DVD-CSS's Encryption Not Enough? Here Comes DECE 361
An anonymous reader writes "Studios digitally restricting (drm) or locking down content with DVD-CSS not enough for you? Well, get ready, here comes the entertainment cartel's Holy Grail, all-hardware encryption, via 'DECE.' And let's not forget this little issue."
Re:Pirating (Score:5, Informative)
It's not just stupid DRM, but stupid content controls in general. An example. I wanted to watch Inglorious Bastards so I checked the Xbox marketplace. I see it's available, but wait it's only available to buy - in standard definition no less. Why I can't I rent it? There are tons of other movies to rent. It can be rented at the video store or on netflix, but I can't rent it from the Xbox marketplace. I am trying to pay to rent a movie, and the content providers instead of making it easy for me to do so push me to find it on the internet instead.
Re:Pirating (Score:5, Informative)
Well, if you can feel "fair"... Several boxes with games I bought collect dust on the shelf, while I play torrented versions. Not gonna risk putting these in my drive. It took me weeks to get my DVD-RW working fully again after SecuROM bundled with Oblivion broke the drivers beyond repair and I couldn't even make copies of my private data.
Misleading summary (Score:3, Informative)
The summary is slightly misleading. Yes, it's DRM but it's an effort by the industry to make it so that content purchased in one way (eg. on your PS3) will work on a multitude of other devices which may or may not be owned by you.
I dislike DRM as much as the next Slashdotter, but this is actually laxer than the current DRM employed on digital content distribution - where you're locked into the device you download it to and the possibility to popping over to a friends house to watch something is minimal.
(side note: of course this will fail)
Re:Pirating (Score:3, Informative)
StarForce is the one that breaks disk drives, not SecuROM. At first I was going to protest that Oblivion doesn't even use SecuROM, but apparently the Game of the Year edition does.
No (Score:5, Informative)
I want high quality, unencrypted, unencumbered media.
You are attempting to compete against piracy, which can already provide me with the above, by offering me an inferior product at the cost of replacing my existing, fully functional hardware.
I did not purchase music online until Amazon MP3 came to town. Amazon MP3 actually fills my exact requirements, high quality, unencrypted, unencumbered media, and as such I have stopped pirating audio entirely and have instead been purchasing music again. It's worth the money to get a high quality instance of what I actually want, and includes an unexpected high value bonus; the album art in every file!
Amazon MP3 offers a superior product to that produced by piracy. Do the same for video and I will begin spending money on movies again, until that time I will continue to get what I want from the people willing to offer it; pirates.
Re:DRM hurts legitimate customers only (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Pirating (Score:2, Informative)
That's funny, my ripped copy of Up! works just fine. Thanks AnyDVD!
Re:Pirating (Score:3, Informative)
I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Is that what it says in your constitution?
Yes: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." [wikipedia.org]
Re:Depends on how big (Score:3, Informative)
But the point is still valid. You are referring to natural obsolescence of hardware. He is referring to forced obsolescence.
What if, in addition to building a phonograph cylinder machine to listen to your old cylinders (which is technologically very feasible) you were prevented from actually playing the cylinders because they were protected by a DRM scheme and the DMCA says you can't bypass those, and you can't Edison to sell you a license because the current licenseholder for the DRM technology isn't selling them any more?
And even if you found an old licensed cylinder player, you couldn't simply borrow it and make a backup of your cylinders, because to do so would involve bypassing the DRM scheme and that's illegal. You could listen to them as long as you can find an old player that was built specifically to handle the DRM scheme your cylinders were encoded with.
At this point, the current DVD CSS scheme is licensed, and that license is not perpetual. If the MPAA wanted to, they could force termination of licensing agreements with the various DVD manufacturers, meaning that no new DVD players could be manufactured that could play CSS-encoded DVDs. It's still possible to make DVD players, just not legal to make them so they can actually play CSS-encrypted DVDs. Once your DVD player dies you can only buy a DECE one, and it's incapable of playing your CSS-encoded movies.
Or you spend 15 minutes with each one of them and DeCSS, breaking the law to watch the media you've paid for.
I'm not saying that the movie studios WOULD do this, but they easily could. And it's not without precedent. Some newer games require that you have an old CD reader around and their DRM schemes refuse to work with anything that can actually write DVDs. Finding a working DVD reader not capable of writing DVDs is slowly getting harder, and there's no technological limitation keeping you from playing the game perfectly well on a newer model drive - just a DRM one.
And, as I'm sure several hundred people have posted already and several hundred more will also mention - none of this will slow down the pirates one whit. They'll crack it before the first movies become commercially available, and anyone who pirates the movie will one again have an arguably superior product to that offered to the paying customers. Pirates will be able to watch their movies on any device they own, keep backup copies, and freely move their content from computer to computer without hassles or asking a licensing agent for permission. Paying customers will have to beg like orphans, "please, sir, could I move this movie to my new computer?" and pray the licensing agent continues to find the business model profitable so they have someone to get permission from.
Of course, that'll never happen. *cough* MSN Music *cough-cough* Yahoo! Music *cough-cough* Wal-Mart Music *cough*
Re:All-hardware encryption? (Score:3, Informative)
Hardware is often easier to make resistant to reverse engineering. For example, one way to get the secret keys from software is just to look at it in a hex editor or dis-assembly. This isn't easy, don't get me wrong, but it's a lot easier than using a SEM and a tiny drill to open a smartcard without setting off the self destruct. And if you screw up, you don't need to buy a new one to try again.
It also lets you close the screencap hole: with a cracked OS you can just capture everything that appears. Now if the OS just renders a black rectangle and passes off instructions to the video card to fill it with delicious, delicious content, then this is more difficult. Note that this has advantages as well, in that the graphical processing is offloaded to the graphics card with minimal CPU load.
Re:Pirating (Score:1, Informative)
Up! ripped fine for me. with a current version of hdDVD fab decryptor. sony and disney have added copy protection that dvdshrink can't defeat and it changes every couple of years, so I rip with the latest hddvdfab first and then use dvdshrink to make an iso image out of it. easy :P
DIVX Part II (Score:2, Informative)