than needing for 500 gig drives to store each 20 gig movie.

Re:Serenity.HDTV.720p_Dual_x264-CLT-HD

[A beautiful mind]

Better yet, are you so confidant that what you are doing is legal, that you would be willing to publically announce you have a digital copy of the movie (without having any physical copy). Lets say you would not have to implicate any hosting site. No one could possibly get into trouble except for you. Are you so confidant that your acquisition of the digital download was legal? I seriously doubt it.

Yes I am so confident. See this [artisjus.hu] (hungarian RIAA) link. Actually it is not only for digital copies, but if I download something that is not software and burn it to a dvd, I'm still legal. Rough translation:

Can I download movies, music or games for personal use?

Copying under copyright law requires permission from the copyright owner and downloading means copying. The law however, allows certain exceptions, that a private person for private use can make copies of works falling under the copyright protection. The exception includes for example music or movies if they are not protected by copy protection mechanisms, but does not apply to software. So thus, downloading the former today is not against the law, but copying software requires permission from the copyright holder.

Notice, that when it talks about copyright protection it is talking about all media, so this includes physical. The protection is evaluated on a item basis, so it's not enough to claim that "this title is generally protected by DRM", but you have to show that the specific file you found on the internet for download, or the specific dvd you ripped, was in fact DRMd. The only limitation in personal use is that you have to perform the copying yourself, someone else can't perform it on your behalf.

But if you still don't believe me, let me quote the hungarian copyright law [www.hpo.hu]:

35. (1) Természetes személy magáncélra a mrl másolatot készíthet, ha az jövedelemszerzés vagy jövedelemfokozás célját közvetve sem szolgálja. E rendelkezés nem vonatkozik az építészeti mre, a mszaki létesítményre, a szoftverre és a számítástechnikai eszközzel mködtetett adatbázisra, valamint a m nyilvános eladásának kép - vagy hanghordozóra való rögzítésére.

Rough translation:

A natural person is permitted to copy a work for personal use, if it is not for the reason of profiteering even indirectly. This paragraph doesn't apply to architectural work, engineering installation, software, database operated by information technology means and to the recording of a public performance of a work.

This was an excerpt from the fair use section of the law, which is quite long and allows quite many things, for example to perform "happy birthday" if it is not for profit (not a specific happy birthday exception, but a general performance one that applies to the happy birthday case).

Re:Sky

[AnyoneEB]

The article is about Serenity, not Firefly. I know Serenity is a continuation of Firefly, but it happens to not contain any part of the Ballad of Serenity (strangely enough). I agree with the other posters who said the correct ref would be "Can't stop the signal."

Re:The size will be the limiting factor not DRM.

[Anonymous Coward]

While not 40Gbps, you should try a well-wired college campus. Generally a lot of peers in the dorms and Gigabit Ethernet or better.

Re:Piracy isn't the main issue

[alexgieg]

He probably forgot. But we shouldn't forget that the URSS was the greatest ally of Germany from way before the war, by reaming Germany, and for a great part of the war itself, when Hitler and Stalin delimited the countries and borders each would control.

Stalin only turned Hitler's worst enemy when Hitler betrayed him by violating the Ribbentrop-Molotov non-aggression pact and invading URSS-owned territories and then Russia itself. Weren't for this and Stalin wouldn't have opposed him in the slightest.

Links.

[Anonymous Coward]

The Chronicles of Riddick [thepiratebay.org], Batman Begins [thepiratebay.org], and Pitch Black [thepiratebay.org].