Copy Protection Backfires on Blu-ray

An anonymous reader writes "The first two Blu-ray releases to hit the market encrypted with BD+ (an extra layer of protection designed to stave off hackers) are wreaking havoc on innocent consumers. As High-Def Digest reports, this week's Blu-ray releases of 'Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer' and 'The Day After Tomorrow' won't play back at all on at least two Blu-ray players, while load times on other players (including the PS3) are delayed by up to two minutes. 'The most severe problems have been reported on Samsung's BDP-1200 and LG's BH100, which are both said to be incapable of playing back the discs at all. Less catastrophic issues (error messages and playback stutter) have been reported for Samsung's BDP-1000. The discs appear to play back fine on all other Blu-ray players ... Calls placed to both Samsung and LG customer support revealed that both manufacturers are aware of the issue, and that both are working on firmware updates to correct it. Samsung promised a firmware update within 'a couple' weeks, while LG said an update is expected in 3-4 days.'"

...firmware update?

[TruePoindexter]

A firmware update? For my bluray player? Yeah because the average consumer will know how to do this or even be aware of the possibility.

Smackin Down The Competition...Maybe

[blueZhift]

Is it just coincidence that the affected players are from Samsung and LG, two Korean electronics giants that happen to be among Sony's biggest competitors? I'm just sayin...that's all...

Re:Here's a thought

[91degrees]

I don't follow. Why couldn't the HD-DVD supporters use exactly the same tactic?

DRM is just plain bad business...

[Jennifer York]

Why punish the people who actually pay for your product? The only way to suffer from this is if you purchased a copy, the people who are downloading this are free of the pain... It's like they _want_ you to pirate it. They are creating a system with incentives for illegal copying.

This is one of the reasons I don't care about this format war, they both are wrong headed... I want content delivered over the wire (or wireless, you get the idea).

Firmware updates!? To my DVD Player?

[arkham6]

Dear God, what the hell is this crap? Are we now to allow manufacturers to produce shoddy equipment and promise 'firmware' fixes down the line? That is totaly unreasonable. I should not have to patch my DVD player, update my receiver, or flash my TV.

I should be able to buy some equipment, plug it in and watch my movies. thats it.

That this is a necessity was a given.

[Opportunist]

Simply because as soon as they start "revoking" keys, yours could be amongst them, so you have to be able to somehow "upgrade" your ... waitaminute, isn't that key one of those things that can't be flashed?

Say, what happens when a key from a standalone BluRay Player (or, let's play it out a little, the PS3 one) gets revoked? You have a rather expensive brick?

Re:Obligatory

[laing]

I am a member of the general public and I have *NOT* accepted HD-DVD or Blueray as viable formats. I have been waiting for something else to come along that promises my ability to view HD movies that I buy on future players. Part of the DRM system incorporated into both standards will "bind" the discs to the players and play them at reduced resolution in any other player. What happens when my player wears out? Must I re-purchase my entire movie collection?

JSL

--
This space for rent.

Awful nice of them

[Selfbain]

The more they do stupid things like this, the better I feel when I pirate.

Region locks and now this!

[GreatDrok]

You know, I understand how people complain that HD DVD isn't as open as DVD but to be honest, to me it is more open because I didn't have to worry about buying a region free player. On the other hand, BD is far more locked than DVD since there were region free DVD players available fairly early on but so far none for Blu ray. Until Blu ray is at least as open as DVD (ie can be made region free) then I will go with HD DVD all the way. Sure, it isn't currently as easy to rip them as with DVDs but it took years before DVD could be ripped.

I just don't understand why people are supporting Blu ray......

The other day I was looking at disc prices. The typical price for a BD here in NZ is close to $50. HD DVDs are about $35 and regular DVDs are $30 for comparison. Also, there are no discounts to be had on the PS3 and while the US looks to be getting a new SKU at $399US ($525NZ) we are expected to pay $1200NZ which works out at $910US. Think about that.

Re:Obligatory -- offtopic

[provigilman]

When I tried to do it I wasn't allowed to, so perhaps that's an update to iTunes that wasn't out at the time. The problem though is that I shouldn't have to wait, or it should be easy and seamless to understand.

If I take a CD and I stick into my computer, it plays. That same CD plays in my truck, on my portable CD player, in my TV's DVD drive, on my various consoles, etc... I don't need an "update", there isn't a menu and I don't have to select a checkbox. It. Just. Plays. This concept has been lost in the music community now, and it looks like the MPAA is throwing it out the window too.

Re:Where did you get that?

[fireboy1919]

I'm not sure where he got that either, but if you read between the lines, you can pick up this as a possibility. You can also figure out (by just looking at the Wikipedia entries), that this *isn't supposed to be possible now*.

Blu-Ray players will allow approved code to execute under a specific virtual machine [engadget.com]. The specification for this virtual machine is specifically not known. It is forbidden to be known, actually, to prevent tampering. We have been assured, however that BD+ doesn't affect the state of the machine permanently.

Unfortunately, the current trouble with DVDs could easily be fixed by *removing* the need for this, by having firmware updates happen in the discs themselves, or by requiring internet access that's directed by BD+ to download new firmware (which is essentially the same thing as having BD+ do it, isn't it)?

Once you can do firmware updates, you can do what the GP is talking about, can't you?

Re:Why firmware updates?

[Fast Thick Pants]

The BD and HDDVD players need to be firmware-updatable so that cracked keys can be revoked. The occasional snafu like this helps train consumers to cooperate with the process.

Re:BD-J issue

[Jherek Carnelian]

This is a BD-J issue, not an encryption issue. They usually fix BD-J issues quickly. Notice no problem with the Pioneer/Sony player.

How do you know that? My understanding is that BD+ does not use the BD-J virtual machine, it has its own (non-java) virtual machine.

Re:Obligatory

[UncleTogie]

Now there are disks using BD+, which of course we don't have a key for.

...yet...

Re:If you fuckers didn't STEAL their shit we would

[siddesu]

Okay, you're not blind. You dislike the drive for extension of copyright terms and DRM, and believe those are primarily there to protect copyrights, not limit consumer choice and eat consumer surplus. Fine. Now, two questions.
Why has the drive to extend copyrights started long before there was even tcp/ip, not to mention file sharing?
Why has the music/movie industry consistently opposed limited, fair-use sharing "even [though] when it first became easy it was no threat to copyright holders"? Why would they sue the makers of VCRs at the time, when copyright abuse wasn't a threat?

If what you say was true, any of these would be very difficult to explain, don't you think?

Re:It's playback protection, not copy protection

[zoward]

Since it prevents people from playing the movies it's obviously a playback protection mechanism.

Per your own sentence, it's a playback prevention mechanism. If I were a BD-player owner (and the way things are going I'm not planning on becoming one anytime soon) who couldn't play either disk, I wouldn't feel very "protected".

Re:Obligatory

[halber_mensch]

I hope this was a mistake. I know I've screwed up and hit the wrong selection when modding.

It could have been a mistake. Or it could have been a Sony employee/fanboy making a vain attempt to crush negative opinion.

Re:Obligatory

[Machtyn]

I don't know... looking at your UID, /. now has over 1 million registered users. How many more are not registered? At what size does a population need to be to qualify for "general public"

I would agree that actually becoming motivated enough to post on /. would make you not "general public". But we have all sorts here, not just the tech heads.

Re:Obligatory

[Sandbags]

I don't pirate video, so I've not much to worry about, but if I did, I'd rather there be a definitive encryption system that I know I could crack, and know I have done so completely because I can see or hear the difference between encrypted and not. This is far better than the watermarking technology they're hinting at implementing (and rumor they're leaking into peer to peer networks as we speak) in downloaded music and movies. Each watermarked file is unique, and because the watermark containing your personal information (or the person who didn't know any better and uploaded the file) is buried in the digital layer and imperceptible to your eyes and ears, and even to the h264 decoder playing the file, it's impossible to identify watermarked files. It takes comparing dozens or even hundreds of copies of the same file to determine the specifics of the watermark in order to strip it, and each file released can use a unique schema for the watermark data, meaning you'd have to have a crack tool with a database of millions of watermark keys to clean files, something you really can't develop. There's no single key to unlock a watermark like there is for AACS, and worse, it's impossible to tell if it's unlocked or not.

Personally, I'm skipping blue/HD. In 3-5 years they'll have 2.8:1 true widescreen at 2-4 times the resolution of current HD max resolution. DVD is fine for me now. HD vids ripped from HBO are even better (and I get dozens of them per month for $8.99) Sure, I have to wait an extra few months for it to air, but if I wanted to see it that bad, I'd see it in the theatre.

I've got a few TV shows I love too that I'm not only ripping, but first I pass them through a scene detector and strip the commercials. I also pack 2-6 episodes together and insert new scene cuts (titles) before ripping it to DVD. Sure, it takes about 2 hours to prep and rip a disk, but I'm getting free complete TV seasons, commercial free, on DVD for not much more than my time and the cost of blanks.