quote:

---

New DRM Scheme Could Make Current DVD Players Obsolete

LAS VEGAS -- Guess what? Your DVD player might now be obsolete.

Hewlett-Packard and Philips said Wednesday that they have developed a content-protection system for DVDs, designed to protect users from burning "protected" DTV broadcasts. The encryption system will be built into next-generation DVD players as well as media.

Without a player and disc using the new Video Content Protection Scheme (VTCS), DVD burners won't be able to record digital video under the new regulations. That will mean that the enormous installed base of DVD players and burners may be forced into obsolescence, executives said.

The new Video Content Protection Scheme scheme is designed to work hand-in-glove with the new FCC "broadcast flag" initiative, scheduled to begin on July 1, 2005. The FCC wants to try and protect content from being passed indiscriminately among private individuals via the Internet and other means. VCTS has been approved by the FCC, the CableLabs consortium of cable providers, and is under consideration by the Japanese ARIB standards body.

Even the VCTS solution is not foolproof, however.

For example, the VCTS the DRM solution will only work with the single- and dual-layer versions of DVD+R and DVD+RW media, not the "-R" counterparts. Furthermore, analog video will not require the protection scheme, meaning that video stored on analog VCRs could be free of the copyright restrictions. On the other hand, if either digital video or a digital connection is used, the VCTS scheme will be used. That will also include PCs, where content could be piped over the Internet.

"The primary goal if you read FCC regulations is to create a situation where it is not possible to randomly, indiscriminately distribute content over something," said Kevin Saldanha, HP's DVD+RW program manager, speaking at a press conference here.

For example, the system is designed to prevent users watching a locally "blacked out" football game in New York from viewing a video stream sent to them from friends in California, who are not subject to the blackout restrictions.

The VCTS scheme will also be built into next-generation media, which will slowly replace the non-DRM encoded DVD+R discs over time. The new discs will be somewhat more expensive than their DRM-free counterparts, explained Jun Ishihara, a product manager for Mitsubishi Chemical Media Co., also known as Verbatim. Likewise, the new players will probably be priced somewhat higher than conventional players, HP executives said, although pricing will be up to individual manufacturers.

Although it is still too early to tell what consumer reaction will be, customers have generally rejected schemes like Divx, the Digital Video Express initiative backed by retailer Circuit City. DivX allowed users to watch the disc for 48 hours before it was rendered unusable. The Divx program was killed off in 1999.

"In large part, the issue with the new players will solve itself," said Chris Buma, an A/V program manager with Philips Consumer Electronics, at a press conference held by the DVD+RW Alliance here. "It is a restriction, but a restriction that can be overcome."

Furthermore, the DVD market is still plagued by incompatible standards. Although most drive manufacturers support both the DVD-R and DVD+R standards, the two formats are nevertheless incompatible. Most U.S. players also neglect to include DVD-RAM, a third standard in wide use in Japan for recording digital video broadcasts. According to attendees of a press conference held by LG Electronics here, a significant portion of DVD players are returned to retailers because of format confusion.

While DVD players will not be able to be upgraded, PCs might be, Saldanha said. Even DVD burners aren't free from content protection, however. Most DVD-ROM drives include some sort of region encoding that allows a user a certain number of opportunities to change the region to watch foreign discs.

Wolfgang Schlichting, an optical storage analyst for IDC, said that characterizing the VCTS DRM scheme as a forced obsolescence of DVD players was a "bit of an overstatement". However, the addition of the copyright restrictions will add more confusion to the market, he acknowledged.

The DVD+RW Alliance includes Dell, HP, Mitsubishi Chemical/Verbatim, Philips, Ricoh, Sony, Thomson and Yamaha.

---

 

---

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 01-06-2005, 06:30 PM:
 
Wow, people running these companies are really stupid.

First off, do I even need to point out the blatant fact that pirates WILL FIND A WAY NO MATTER WHAT! You cannot stop a professional pirate, period.

Second, this will kill their precious DVD+R format and everyone will stick to DVD-R. Can anyone say Divx?

Third, even the amateur pirates out there will simply record the analog stream and it will look plenty fine.

Like I've always said, people running these companies (and of course my personal hero Jack Valenti) are really F'ing stupid. Yes bootlegs are bad and take away from the profit of the studios, but that is a part of doing business in this industry, just like being open on a Tuesday when hardly any customers show up. The studios still bring in $100 million on every piece of crap movie released too!
 

---

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 01-06-2005, 08:24 PM:
 

quote: Some moron

---

For example, the system is designed to prevent users watching a locally "blacked out" football game in New York from viewing a video stream sent to them from friends in California, who are not subject to the blackout restrictions.

---

quote: Teh Brad Miller

---

Third, even the amateur pirates out there will simply record the analog stream and it will look plenty fine.

---

quote: Some moron

---

That will mean that the enormous installed base of DVD players and burners may be forced into obsolescence, executives said.

---

Great marketing plan. Way to win over the public! I hate stupid people. Seriously, nobody would shed a tear if the executives of all these companies all suddenly died (of natural causes, of course).
 

---

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 01-06-2005, 08:46 PM:
 
So if someone was pushed off of tall building and plummeted to their death on the pavement, that would still be considered "natural causes", right? I mean, I don't know of anyone who could fall 20 stories and not die when they hit the pavement.

(Now waiting for the PC people who can't take a joke to post how outraged they are.)
 

---

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 01-06-2005, 09:30 PM:
 
Obviously. I mean the *push* wouldn't even cause them any amount of harm. It's the impact with the pavement that would do the trick. And the only reason you're pushing them in the first place is just to give them a friendly, loving nudge in support of their money-grubbing ways. No one else loves these individuals, so you have to give them a little nudging love.
 

---

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 01-07-2005, 12:40 PM:
 
But wait, didn't John Q. Public win the landmark court case (Universal, Disney, MPAA et al, vs. Sony)? That was when the studios tried to make it crime punishable by death to record their "product" off broadcast TV; they wanted to Sony & every other hardware manufacturer to stop and desist from making VCRs because a VCR's primary purpose (they said) was to infringe on the plaintif's copyrights? Yeah, Valenti was on the charging horse in that idiotic battle -- stop the manufacturing of video recording devices. What a joke, only they were serious about it. Insiders said that the real reason why Universal to on this fight was because they were heavily investing in LaserVision and they saw recordable video as a major threat to their technology. Disney jumped in because, well, you know Disney.

BUT -- the ruling was AGAINST the studios -- the ruling was that we are allowed to make ONE copy of any broadcast content that came into our homes? So wouldn't this protection scheme prevent us from doing that we were given permission to do by this precedent-setting court case? Oh...I forgot; the studios make up their own copyright rules -- like getting the copyright protection extended from the original, limited 48 yrs, to "the life of the 'author' plus 50 years." They make up their own rules to their own liking and then they go to Congress, which is supposed to be representing us, and they ply them with wine and women, and in the blink of an eye, Congress, whores that they are, agrees to whatever the MPAA wants.

I wouldn't be surprised if Congress just turns around and reverses the single copy provision of the current law. If that should come about, then I say, Long Live the Hackers and the Pirates!
 

---

Posted by Carl Martin (Member # 1146) on 01-08-2005, 05:31 AM:
 

quote:

---

designed to protect users from burning "protected" DTV broadcasts.

---

interesting use of the word "protect". apparently it means the same as the word "prevent", only it sounds like a good thing.

carl
 

---

Posted by Thomas Procyk (Member # 1170) on 01-08-2005, 01:28 PM:
 
Ah, this horse is beaten to death already. It's human nature to want to break keys, crack codes and cicumvent security. That's what sets us apart from other "beings." The most hysterical was when DVDs first came out with their fancy copy protection. What did that take? A few weeks before some goon printed up tee shirts with the code for the crack on them?

Music and Film Piracy, The Drug Trade, Terrorism, Sharing plates at the Buffet... as long as there are humans, they will find ways around the "security" measures. Because security is an illusion!

=TMP=
 

---

Posted by Wayne Keyser (Member # 2420) on 01-08-2005, 11:30 PM:
 
Just digging their own grave - remember when VCRs were new? "Holy God, they're RENTING these tapes! We've gotta put a stop to that ... it'll mean the end of the movie business! Quick, pass a law!"
 

---

Posted by Bruce Hansen (Member # 281) on 02-11-2005, 09:00 PM:
 

quote:

---

remember when VCRs were new? "Holy God, they're RENTING these tapes! We've gotta put a stop to that ... it'll mean the end of the movie business! Quick, pass a law!"

---

quote: Frank Angel

---

I wouldn't be surprised if Congress just turns around and reverses the single copy provision of the current law.

---

quote:

---

New copy-proof DVDs on the way?
Published: February 14, 2005, 9:00 PM PST
By John Borland
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

Content-protection company Macrovision is expected to release a new DVD copy-protection technology Tuesday in hopes of substantially broadening its role in Hollywood's antipiracy effort.

The company is pointing to the failure of the copy-proofing on today's DVDs, which was broken in 1999. Courts have ordered that DVD-copying tools be taken off the market, but variations of the software remain widely available online.

Macrovision's new "RipGuard DVD" technology can prevent much of the copying now being done with those tools and can help bolster studios' DVD sales even if it's not perfect, company executives say.

"Encryption standards either work or they don't," said Adam Gervin, Macrovision's senior director of marketing, "Now the cat's out of the bag. (DVD sales) are going to be one of the main sources of revenue for Hollywood for a long time, so why leave billions of dollars on the table when you can do something about it?"

The company could be hard pressed to break into an arena of the content protection market that has historically been managed by companies or industry groups closely associated with the Hollywood studios themselves. However, studios have been deeply concerned by the failure of today's DVD copy protection and might be willing to experiment with an alternative if it proves practical.

The original DVD copy-protection tools--called Content Scramble System--was developed by a technology coalition that included studio representatives and is licensed by a groupwith close ties to Hollywood.

A new coalition, which includes Warner Bros. and the Walt Disney Company as well as powerful technology companies such as IBM, Sony, Microsoft and Intel, is working on a new content-protection technology for next-generation DVDs. That technology called the Advanced Access Content System, which is not designed for today's DVDs, is being designed to allow movies to be moved around a home though a digital network.

The group has said little about its progress since announcing the project last year, but companies involved have said they expect to have it ready in time for the first expected release of high-definition videos on DVD late in 2005.

Macrovision does have a longstanding relationship with studios, however. The company is responsible for the technique that makes it difficult to copy movies from one VCR to another, and it has updated that technique to help prevent copies of movies being made using the analog plugs on DVD players.

It's using a new version of that analog guard to create copy protection for video-on-demand services, and will be included in new TiVo devices and other set-top boxes beginning later this year.

The company's new product takes a different approach to antipiracy than it has taken for analog or audio CDs. Gervin said Macrovision engineers have spent several years looking at how various DVD-copying software packages work, and have devised ways to tweak the encoding of a DVD to block most of them.

That means the audio and video content itself requires no new hardware and isn't scrambled anew, as is the case with most rights-management techniques. Someone using one of the ripping tools on a protected DVD might simply find their software crashing, or be presented with error messages instead of a copy.

Macrovision's analog copy-protection business means that it receives pre-market versions of most major DVD players in order to test for compatibility, and it has been performing RipGuard DVD tests on these machines for months. As a result, the company says it is confident that discs encoded with its new product would be playable on all major DVD player brands and PC drives.

Gervin said that the technique would block most rippers, but not all, and could be easily updated for future discs as underground programmers find ways to work around RipGuard.

If adopted, the technology could be a welcome financial shot in the arm for Macrovision. The company has seen its revenues from DVD copy protection fall over recent quarters, and has increasingly been looking to other businesses to make up the shortfall.

---

 

---

Posted by Jesse Skeen (Member # 586) on 02-15-2005, 02:30 AM:
 
If they do that, then I assume that all titles that use it will stay in print FOREVER. I've had the capability to copy DVDs for a few months now, but have only done it on titles that are no longer in print, such as several Sony Pictures titles that have had the widescreen transfers dropped
Anyone who copies DVDs just to save money is a cheap bastard- compared to laserdisc prices the studios are practically GIVING away DVDs.
 

---

Posted by Bruce Hansen (Member # 281) on 02-16-2005, 12:56 PM:
 
I think that most people will buy a DVD they really want, but may copy a rental DVD, or friends DVD, that has some intrust to them, but not enough to buy it. If this is the case, then the studios are not loosing money, because that person would not have baught that DVD in the first place. But the studios could loose money if fewer people rent DVDs bacause they cannot copy them, and therefore the rental stores buy fewer DVDs to rent out. The management-morons at the studios are so over paid, that they do not understand what it is like to have limited funds to buy things like DVDs. They can just buy whatever they want, and they think it is the same for everyone.
 

---

Posted by Paul Mayer (Member # 355) on 05-20-2005, 01:07 AM:
 
Heh heh, the latest DRM scheme, this time from research going on at UCLA:

quote:

---

Give Your DVD Player the Finger

By Katie Dean

02:00 AM May. 19, 2005 PT

Researchers in Los Angeles are developing a new form of piracy protection for DVDs that could make common practices like loaning a movie to a friend impossible.

University of California at Los Angeles engineering professor Rajit Gadh is leading research to turn radio frequency identification, or RFID, tags into an extremely restrictive form of digital rights management to protect DVD movies.

RFID tags have been called "wireless bar codes" -- though they hold more data -- and are commonly used for things like ID badges or keeping track of inventory in a retail store or hospital.

Though RFID tags are usually read by a wireless data reader, the proposed DVD-protection scheme would make no use of RFID's wireless capabilities.

Rather, the researchers are interested in the ability to write data to the tags, which can't be done on a DVD once it's been burned.

Here's how the system might work:

At the store, someone buying a new DVD would have to provide a password or some kind of biometric data, like a fingerprint or iris scan, which would be added to the DVD's RFID tag.

Then, when the DVD was popped into a specially equipped DVD player, the viewer would be required to re-enter his or her password or fingerprint. The system would require consumers to buy new DVD players with RFID readers.

Gadh said his research group is trying to address the problem of piracy for the movie industry.

"Content owners would like to have extremely tight control on the content so they can maximize revenue," Gadh said. "Users want to move stuff around."

Gadh said the proposed system is "absolutely" more restrictive to users than anti-copying methods already used to protect DVDs.

"By definition this is a restrictive form (of digital rights management)," Gadh said.

Gadh said he could not reveal specifically how the system would work, as it is still in the research stage. A prototype will be available by the end of the summer, he said, and at that point, it will be shopped around to movie studios and technology companies.

"I don't know quite what is going to work in the real world," Gadh said.

Most DVDs are already encrypted with an anti-copying mechanism called Content-Scrambling System. The encryption has been broken, however, and programs to descramble DVDs can be found all over the internet.

DVDs are also "region coded" so that discs sold in the United States, for instance, cannot be played in the United Kingdom. The region coding gives the movie studios control over where and when films are released on DVD.

Ed Felten, a computer science professor at Princeton University, called the proposal the "limit of restrictiveness."

"I think people would find it creepy to give their fingerprint every time they wanted to play a DVD," Felten said. "It's hard to think that would be acceptable to customers."

He said it seems unlikely that people would buy new DVD players with RFID readers in order to purchase DVDs that are less functional.

Privacy advocates have expressed concern about RFID technology because the tags can tie products to individuals, potentially without their knowledge.

Seth Schoen, staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said it's unlikely this DRM plan will be any more effective than others preceding it.

"It only requires one person to break it," Schoen said.

Schoen said this is the "smart cow problem": Once one of the cows opens the gate, the others will follow.

---

quote:

---

someone buying a new DVD would have to provide a password or some kind of biometric data, like a fingerprint or iris scan, which would be added to the DVD's RFID tag.

---

quote:

---

The system would require consumers to buy new DVD players with RFID readers.

---

quote: Jesse Skeen

---

Anyone who copies DVDs just to save money is a cheap bastard- compared to laserdisc prices the studios are practically GIVING away DVDs.

---

quote: Alan Dallas

---

Actually they can afford to pratically give away DVD's. I was reading an article about 2 months ago that looked at the DVD Mfg buisness and it was Estimated that to make one(1) copy of a Movie on DVD for these companies it only costs them approx. $.08 cents USD. Not including Packaging/Werehousing/Shipping. Wish I could find the article again.

---