Blu-ray BD+ Cracked

An anonymous reader writes "In July 2007, Richard Doherty of the Envisioneering Group (BD+ Standards Board) declared: 'BD+, unlike AACS which suffered a partial hack last year, won't likely be breached for 10 years.' Only eight months have passed since that bold statement, and Slysoft has done it again. According to the press release, the latest version of their flagship product AnyDVD HD can automatically remove BD+ protection and allows you to back-up any Blu-ray title on the market."

Re: BD+ Cracked

[Panaqqa]

I'm beginning to increasingly believe the old cliche, "Information wants to be free".

Well....

[webmaster404]

Well time for me to go buy a blu-ray player now that I know that if it fails, I can back up my data onto my PC, play them on Linux and actually be able to use blu-ray.

pwned

[JeepFanatic]

When will people learn that making bold statements about their technology's security will only make them look like a fool when it is finally broken?

Barrier to Ownership

[tompatman]

Now that that's been handled, looks like it's time to start shopping for a BD player.

unimportant

[rucs_hack]

The vast majority of customers for blu-ray technology won't give a rats arse about this. I certainly don't

We've been able to crack dvd's for years, but every house I visit still has a pile of purchased dvd's, and I know of not one person who backs them up. The only people who use the cracking stuff that I know, do so either directly from borrowed dvd's, or indirectly through downloading movies. A know a few who never buy dvd's, because they prefer some dodgy rip. Beats me why, I know the average quality, and I don't think it's worth it, especially since they usually end up just taking up drive space.

The same will most likely occur with blu-ray. Most, if not all, purchased blu-ray discs will never be backed up. This cracking will be employed only by people who don't want to pay. They most likely wouldn't anyway.

So why don't we just drop this 'legal backup' crap and admit that this is only going to be of use to people who have no intention of buying the 'legal' dvd's in the first place.

Re:Barrier to Ownership

[chasingporsches]

i completely agree... and i think that's the message that movie studios should be taking from this -- now that it's possible to create backups, more people are wanting to buy BD players when they wouldn't have otherwise -- not that the pirates have won again.

Re: BD+ Cracked

[TheLinuxSRC]

The whole problem with encrypted media is that in order for the customer to want to purchase it, they will need to access the media they have purchased. In order to access that media, they will at some point need the key(s) that unlock it. Simply put, the purchaser of the media has the locked media, but they will also have the key. If you give people the key to the lock along with the lock, it is only a matter of time before someone figures out how to get the key.

Re:pwned

[rubycodez]

why call it disaster? it's GOOD when any and all copy protection schemes are broken so I can get fair use out of my purchases. Those who are creating DRM are trying to take away my rights. When will they learn they may as well just abandon their wasted efforts and instead get smarter about how content is priced, sold and distributed.

Re:why?

[lilmunkysguy]

I am beginning to ask myself: why are we always happy because of such news? I mean yes, we are all little pirates at the bottom of our hearts and we all liked Robin Hood, but shouldn't we start thinking more responsible towards how technology advancement can occur?

We are happy because if we purchase a product, we feel we should be able to use it however we want to. DRM puts restrictions on how we can use the product we own. Removing those restrictions and allowing more freedom makes us happy.

Re:unimportant

[Anonymous Coward]

you obviously don't have kids... how many times have I had DVD's repaired in the past year? I've lost track, some did not work after being "repaired" as well.

That tactic speaks volumes.

[jskline]

It really does. If they "delayed" release of this, then they must have been waiting to "lock in" the format war so that they wouldn't have to go supporting both standards. Apparently the Blu Ray was easy enough for them and now that there is "vendor lock-in", this pretty much says that they really are dictating the markets. This really speaks volumes about marketing tactics.

Re:unimportant

[the_other_chewey]

The vast majority of customers for blu-ray technology won't give a rats arse about this. I certainly don't

Well, I do. Let me tell you why:
I don't own a TV. I *do* however own a computer with a WUXGA display. In its current
config, my computer would not be "MAFIAA certified" to play BD discs, even if I hab a BD drive.

I want to be able to play the content on my computer.

With the OS of my choice. With a display of my choice. Without this HDCP crap.
I own a bunch of DVDs because deCSS has become ubiquitous today, and nearly every
computer with a DVD drive can play them, without any platform or software dependencies.

I'm waiting for the same to happen for BD - until then, no money from me.
Please make it happen soon, HD video looks great.

Re:unimportant

[ledow]

I think you're wrong about people legally backing up. I know of people that can't navigate a start menu who have backed up their kids DVD's, give the copies to the kids and put the actual DVD's out of reach. I know of people who back up music CD's and only play the backups in cars because they have a tendency to get scratched, lost, trodden on, or left out in the sun.

Only last week, I bought a book that came with a video DVD. It cost me about £30 and the DVD will only play in my DVD player because it's cheaply-produced. It would cost me more in petrol to take it back to the shop than it would to just copy it and I had two DVD-RW drives that could read it, slowly, but they could. So I made a copy and I have that copy tucked inside the book alongside the original.

When we go abroad on holiday, we often go with family and watch DVD's some nights. We'll take copies wherever possible because you don't know what people's machine will do, what the luggage has to go through etc. And it's not unusual for us to leave something in the DVD player. When we travel in our own country, I'll bung hundreds of mp3's and a few movies or a TV series onto a laptop or DVD-R so that we have our own entertainment for travel and/or if our destination doesn't have something to play music on.

I've trained my wife to use backup CD's wherever practical - she ruined the original copy of a CD of the first song I ever bought her and she was devastated, so from then on she's copied every CD that she thinks is worth the effort. The same for a few DVD's but with the CSS and menuing hassles, it was harder to get her into that. With Blu-Ray (or any future technology), if I can't copy them easily, I won't buy them. Even if it comes down to just being able to transcode them to DVD and burning a DVD-R, that's what I'll do. And I have absolutely no doubts that whatever the most common format for purchasing movies/music, there will be a way to copy them sooner or later. At that point and not before, I will buy into the technology, if I feel the need.

Re:unimportant

[molarmass192]

I own and rip my DVDs to put them on my media server. I pay, and I "crack", so I can watch DVDs on demand without hunting them down, sitting through ads, and even on the road on my iPhone. So where do I fit into your argument? I'll concede that some people will borrow / rent DVDs to rip them, but honestly, it's much easier to torrent the movie you want than to rip / encode for 99% of the people out there. I'd say at least 50% of rippers do so legitimately, DMCA not withstanding.

Re:Well....

[Tanktalus]

Have you ever thought that your own paid-for movies are just data?

Re:Well....

[PJ1216]

not every movie copied has to be stolen. and i doubt he was planning on stealing. especially since he said he also wants to wait for the prices of the movies to come down. which he has a point with. i mean, i've seen some movies go for $35.

Re:why?

[tolan-b]

1. This won't affect piracy, the places where you can get pirated movies are already full of BD releases so obviously those creating the pirated releases were already able to get the data (probably by ripping it out of the decoded video stream at some point).

2. Software patents or no, I believe that I should be able to do what I want with something I purchase as long as it's not harming others. Moving my movies from physical disks to my media server is not harming anybody.

3. As others have already said, DRM is fundamentally broken. To view DRM encrypted content you have to have the keys. If you have the keys then the encryption can't be secure. The sooner people (the content industries) realise this the sooner they can stop pissing off their legitimate consumers without actually denting piracy. This is a win for all. EMI have realised this, and I think a couple of other music studios, now it's just a waiting game until the rest of them get it.

This enlarges the customer base

[PhilLong]

As was posted earlier to /. regarding gaming, the studios et. al. should really focus on _customers_, not pirates because, duh, customers buy things. Some customers demand fair use rights by hook or crook (for example those that want for various reasons to have a lone htpc+speakers+monitor be your entire HT), and now that slysoft has provided for a fee, the _customer_ base for Fox. et. al. just expanded. The pirate base is probably unchanged by this, so really the studios should be celebrating, and the people that should really be cackeling incessantly are the ones that get the mandatory fee paid for providing the snake oil that is the useless AACS and BD+ "protections". From the slysoft AnyDVD HD forum: Xtrap1979 I can now make a collective order of all the Fox titles http://forum.slysoft.com/showthread.php?t=14787&page=3 [slysoft.com]

Re:pwned

[PJ1216]

this whole "blu-ray monopoly" thing is getting old. prices went up because they don't have to undercut their costs anymore. now, prices will eventually go down when the technology is actually cheaper. DVDs were expensive at one point too, but had no competition at the time (if you really want to count VHS, thats up to you). They started high (in some categories, higher than hi-def dvds), but due to never having to undercut their costs, they started as high as they could and then went down. Blu-ray didn't start as high as it could. It noticed it had to cut profits to try to win first. Now, they don't have to. Prices are now controlled by the actual cost of the equipment. Competing formats is *NOT* good for the consumer unless all content is available on all formats. The fact that one of the hi-def formats died is *GOOD* for the consumer. Competition isn't automatically good for the consumer and a so-called 'monopoly' (which is most definitely isn't) isn't automatically bad. When HD was around, it was a terrible situation. People were torn between choosing various studios. What if I liked movies from two studios that weren't on the same format? I'd have to buy a dual-player or even just two players. How can you justify saying its a good thing for consumers that they'd have to pay twice as much money on equipment?

Anyhow, on the topic at hand, is anyone really surprised it got cracked? DRM will eventually die at some point. Right now its just something that we gotta continue fighting until companies realize they lose more money by utilizing it. Music has begun dropping DRM. Some book companies have started releasing straight pdf's of books without any DRM. Video will eventually follow.

Re: BD+ Cracked

[scubamage]

As long as the content ultimately gets decrypted/decoded to a format which is percievable to human senses, it can be cracked. There is nothing stopping a dedicated pirate from going, pixel by pixel, dumping the current pixel color values into a massive 2d array - in fact in the pre-deCSS days there was a program that worked with PowerDVD by doing that very thing. Dump all the pixelvalues as arrays into a screenshot bypassing Windows, then stream together the screenshots in a video format of your choice, and you've got uncompressed, perfect digital video. From there you can just run a male to male cable from your stereo out jack to an audio input, and you've got your sound. Mux them together and you've got everything you need to make your pirated copy. Its low tech, but it works. The fact is, no matter what these antipiracy groups do, they can *NOT* beat technology with more technology. Because all it takes is a bored geek with a soldering iron and some spare time to bring down their house of cards.

Re:pwned

[wift]

I agree, one format is better for the consumer however, pricing will still be in question.

Why are regular DVD movies going up then? No longer do I see new titles non-bonus material at $19.99. But $21.99 and sometimes $24.99.

Re:Barrier to Ownership

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a 3rd option: being able to view the High Definition movie you paid for on a non-certified HDCP screen, without quality "downgrading".

The power of abstraction

[JSBiff]

Ok, yes, books are more than *just* dead trees with ink squirted on them. But guess what, they also *are* dead trees. . . with ink squirted on them. Meaning they share at least some of the properties dead trees. For example, if you needed to, you could burn them in a fire place for warmth, if it came down to it. They have a high quantity of cellulose, so if you needed a source of cellulose for some sort of chemical reaction, you could possibly use books (or other paper - magazines, newspapers, etc) if you had to.

I think the GP's point was, he should be able to backup his movies to his computer, because at a low level, Blue Ray movies are just data on the disc. He should be able to backup *any* data on a BD to his computer. Yes, movies are more than data, but they also *are* data too. The power of abstraction is that I can usually treat any two *similar* things similarly, even when they aren't identical.

So that I can drive a Chevy Corvette or a Cavalier, a Ford F-150 pickup truck, or a Toyota Camry all on the same road, because they are all automobiles. Yes, a pickup truck is *more than* a set of wheels, a frame, and a motor, which collectively fit within a certain standardized set of dimensions and under a certain maximum weight, but it *is* also a set of wheels, a frame, and a motor which collectively fit within a certain standardized set of dimensions and under a certain maximum weight, which is why it can drive on the same road as the other vehicles.

I think one of the distinguishing features of most geeks, that sets them apart from the general populace, is the fact that they have the ability to see, when it's useful, that "a book is just a dead tree", and to be able to figure out when that fact is useful. It is the foundational principle of much of engineering and computer science. Most people see the forest, or maybe the trees. A good hacker sees the forest *and* the trees.

Your response to the GP just shows that you just don't get it. It doesn't mean he's any less correct. I hope this post helps you to see that.

Re:Barrier to Ownership

[rmach]

#3 Backing up movies to give to the kids to use because they will scratch them up where they won't work anymore. After that happens, make a new copy from the original.

I own a large collection of DVDs and this is a use I do for some of them that watch. I also do this for CDs as well.

Re:Barrier to Ownership

[drsmithy]

I agree. However, it's a shame that this crack of the DRM is coming so close to the end of the format war and the exchange offers most stores are supporting. The numbers of people that are going to buy BR players because of the fair use now are only going to get lost in the shuffle now.

Well, they'd otherwise be statistical noise so, no biggie.

Re:pwned

[Firethorn]

Don't forget that as a side effect of the DRM and the occasional secondary studio messup that the pirates often offer a superior product.

Pirate copy: Free except for the 5 min I spent looking it up
Standard video: $5-30

Pirate copy: Open file. Maximize screen
Standard video: Find disc, insert disc, wait for disc to load. Wait through FBI warning. Skip ads for movies that I either already own, or will never buy that have been out for years. Wait through non-skippable ad or that insulting 'Don't steal this video'. Finally play video

Pirate copy(software): Install, patch, run
Standard copy: Install, enter DRM code. Hope. Patch. Update hardware, enter DRM code AGAIN.

I mean, I have a tendency to email copies of images on sites that try to prevent copying of images on websites to their webmaster when they do stupid stuff like disable the right click or have a flip-image of 'don't steal this image'. It pisses me off.

I buy movies, so many that I have a hard time sorting through them. Sure, most are $5 walmart specials, but eh. I haven't bought music often, but I don't download it either as I'm mostly satisfied with radio.

Re: BD+ Cracked

[Midnight Thunder]

I'm beginning to increasingly believe the old cliche, "Information wants to be free".

I am also beginning to increasingly believe that if you create a good enough dare, people will take you up on it, just to prove you wrong.

Mother nature likes to join in too sometimes, as one ship has shown us.

Re:pwned

[earthforce_1]

Unfortunately, it is still only a "closed source" crack proprietary to SlySoft. You would have to run their software under wine and we would be back to square 1 if anything bad happened to SlySoft. The good folks at doom9 still need to keep working on this. muslix64 and DVD Jon, are you listening?

Re:pwned

[pnewhook]

The copy protection is meant to prevent you from backing up your only copy of the disk to another device, which falls under fair use. Also, you cannot format-shift because of the copy protection. If you buy an HD movie and want to downsample it for use on your iPod, you can't unless you get past the copy protection.

Neither of these are valid examples of fair use as defined under US law. Go look it up.

Seriously. You must be new here 'cause I might just be modded redundant people have been over this so many times on Slashdot.

Just because something is repeated doesn't make it true. Your using 'fair use' as an excuse to make illegal copies. I'm not new here, but you must be a regular since you spew unsubstantiated nonsense to justify your wild claims without looking up the facts.

Re:pwned

[zsouthboy]

You buy a LICENSE to use your media. The physical disk is not what you're buying.

Your comparison makes no sense. (And the media cartels are trying to have it both ways - it's a license when its convienient for them, but if you scratch your disk, oh, you bought the physical media, please buy it again.)

Re: BD+ Cracked

[geekoid]

HAHAHAHAHahhahaha, oh man, that was funny.

"...just sufficiently hard that the cat and mouse game is too much effort for the pirates."

Except the pirate have the time, and the skills, and the same computer power as the companies. Add to that they don't have an arbitrary budget and they get an Ego boost from doing it? do you really think these snake oil salesmen have a chance?

What next, a scheme for hiding porn magazines in your house from teenagers?

At least more and more media companies are beginning to realize the futility of these scheme, hopefully they will go away. Really, I want to buy by disk, put it on my computer and call it up when ever I want. That's the future, that is what consumers want and expect.

"You can't hide secrets from the future with math." - MS Frontalot.

Re:pwned

[robizzle]

You points are mostly correct. However, copy protection is not "meant to prevent you from backing up your only copy of the disk to another device." It is meant to prevent you from either making copies of movies you do now own (IE rental or borrowed movie) for personal use, or to prevent you from making copying movies you own and giving/selling them to someone that does not own the movie -- basically anything other than fair use (backing up, down sampling for personal use, accessing content for a creative art, etc.) In other words, (IMO), the movie studios don't have any problem with fair use -- they have a problem with theft and the only viable solution on their end is copy protection which unfortunately has the side effect of limiting fair use.

I'm pretty confident that if we were in a perfect society where the only reason someone would copy a movie was for true backup purposes only, then copy protection would not exist. But we aren't in this perfect society, so our two options are 1) Have no copy protection and also some way to legally enforce theft. Or 2) We put up with copy protection which does work against a majority of the public and results in much less law enforcement needed.

The problem with 1 is that it is very difficult for law enforcement to find people that copy movies illegally because it can be done in the privacy. I am certainly not suggesting we should sacrifice privacy in the interest of getting rid of copy protection.

The problem with 2 is that copy restriction restricts fair use (backup, down sampling for personal use and creative art.)

I suppose there is a third option as well which is to make movie theft perfectly legal. This seems like a horrible idea because it will remove incentive for movie studios to produce quality films because of reduced profits, lower margins and higher risk. Movie studios have always had the option to do this but nobody has found a business model that can strive on free movies like we have with free/open source software.

Re: BD+ Cracked

[geekoid]

hmmm... I do see your point. However it does 'want to be free' in that people like to sharing information.
Which is a huge deal in that it's a very basic part of human nature. That is what the expressionmean. nobody believe information actually wants something, it's just a observation of human nature.

Like saying "Cars like to clump up in traffic." doesn't actually mean the cars like anything, it's just an observation of what car operators tend to do.

Re: BD+ Cracked

[mikeabbott420]

If the Satellite TV companies needed to protect a library built over years rather than just a current transitory stream, where they are in continuous contact with the player, their task would be much more difficult and conversely the rewards of cracking would be that much greater. Disk is different than broadcast.

Re: BD+ Cracked

[MightyYar]

I don't think many people take the phrase literally. All it means is that it is very hard to keep a secret, human nature being what it is. Governments, companies, individuals all expend tons of effort to try and keep information locked down - and yet even the best systems are compromised.

In other words, the path of least resistance is to structure our society such that it isn't dependent on the keeping of secrets. The fewer secrets, the better - though all except the most extreme nuts would argue that some secrets are in fact necessary.

We made a boat load of money

[geekoid]

and you should read mine over and over again.

Re: BD+ Cracked

[Mr_eX9]

Your Middle School English teacher didn't teach you about personification [wikipedia.org]?

A personification is a figure of speech that gives an inanimate object or abstract idea human traits and qualities, such as emotions, desires, sensations, physical gestures and speech.

emph mine.

It seems like an appropriate saying to me--when information is locked down by secrecy or DRM, people will leak it or break the DRM. It's a nice expression that has meaning packed into it.

Re:The power of abstraction

[chill]

Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, 464 U.S. 417, 455
    (1984) (holding that "time-shifting" of copyrighted television shows with VCR's constitutes fair use under the Copyright Act, and thus is not an infringement).

Space shifting [wikipedia.org], or copying a legally purchased copyright material like a DVD, to a computer hard drive for convenience is still being debated in the courts. It should be noted that no case has been decided regarding personal space shifting. Only cases by commercial entities like Diamond Multimedia, MP3.com, Napster, etc.

Why? Because the Audio Home Recording Act [wikipedia.org] of 1992 set nice precedents covering this sort of behavior. Yes, it is specific to audio, but it explicitly gives people the right to make private, non-commercial copies of their stuff. The Senate report defines noncommercial as "not for direct or indirect commercial advantage", offering examples such as making copies for a family member, or copies for use in a car or portable tape player.

That is a very big precedent and the video industry does not want to try and overcome that. This is why they went after DeCSS with vigor and the DMCA was enacted. Their "loophole" is to attack people for decrypting, not for copying.

Uploading, sharing with friends and the like are different stories. But I believe you are firmly within your rights to make personal copies (for you and your household) copy copyright materials that you legally own.

IANAL, but I challenge you to find one U.S. court case concluded after 1992 that says otherwise.

Re: BD+ Cracked

[LunaticTippy]

The same thing happened with cd and dvd. At first blanks were expensive (and generally half the capacity) but once it became the dominant media the economies of scale kicked in.

I'd say if Bluray becomes the dominant media (which isn't certain, I happen to think discs are doomed) we'll see spools of blanks for $20, just like the last two times.

Re:pwned

[elrous0]

I would also add that HD-DVD was region-free, cheaper to produce (and hence to sell), and didn't have the conflict-of-interest of being tied directly to a media-producing studio (Sony). It was just a better all-around product for consumers. Blu-ray is aimed at pleasing studios more than the consumer.

That's not a secret!

[Xenographic]

> You can't hide secrets from the future with math.

Sure you can! With one time pads no one knows because they're secret.

The problem BD+ and ALL other DRM schemes have is that you can't keep the movie a secret from your customers because they pay to watch it! On other words, the problem is that these movies are not secrets.

Re: BD+ Cracked

[Minupla]

It's the same problem as there is any IT security problem. Protectors need to be perfect every time, attackers need to be lucky/good (in that the protector missed something) once. Add to this basic fact the matter that there is an inherent architectural problem in content protection (you gotta give the attacker what they need or users can't see the media) and the fact that the usual relentless march of technology favors the attacker (more CPU power = easier key breaking, additional CPU power doesn't benefit the defenders) and I'm glad I'm not in the digital chastity belt biz, AKA content protection.

Min

Re:pwned

[OMNIpotusCOM]

Yeah, I hate it when someone asks a question, gets an answer and an insult at the same time, then questions the answer with valid points, then gets somehow penalized. I'm confused... who was the dick again?