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".

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:

[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 benef

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:

[rnelsonee]

Well, the poster was absolutely correct - even if it's hard or improbable, it doesn't mean his concept is wrong. All the media companies need to do is make it 'sufficiently hard' and it won't be cracked. Just because you think every DRM in history has been hacked and will be hacked doesn't make it true.

If you knew your recent history about hacking DRM, you would know that DirecTV is a perfect example. Their older cards had a weak DRM scheme where it would validate PPV requests at a certain time in a se

Re: BD+ Cracked

[Belial6]

I would say that you are only half right. If Dish is easier to hack, saying that DirectTV is unhacked is like saying that my front door is secure because it's easier to throw a rock through the 4x8 window right next to it. Largely pointless for the conversation. After all, have you succeeded if the hacker is still getting the data through another channel? Then there is Netflix. Most of the people I knew that hacked DirecTV did were subscribers to DirecTV. They hacked the system for the PPV channels. At $19 a month for way better selection, I know a lot of people switched from hacked DirectTV to Netflix because it was a better value.

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:

[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

[oni]

cat and mouse game is too much effort for the pirates

Just to be clear, pirates aren't the ones playing that cat and mouse game. When you see a street vendor selling pirated copies of Star Wars, he's selling actual Blu-ray discs. He made bit-for-bit copies and he didn't need to decrypt anything to do it. The fact that Blu-ray is encrypted didn't do anything to prevent the pirate from stealing the content.

Decryption is needed by people who want to *gasp* watch the discs they legally purchased at BestBuy.

Re: BD+ Cracked

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know about satellite TV in the US, but...

Virtually every satellite TV encryption system available has been broken, often many times over. These range from simple hardware hacks, such as subscribing to all channels then sticking a resistor in the decoder to prevent the card's EEPROM from being changed then unsubscribing again, through complete reverse-engineering of the cards. Cards were routinely modified to recieve all channels, card details were copied onto deactivated cards, and some were even re-implemented from scratch using a PIC soldered onto a PCB, or even using programmable cards.

These systems relied on security through obscurity - the pirates didn't know how the cards worked, so there was no way they could compromise them. Yeah, right...

This continued until very recently. Most newer encryption systems follow the pattern that BSkyB used with their analog and digital encryption systems. BSkyB's analog system relied on replacing the cards. Each time a revision of the cards was breached, they would issue a new one that fixed the holes in the last, and often fundamentally changed the way the card worked. Sky retired the system before it was fully compromised, but other providers kept using it. They had to face the fact that computing power had advanced so much that it was possible to brute-force decode the signal in real-time with no card.

Most modern cards are programmable, as are the CAMs (the modules that talk to the card, and pass the final decryption keys to the STB). So the current encryption systems change the firmware in both card and CAM periodically. Any breach will only work for a limited time. Even after all these years, the arms race continues - pirates have found all kinds of creative ways around these things, such as sharing a single card across the internet.

It's also possible to buy a PCI satellite card that allows a PC to recieve satellite TV. Combine that with an official card and CAM, which work as normal. You can't change the card, but you can do whatever you like with the decryption keys it generates, or the decrypted TV signals. That includes recording it, and uploading it to the internet. You could even do that in real-time if you wanted to.

The continual update thing is what Sony are trying with BD+. The idea is that the BD+ portion contains code, unique to each disc, which verifies that the player is authentic and hasn't been compromised. Once it's done that, it provides decryption keys to the player.

The general idea is that, while it may be possible to compromise AACS in the same was as CSS, each BluRay disc will contain unique encrpytion code for that disc. The idea is that each disc will need to be cracked individually, just like PC games. And we all know how well that approach works in practice.

This assumes that each BluRay disc will have completely unique BD+ code, and that's just not going to happen - they have to maintain compatibility with existing players, which means the BD+ code has to be extensively tested. Hackers can move much more quickly - even if they did have to crack each batch of BluRay discs individually, they'll be able to update their decryption tools much quicker than Sony can update their BD+ code.

It also assumes that nobody knows how BD+ works (security through obscurity), and that nobody will be able to independently implement a BD+ VM that pretends to be a real player. That's exactly what SlySoft have done. Their VM isn't complete yet - it only implements the portions of BD+ that current discs are actually using. It is known not to work on one disc (Hitman, I believe), simply because it uses parts of the BD+ VM that they've not implemented. Yet.

The point is that the pirates are far more agile than Sony, and have unlimited time in which to devise a solution. There is no such thing as making it too much effort. At least with the satellite TV analogy, you can't keep using a hack once the hole it exploited has been patched, so there is a time factor. There is no time factor with BluR

Re: BD+ Cracked

[Alsee]

I will give BD+ credit though, it managed to hold them off for 8 months

Nope. 5 months.

According to the link they sat on this for 3 months for strategic reasons, waiting for the format war to end.

-

Re:

[TheLinuxSRC]

You make a few interesting points, but I think there are technical problems with your solution. First of all, with a large enough sampling of keys, cracking the algorithm becomes easier. If every disk had a unique key, there would be a huge base of samples thus cracking the actual algorithm would ultimately become trivial. The second problem I see is that if you did that, the crackers would know exactly where the key resides and wouldn't have to go through the hoops of retrieving it from memory.

I do not cl

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:

[ichthus]

Ah, your post takes me back to when DVDs were first being ripped. The same arguments of impracticality were being made then. "DVDs hold 8 gigs, and we only have ~40 gigs of HDD space to store the VOBs."

There's a difference now, though. Back then, you had to recode the vobs with some crappy (by today's standards) codec like old QuickTime, or asf or something. Nowadays, DVDs can be recoded and stored in XviD format with a decent quality tradeoff. Likewise, BD can be recoded to x.264 and stored in about 4

Re:

[0111 1110]

Although you have some good points, there seems to be something you are missing. Have you ever actually downloaded one of those re-compressed hi-def movies? I have. The file was 9 GB. As far as I can tell it was the original resolution. So it has been *hugely* re-compressed. I was expecting it to be a huge mess. But you know what? It wasn't. Yes, there were numerous compression artifacts, but I was too distracted by the fact that the overall image quality and detail and dynamic range were about 1.78 gazilli

Re:

[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

Re: BD+ Cracked

[mrchaotica]

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.

No, you don't. It's uncompressed, but not "perfect" because it still has the compression artifacts. Then, when you recompress it, it has two sets of compression artifacts. Although it's higher quality than aiming a video camera at the display, it's still more-or-less the same as the "analog hole."

To really count as "cracking," the attacker needs to get access to the decrypted but still encoded stream.

Re:

[chgros]

uncompressed MPEG-2
MPEG-2 is a compression standard

Re: BD+ Cracked

[IndustrialComplex]

There is nothing stopping a dedicated pirate from going, pixel by pixel, dumping the current pixel color values into a massive 2d array
-- -- --
Actually, there is. It's called HDCP, and means that only "authenticated" output devices will get digital data.

I doubt those devices will stop a dedicated pirate with good soldering talents. The data has to go to the screen at some point.

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: BD+ Cracked

[GoofyBoy]

>if you create a good enough dare, people will take you up on it, just to prove you wrong.

That's sounds like a dare to me.

Re:

[Phisbut]

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

Actually, I think the whole meme reads as such :

- Information wants to be free
- Entertainment wants to be paid
- You just want to be cheap

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

[DarkOx]

Its also an entropy thing. It may well be that like almost everything else we observe information follows a concentration gradient. That is if you concentrate information with a small group of people you have to constantly expend energy keeping it there. So if you decide gee I only want people who purchase a certain bit of plastic to watch my move you have to put alot of energy into keeping the movie on the plastic. Eventually it will get off if you don't. It may well be that DRM is like heating your house; the more insulation you have(stronger DRM scheme) the better but as soon as you take the input energy away (turn off the heater)/(complete your encrypting) the temperature will always equalize with the outside(the movie will propagate to places where the disk is not present).

Re:

[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: 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.

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?

Re:

[Z00L00K]

It's OK to make bold statements if you can do it with humor and not depend on the failure of that statement.

But when it comes to things like DRM and security it's just a disaster waiting to happen. What happens is that this will be a magnet and a challenge for all hackers regardless of intent just because they want to prove the statement wrong.

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:pwned

[h4rm0ny]

The only bad thing about BD+ being cracked is that it didn't happen sooner. A naive faith that it would be secure may have been one of the factors in studios throwing their weight behind Blue-ray instead of HD. Now that HD seems to be going down the pipes, it leaves blue ray in a monopoly position, free to keep their prices high. Okay - it's not quite a monopoly position as they still have to compete with traditional DVDs. But it's a worse situation for the public than if HD were still around. Still, every little crack helps.

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:

[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:

[Phat_Tony]

Those who are creating DRM are trying to take away my rights.

What right are they trying to take away?

If they are abridging your rights, why don't you, or one of the many other people who hate DRM, or the EFF, sue them for abridging your rights?

The bill of rights doesn't say "The government shall make no law abridging the rights of the people to transfer video content from their TV set to their computer or portable media player." Perhaps it would have if they could have conceived of such problems.

If you're referring to fair use, that's for purposes of criticism

Re:pwned

[DrSkwid]

You bought a disk full of data.

DRM locks the data to the disk, requiring you to risk damaging the only copy of the data you bought in order to access said data.

Fair use is copying the data you bought to another device so you can access it from there.

I'm surprised you need it explaining to you, are you a bit dumb ?

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:pwned

[mstahl]

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.

The studio's line works just fine if you're okay only watching your movies in your Blu-Ray player and only if the keys to the disks are still valid and only if you even still have a blu-ray player years from now. If you buy a movie you should be able to enjoy it howsoever you see fit as long as that doesn't involve charging people money to view it or selling copies you've made from it.

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

Wait....

[mstahl]

So we're having a low-UID pissing contest . . . but in reverse???

Re:

[UnknownSoldier]

You don't understand how Law is supposed to work. _People_ create Laws, and created Government to work/serve the best interests of everyone, not the other way around. Law is not some "absolute" codified rule -- thats why we have the Spirit of the Law (Theory), and the Letter of the Law (Application). When the Law no longer works, we have things such as civil disobediance. Copyright is an archaic hold-over from when publishers didn't want competition. Imaginary Property rights are the next absurd idea th

Re:

[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 thi

Re:pwned

[elrous0]

They know damn well that no DRM is ever really secure. But the bread and butter of these companies is to sucker the studios into thinking otherwise. So they don't make such statements because they actually believe them, but to sell their DRM scheme. By the time it gets cracked (usually about 5 minutes after anyone bothers to try), they've already made their money and can laugh all the way to the bank.

Re:pwned

[phobos13013]

Be assured it was this argument that Sony brought to the studios to get them to kill the (IMO better standard) of HD-DVD since it has already been cracked. Also, be assured that Sony knew their argument was bullshit. Sadly, it was this lie that killed the standard, not a few thousand people skewing consumer purchasing towards BD. Ca va...

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[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.

Re:pwned

[Yvanhoe]

It was eight months ago. The crowd he delivered his statement to doesn't have that kind of attention span.

Re:

[raddan]

There are a lot of people on the planet.

Barrier to Ownership

[tompatman]

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

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: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".

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

[sweepkick]

How about the most important 'legit' reason (for me anyway): being able to play blu-ray media on Linux?

Artificially keep prices high

[microbox]

#1 is crucially for me. I've consolidated all of my media for convenience. I don't want bookshelves full of plastic boxes - my house is only so big. Furthermore, when I play my media, I don't want to sit through corporate marketing and propaganda. I just want to play my movie. So I *always* rip and encode a movie, and never bother with the DVD player software. If media companies can't bring themselves to sell me the product that *I* want, then I'm going to put a little effort into converting the product int

Re:

[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:Barrier to Ownership

[wolrahnaes]

The different Blu-Ray "profiles" require different hardware, which is obviously not something that can be fixed by a firmware upgrade.

Profile 1.0, otherwise known as the grace period profile, only required 64KB of local storage for key revocation lists.

Profile 1.1, which is the "final standard" profile (though it was only required for players released after 11/1/2007, leaving over a year of BD player production supporting an incomplete featureset) requires 256MB of local storage as well as secondary audio and video decoders to allow for PIP and overlay audio commentary.

Profile 2.0 adds networking and Internet connectivity to the mix and ups the local storage requirement to 1GB. This profile is equivalent to the features that have been mandatory in HD-DVD from day one.

The only upgradable hardware BD player is the PS3, since it already had the hardware for other purposes. Profile 1.1 support was pushed out in a software update soon after it became mandatory in standalone players and profile 2.0 support was announced yesterday and is expected some time next month.

dupe

[Google85]

The original was Posted by kdawson too... http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/30/2034242 [slashdot.org]

Not fully broken

[Watson Ladd]

Wikipedia states that it only enables backups, which are then played with a software player which is Blu-Ray compatible. It doesn't look like VLC will be playing BD+ protected media anytime soon.

Re:

[Oxy the moron]

Theoretically, though... once you have it playing on your PC in any form like that, couldn't you capture the video output to some other device and have an unencrypted form of the video that way?

The link is a trap

[nurb432]

Its not really details of how it works, its a FBI sting to get people that are intent on learning 'forbidden knowledge".

Re:

[webmaster404]

You must be new here, we on /. never RTFA

Re:

[nurb432]

While i was 1/2 joking, that means i was 1/2 serious too.

I can see the FBI/etc putting fake websites up for things like crack sites, or security hacking sites as you know if a person goes there they HAVE to intend to do something bad.. How about a fake KKK site, since we all know if you read that you will go out and kill people? What if you bought a book at amazon ( or just searched for one.. ) telling you how to make a machine gun, or a bomb... means you are a terrorist, right?

The fact they are getting a

Re:The link is a trap

[DrSkwid]

Since I bought a copy of The Shellcoder's Handbook Amazon keeps trying to get me to buy other cracking books, for instance :

Hello, Dr Skwid., Amazon.co.uk has new recommendations for you based on items you purchased or told us you own.

Reversing: Secrets of Reverse Engineering
Buffer Overflow Attacks: Detect, Exploit, Prevent
Rootkits: Subverting the Windows Kernel
The Database Hackers Handbook: Defending Database Servers

Sockets, Shellcode, Porting, and Coding: Reverse Engineering Exploits and Tool Coding for Security Professionals
Professional Rootkits (Programmer to Programmer)

Now that the UK & Germany has outlawed knowledge it's like a trap!

Bogus claims

[Anonymous Coward]

This is completely bogus marketing on Slysoft's part. They have "broken" the current titles by extracting the code from each one, but BD+ relies on code being downloaded from the disc itself to decode the data. The bar will just be raised now and new code will be added to newer titles.

wait for the outcome?

[gEvil (beta)]

"Admittedly, we are not really so fast with this because actually we had intended to publish this release already in December as promised. However, it was decided for strategic reasons to wait a bit for the outcome of the "format war" between HD DVD and Blu-ray."

Interesting that they wanted to wait for the outcome before releasing this. It's almost as if they were waiting to thumb their nose at the BD camp once all the companies had moved over to that side. And did anyone get the feeling the press releas

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, an

Re:unimportant

[webmaster404]

It however does a few things...

1. It tells that Blu-Ray is already supported enough to buy a player now
2. It allows you to even if Blu-Ray ends up failing, you can rip your Blu-Ray movies to the new format (and don't expect media storage to be made as long as VHS and DVD did anymore...)
3. It will allow various third-party projects to soon take advantage of this (even if right now it only lets you make backups) and add Blu-Ray support to media players on OSes such as Linux.

Re:unimportant

[Stuart Gibson]

I agree that is the reason for the vast majority, but there are some cases where people have a legitimate reason. I'm in the process of ripping my 600+ DVDs to an increasingly large hard drive array so I can access them all around the house without the need to get the discs. I know it's unusual but there are legitimate reasons.

Re:

[Chabil Ha']

I do this at home already, and it's wonderful. My intentions are this: I have a two young kids who like to watch movies and I'm protecting my investment by putting the legally acquired discs on the top shelf of my closet where peanut butter covered fingers can't get them. They get an easy way to watch movies through a client, I get to protect my investment from the inadvertent damage of my kids.

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:

[JeepFanatic]

While I agree with you that the MAJORITY of people use these technologies because they don't intend to pay for movies, I actually myself archive DVDs for my girlfriend's kids so that they don't ruin the originals (as has already happened on more than one occasion). So now you can amend your blanket statement that ONLY people who don't pay for the movies use the technology.

Re:

[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

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:

[debest]

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.

Well, I'm one who would have never purchased a DVD player without the ability to back them up. I have a small child who likes to watch movies (think Disney/Dreamworks stuff and the like) and although she's finally old enough to be (somewhat) careful, no WAY was she going to lay a hand on any of those DVDs unless they were backed-up copies of the originals. VHS may have degraded over time, but those tapes could stand up to physical abuse way better than an optical disc ever could.

Re:

[SCHecklerX]

Um. The *only* way i'm able to even *watch* dvds on my computers (not a single windoze box in the house) is because of 'illegal' copy protection breaks via decss.

Re:

[khafre]

It's not about backups. I for one like to be able to rip my DVDs to watch on a personal video player (e.g. iPod Touch). Now I can buy my media once on Blu-ray and watch on everything from my big screen to my personal video player.

I'll know it when I see it

[AchiIIe]

Slysoft has made this claim before. It turned out to be bogus. The crack allowed a user to copy a BD to the harddrive and play it back from there using only a specific version of Cyberlink's PowerDVD (3319a), but not to transcode, otherwise manipulate the content or play it back from a burned BD-R or BD-RE. (Wiki)

Now I'd like everyone to remember that BD+ is not an `algorithm` per se. It's not a DRM one way function. BD+ is a virtual machine and a blu ray disk is a full fledged program that runs under the VM and can even run native code to patch and upgrade the virtual machine.

This is akin to running a java application that can inspect the java VM.

It's a cat and mouse game for now.

*Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BD%2B [wikipedia.org]

Re:I'll know it when I see it

[webmaster404]

If they can patch it we can re/unpatch it. Once the VM ends up being cracked we can do whatever we like with it, like install Linux on it.

Re:

[Rocketship Underpant]

Wow... I guess we have to imagine a Beowulf cluster of BD+ virtual machines running Linux now. :rolleyes:

Re:I'll know it when I see it

[Constantine XVI]

Install Linux in Java, on a BD player? Isn't that like putting Jiffy-Pop in the microwave, outside of a supernova?

Re:I'll know it when I see it

[conteXXt]

"we can do whatever we like with it, like install Linux on it."

24 Carat Pure Slashdot Gold.

We have a winner.

I call for a new rule

[Gazzonyx]

"we can do whatever we like with it, like install Linux on it."

24 Carat Pure Slashdot Gold.

We have a winner.

I call for a slashdot version of the Godwin; any technical thread on the viability of any technology is over the moment anyone claims something to the effect of "... We could install Linux on it!"

However, asking "... does it run on Linux?" is still fair game.

Envisioneering - WTF?

[robably]

Envisioneering n.
a. The application of false promises to scam money from the gullible. From Envision "to see a way" and Profiteering "to improperly profit by".
b. The profession of or the work performed by an envisioneer.

8 whole months?

[elrous0]

Wow, these guys are getting slow.

If there were demand, it'd be faster.

[DingerX]

I mean, come on. The HD war so far only has losers.

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.

"Crack" Has Important Use Unrelated to Ripping

[fyrie]

The crack allows you to play the media at full quality on systems that do not have a fully HDCP compliant chain. Example: If you have a home theater TV hooked up to an older HDTV that only has component inputs, or if you have a non HDCP video card, you can use this "crack" to play your discs at full quality.

Re:"Crack" Has Important Use Unrelated to Ripping

[fyrie]

From Slysoft's website:

AnyDVDHD Features Blu-Ray

        * Same features as regular AnyDVD
        * Removes encryption (AACS) from Blu-ray Discs
        * Removes region codes from Blu-Ray Discs
        * Removes BD+ copy protection from Blu-ray Discs
        * Watch movies over digital display connection, without HDCP compliant graphics card and without HDCP compliant display.
        * The "must have" utility for the serious home theater enthusiast using a media center / home theater PC.
        * Includes a UDF 2.5 file ripper, no need to install 3rd party UDF 2.5 filesystem under Windows XP.

I've been using anydvd to watch HDDVDs and BluRay discs over component for awhile now. However, I haven't tried a BD+ disc yet. I purchased Gattaca yesterday, but I haven't tried to watch it yet. I will give it a go tonight.

Re:"Crack" Has Important Use Unrelated to Ripping

[Alsee]

I haven't tried a BD+ disc yet. I purchased Gattaca yesterday, but I haven't tried to watch it yet.

I have, and just a warning for you. The BD+ DRM on the Gattaca disc requires a blood sample for DNA scan.

-

There is always somebody smarter than you are

[Danathar]

The blue ray encryption geniuses should read my subject line over and over and over and over.

We made a boat load of money

[geekoid]

and you should read mine over and over again.

Available resources

[PPH]

Thanks to the recent demise of HDDVD, additional cracking manpower has recently become available to work the Blu-ray problem.

Yet another success for IT project management.

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: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.

Re:

[h4rm0ny]

Seconded. I've been holding off from getting a drive for my computer until I saw some reliable and irrevocable cracks available. If this one looks like it will be permanent, then I'll probably get one. Though I'd like to see the price of movies go down first and I may wait until we get some cheaper models. But this is a necessary step for me to buy a drive. Good news!

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Well....

[Tanktalus]

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

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: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:

[eldepeche]

He didn't say "whatever purpose." He said a backup copy. It's totally legal to rip a CD so that you can listen to your music on a computer, mp3 player, car, etc. Why is it different if it's a movie? (Except the car part; that's dangerous.)

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:

[Miseph]

I wish that they'd chosen to accompany what's actually a pretty good filk with something other than another lame video of WoW characters dancing.

Re:

[PalmKiller]

Yes, and this makes me wonder if his crack was a futile attempt to make the folks bring back his favorite of the two formats. He inadvertently helped put the nails in HD DVD's coffin, now hes trying to make up for it. Well its too little too late I think, but its interesting and he probably had the crack all along for bluray, he probably just thought that releasing the HD one would drum up more interest in the format and kill off bluray....in the end it ovviously backfired.