Doom9 Researchers Break BD+ 345
An anonymous reader writes "BD+, the Blu-ray copy protection system that was supposed to last 10 years, has now been solidly broken by a group of doom9 researchers. Earlier, BD+ had been broken by the commercial company SlySoft." Someone from SlySoft posts a hint early in the thread, but then backs off for fear of getting fired. The break is announced on page 15.
Congratulations! (Score:5, Insightful)
A hearty congratulations to the brilliant programmers of Doom9, including Oopho2ei - who claims not to be a "professional programmer".
Re: (Score:2)
Seconded. I have managed to play Blu-Ray discs on my Linux box, but it has been one Hell of a struggle. If this moves things closer to the ubiquity of breaking CSS, then hearty congratulations to these heroes!
But can someone just clarify seeing as that is rather a lot of posts to read though... does this mean we don't need keys, a la the way we can break CSS? If so, that's very impressive, but how did they do it? Not by breaking the encryption but by finding some way around this, presumably? And equa
As the article says... (Score:5, Informative)
...start reading on page 15, it'll discuss (a) what they did and (b) how resistant it is against potential counterattacks by the BD+ people.
Mind you, the idea was not to break the underlying encryption scheme (breaking AES could still turn out being hard for the next couple of years...), but rather disable the BD+ security layer.
Re:As the article says... (Score:5, Informative)
As far as I can tell, it wasn't actually disabled though. What they guy did is write his own BD+ VM. An impressive feat for sure, but that attack was always anticipated. As the dude says later,
So basically the disk authors can keep up for as long as they can trace the VM of an existing licensed player. They don't need to do that currently because no publishers are searching for their VM specifically.
They'll probably be able to do this for as long as publishers want their discs to be playable on software players, simply because it's quite easy to reverse engineer x86 code on a PC, when you have a debugger and plenty of Jolt. I don't know what the BluRay player market looks like. If most BluRay players are hardware based, then as a movie studio I'd be tempted to simply write some BD+ code that looked for existing software players and banned all of them. Then the "trace a licensed player" step outlined above suddenly turns into a silicon reverse engineering problem instead of a software reverse engineering problem. Much harder.
That said, I doubt they'd actually do that. Presumably they allowed software players for a reason, despite knowing they were way easier to hack than hardware players.
Re:As the article says... (Score:5, Interesting)
> If most BluRay players are hardware based, then as a movie studio I'd be tempted to simply write
> some BD+ code that looked for existing software players and banned all of them. Then the
> "trace a licensed player" step outlined above suddenly turns into a silicon reverse engineering
> problem instead of a software reverse engineering problem. Much harder.
Even then, you can still run the BD+ code in the VM, and trace it under the VM, and figure out what makes it fail, and ensure that it sees a VM environment which doesn't look like an existing software player. Or any kind of software player. And you may have the ability to modify the software player to explore what triggers the problem (a lot of people who's software players no longer play the latest releases would be rather thankful for a patch).
Harder, but a boatload easier than tracing silicon.
The BD group pretty much has to outlaw software players entirely to avoid this kind of attack.
c.
Re:As the article says... (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree that the BD group may eventually be backed into a corner over software players, at which point it'll boil down to pure economics. I read that the vast majority of BluRay players in the world are PS3, although of course, that doesn't mean the vast majority of used BR players are PS3s.
I honestly have no idea what proportion of BluRay watchers watch via their PCs, but the equation is simple - take a graph of disc sales. Presumably at some point its BD+ program is cracked and sales will fall as high quality rips show up on the internet - I'd imagine the graph looks like a sharp rise upwards on release week followed by a gradual decay into nothingness over time, with a sharp drop around the time the BD+ program is cracked (assuming it lasts long enough that you can even get a sales baseline, ie, not within a few days).
Now let's say 10% of BluRay watchers use a PC, so reduce your project sales by 10% but remove the sharp drop due to piracy, take the integral of both graphs and see if the difference is positive. If it's big enough it might be worth abandoning PC playback to avoid the piracy (or shift that sales cliff to a point where sales were low anyway).
If the economics don't look like that, then the BD group needs to try and get PowerDVD and friends seriously buffed up, security wise. It's certainly possible to make x86 code annoying and difficult to reverse engineer, but very few people can do it well. I'd imagine most of them don't work for BluRay player software companies.
I'd be very interested in a chart of every BluRay title released and when it was cracked, but I doubt such information is publically available.
Re:As the article says... (Score:5, Informative)
Presumably at some point its BD+ program is cracked and sales will fall as high quality rips show up on the internet
Or, ya'know, the opposite. True, there are those who want the copy protection lessened so they can pirate - but there are also those (including myself) who want to be able to do things like play the disk on Linux, make legitimate backups (fscking kids keep scratching my disks), and ripping the movies to play them on portable devices (at lower resolutions, anyway).
Yes, yes, I know I'm part of a sufficiently small minority to be largely ignored by people who impliment things like BD+, but there has got to be plenty enough people out there like me to make your simple equation far less feasible. No sharp drop if the crack leads to a somewhat counterbalancing increase in sales.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
As an example: people in Russia earn about $400/month on average - do you think it increases the chances for Linux/free software popularity? No, everyone just buys counterfeited Windows, which costs about 2-3$ in semi-legal shops. You can even find custom Windows "distros" on the net [philka.ru]. Doe
Re:As the article says... (Score:4, Insightful)
I honestly have no idea what proportion of BluRay watchers watch via their PCs, but the equation is simple - take a graph of disc sales. Presumably at some point its BD+ program is cracked and sales will fall as high quality rips show up on the internet - I'd imagine the graph looks like a sharp rise upwards on release week followed by a gradual decay into nothingness over time, with a sharp drop around the time the BD+ program is cracked (assuming it lasts long enough that you can even get a sales baseline, ie, not within a few days).
By this theory, you should see DVD sales drop to nothing almost instantaneously.
Even if Blu-Ray copy protection were as utterly broken as DVD copy protection is, the disks would still sell fine. Of course, then there are the people like me, who don't pirate anything, but refuse to buy media they can't copy at will. I'll stick with DVDs until the Blu-Ray cracks are so automated and key distribution infrastructure so well-developed that I can do what I want with Blu-Ray media.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Um, wat.
I'd expect bluray sales to start skyrocketting soon. At least for blank media and burners/drives, and a lot of people ready for bluray as long as the players are not overly restricted (ie think a bluray player in your car limited to today's grade restrictions).
Right now I'm willing to buy a bluray burner when the prices approach 50$-60$ for a drive. I'm sure I'm not alone, and plenty others might go for 100$ drives.
Now, the question is, do we play the nice card, and buy up bluray drives to drive dow
Re:As the article says... (Score:5, Insightful)
"can even execute arbitrary code on the machine"
Oh excellent. I think I'll skip BD, thank you.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
"lol, you don't even trust Sony!?!"
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:As the article says... (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes I know. What I meant was, what proportion of BluRay watching people watch the movies on their laptops or desktops, vs a dedicated hardware player or PS3. And yes I expect the PS3 does a lot of it in software too. Point is, I also expect tracing the BD+ VM in a PS3 to be quite hard.
Re:As the article says... (Score:5, Informative)
The PS3 can run Linux. Stock PS3s run Sony's XMB OS, not Linux. I wouldn't doubt the Blu-Ray player using a hardware decoder, or at least the RSX (graphics) chip.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Uhm, does it? I know you can run Linux on it, but does it really use Linux for basic usage such as running a game or the media players?
Use the word Cell multicore processor if anything because it's not multiple PPC cores, just one.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, the PS3 decodes BD in software (they used it as an example of parallel processing on the Cell).
Unfortunately, the PS3 runs -either- Linux -or- the BD decoding program (inside its own O/S).
This makes tracing the BD program from inside Linux impossible.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
...start reading on page 15,[...]
I only have 9 pages, you insensitive clod!
As always with DRM (Score:5, Insightful)
The content must contain sufficient information for the content to be decoded. Anything one software can do, another software can do (see Knuth, et seq). Therefore if there's an available software that can decode the encrypted content it must be possible for open software to decode the encrypted content. Removing the encryption using open software eliminates the protections against copying provided by the closed software and the game is over.
Thus DRM is a fool's errand. It always has been.
The illusion of protectability is however easy to sell for vast sums of cash to content owners who desperately want it to be possible.
Re:As always with DRM (Score:5, Insightful)
Therefore if there's an available software that can decode the encrypted content it must be possible for open software to decode the encrypted content.
Possible != Feasible. It is possible for me to brute force AES-256 but it isn't feasible for me to do so.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, but if your blu-ray player can decode the disc then there must be a fixed key stored in it's memory. It would have to be the same key for all players too. That would mean that one only had to find the key once to be able to play all discs.
It would be rather nasty if the players didn't store the keys but downloaded them. It will probably be a long while before consumers are prepared to accept a player that has to have a net connection to work.
Re:As always with DRM (Score:5, Informative)
Completely wrong.
There are innumerable different player keys, which can be individually disabled on all future discs. Every different brand of player uses a different key, and presumably, different models from the same brand likely use separate keys as well.
It's a fairly simple trick to do. The disc is encrypted with a "disc key". That disc key is stored on the disc, but AES encrypted, using millions of "player keys"... Your player uses its player key to decode the disc key, then uses the disc key to decrypt and play the disc.
When Sony notices that your player key is being publicly distributed, they stop using your player key to encrypt the disc key... Your player (or ripping software as it were) then can't play any future discs, until you upgrade it to a new key.
Re:As always with DRM (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
That would require you to brute force the other players player key, which is of course pretty much impossible...
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
But, of course, the patch containing the new key would have to -- you guessed it -- contain the new key! So then you just compromise the new key (ad infinitum) by intercepting the patch. If the PS3 can read the key from the patch, so can you.
Re:As always with DRM (Score:4, Interesting)
Once SOny notices that happening, they'll make sure to give every PS3 (or small groups of PS3s) it's own key. Then, when one is compromised, they know more or less who did it, and don't provide an update for those PS3s when they revoke the key.
How many PS3's are you willing to buy?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
So all you need to do is examine the update and pull the new key out of it.
If you'd think about it for a moment, you'd realize that if it were that easy, BD+ would've been cracked long ago. It wasn't, so clearly it is not "all you need to do."
While Sony is demonstrably stupid in believing DRM cannot be bypassed for at least ten years, they are not stupid enough to send out an update where the new keys can be easily snagged. I'm sure you can get the technical details of why what you propose is folly if you head over to the Doom9 forums. You probably need to read up on the basics
Re: (Score:2)
There's sufficient information available so that the "authorized" players don't need to brute force AES-256, so it must be possible for open players to find that information and play the movie. There's nothing "magic" about the authorized code.
Re:As always with DRM (Score:5, Insightful)
Therefore if there's an available software that can decode the encrypted content it must be possible for open software to decode the encrypted content.
Possible != Feasible. It is possible for me to brute force AES-256 but it isn't feasible for me to do so.
The point is, the 'legitimate' (w/ DRM I use that term loosely) doesn't brute the key, and the legitimate software can be watched in action. That means that reverse engineered Free software can be created to do the same thing.
Hardware trickery to make it harder to do that also increases the incentive to find a way. Somebody somewhere will find a way to dissect it.
The job is even harder since it will always be a plaintext attack.
The more things change... (Score:5, Interesting)
"The content must contain sufficient information for the content to be decoded. Anything one software can do, another software can do (see Knuth, et seq)."
From the copy of "Beneath Apple DOS" (copyright 1981) that happens to be on my shelf, page B1;"It seems reasonable at this time to say that it is impossible to to protect a disk in such a way that it can't be broken. This is, in large part, due to the fact the diskette must be bootable; i.e. that it must contain at least one sector which can be read by the program in the PROM on the disk controller card. This means it is possible to trace the boot process by disassembling the normal sector or sectors that that must be on the disk."
So they have been flogging this dead horse for 27 years. High marks for persistence, low marks for, well, everything else.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
People do not buy "content." They buy movies, music, software, etc. "Content" is a weasel word that transforms someone's potentially beautiful creative work into a mere commodity whose purpose is to fill a box and generate revenue. For more on this, read the FSF's "Words to Avoid" [fsf.org] document.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Very, very aptly put. There are far too few good movies out on blu-ray that aren't available on DVD for me to make the move. Even if you gave me a blu-ray player, I'd still buy movies on regular DVD when possible. Why? Because the studios have made such a mess of this, with the heavy-handed DRM and high prices (blu-ray is high considering how not-so-hugely-better than DVD it is), that I'm not ev
Huh, what? (Score:4, Funny)
The purpose of DRM isn't to stop copying altogether - it's to increase the difficulty to the point where the amount of copying is trivial.
... and you're going to claim success for DRM after this insightful observation?
Somebody will be along shortly to mod you funny.
Re:Huh, what? (Score:5, Funny)
I don't think DRM is successful, when it comes to MY goals. But many of those who are employing it? Yes, I believe their goals are being met.
Would you like to add anything useful to this conversation, or are you just throwing stuff out there to see if anything sticks, oh wise and whatever one.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Requote:
The purpose of DRM isn't to stop copying altogether - it's to increase the difficulty to the point where the amount of copying is trivial.
I replied to this before, but it was apparently lost. Your answer is here [slashdot.org].
If copying has been made so difficult that the amount of copying is trivial, then why are 1TB SATA drives, 4TB NAS devices and such like moving so fast they don't even shelve them off the skids? Are people making more backups of their photos and email than ever before? Really?
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
And thank you. As long as the DRM continues to be broken quickly as this, we will be able to exercise the freedoms that it was designed to take away from us. Yes, it doesn't solve the problem, but it brings a relief, when the unpleasant possibility that the DRM scheme might actually work this time is crushed. DRM or not, you will still be able to exercise your right to play the movie you bought, your fair use rights or whatever you believe you are in the right to do.
I don't think this is so much of a bad ne
The end of DRM is good news for content owners (Score:2, Insightful)
A lot of people are just not buying content - even though they would like to buy content - because they know that money spent that way is wasted and they don't want to throw their money away again. Of these I believe that many are just avoiding the content rather than downloading it through any of the myriad options for that, and that's demand destruction. Once the content is available unprotected, a huge market of people is opened up who would prefer to pay for what they get if they can pay for it in a wa
Re:The end of DRM is good news for content owners (Score:5, Interesting)
A lot of people are just not buying content - even though they would like to buy content - because they know that money spent that way is wasted and they don't want to throw their money away again.
At the risk of my karma, I'm going to mention that no one I know seems to fall into your generalization of people not buying Blu-Ray discs or players because of DRM. The most commonly cited reason for discs is lack of ubiquitous players (in cars, portable players, friends houses, etc) and the most common reason cited for players is the expense of a Blu-Ray mechanism. In fact, breaking the DRM makes Blu-Ray riskier for investors and therefore likely will increase costs (higher risk means higher cost) in the short term.
All in all, because Blu-Ray is 10x the bandwidth of any online "HD" movie source (and I use that term loosely for online offerings) and because online DRM is so much worse, I don't see it going away. Instead I see it likely to win over DVD-- DRM or not-- but not until manufacturing costs ramp down due to better technologies and economies of scale.
Consider this. Is a DRM-free H.264/AAC mp4 file more convenient, or is a DRM-laden disc that you can play in your car, computer, PS3, portable system, or friend's house by carrying around a 16 gram disc? I suspect for geeks it's the former, but for most consumers it's the latter, and it's really just about making players ubiquitous. The odd player out is, of course, the iPod. It's the one thing that is both ubiquitous and doesn't favor the disc. If the Blu-Ray consortium came to some agreement with Apple there it would go a long way towards gaining acceptance.
These are important points for dialog (Score:5, Insightful)
no one I know seems to fall into your generalization of people not buying Blu-Ray discs or players because of DRM.
We shall see. Most people don't know really why they're not trusting of innovation in content technology. The advantages of open content though are immediately obvious and so when the content owners open up the content it starts flying out the door.
All in all, because Blu-Ray is 10x the bandwidth of any online "HD" movie source (and I use that term loosely for online offerings) and because online DRM is so much worse, I don't see it going away. Instead I see it likely to win over DVD-- DRM or not-- but not until manufacturing costs ramp down due to better technologies and economies of scale.
"Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of backup tapes." Technology has passed this one by, but the truth of it remains. Content providers would do well to sell the right to the content separately, and let people figure out how to get the content on their own. If they must, they can offer content at kiosks you take your external hard drive to. The tree huggers should like the idea of transport-media free content distribution at the very least - that's less mylar disc in the landfill.
Consider this. Is a DRM-free H.264/AAC mp4 file more convenient, or is a DRM-laden disc that you can play in your car, computer, PS3, portable system, or friend's house by carrying around a 16 gram disc?
For the car and portable system a downrezzed movie that fits on an 8GB SDHC card are sufficent, and that form factor is considerably more convenient than a disc that doesn't even fit in your pocket - and is too fragile to carry that way anyway. People do this on their EEE all the time. A 360GB external 2.5" USB drive is bigger and heavier but smaller than a BD with case so it still fits in your pocket, is less susceptible to scratching, fits multiple movies on one disk, and has many other advantages.
Open content means you can make backups. You can convert to your target platform. You can move your content to where you want it and any technology that can play it will continue to play it for all time. DRM content does not have any of these advantages. Most importantly that last one.
Re:The end of DRM is good news for content owners (Score:4, Insightful)
What's to stop you putting that DRM-free file onto a 16 gram disc...
Or onto a memory stick for that matter...
Or a portable hard drive that will store a large number of movies...
DRM-free gives you a lot of freedom, you can do whatever suits you best, your choices are not taken away from you.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, look at the success of the ipod...
Does anyone still use portable CD players any more?
I doubt it, big clunky device with a spinning disc inside that skips the music when it's jolted too hard, and only stores 80 minutes of audio unless you carry around a big stack of equally clunky discs for it.
Compare that to an ipod or similar device, which can store hours of audio on a device little bigger than a credit card in some cases.
Re:Congratulations! (Score:5, Interesting)
What's more impressive is that the thread was started August 24th,
which means it took them 5 weeks and a few days to break BD+.
Kudos to them.
Is this just for MKBv7 (Media Key Block) or is BD+ permanently broken?
Re:Congratulations! (Score:5, Informative)
Is this just for MKBv7 (Media Key Block) or is BD+ permanently broken?
For the most part it is permanently broken. BD+ is just a very simple virtual machine - these guys reimplemented the virtual machine. So the disc publishers can write all kinds of new copy prevention code in the BD+ 'language' but the doom9 guys' VM will be able to execute it pretty much like any sanctioned BD+ VM would. The disc publishers might start exploiting non-standard or undefined behavior in the BD+ VMs (presumably most hardware players all just run the same BD+ VM from macrovision, so any bugs in it should be the same across most if not all hardware players) but such shenanigans won't be too hard to reverse engineer and include into the clone VM.
Now when the publishers switch to MKBv8 that will be a new set of AACS keys that will need to be rediscovered, but that's independent of and in addition to BD+.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not broken yet. The work is still very much ongoing, and this Slashdot story is an exaggeration.
There's great work being done for sure, but it's not FINISHED yet by any measure.
Re:Congratulations! (Score:5, Informative)
It's not broken yet. The work is still very much ongoing, and this Slashdot story is an exaggeration.
There's great work being done for sure, but it's not FINISHED yet by any measure.
They have a BD+ implementation that works perfectly on many BD+ discs. It doesn't cover every corner case of the VM yet, but I would consider that pretty much broken. At least you're down to the publishers playing new tricks, find the corner case, update decoder and it's done. It means that once this gets coded up into a real player, I expect that within a week or two of any BD release it'll almost certainly play on Linux. I'd call that good news.
Re: (Score:3)
Yes, I didn't read quite all the way to the end of the thread (I blame the interface, of course). They got it far enough to decode some discs.
I'm sure there are quite a number of kinks to work out yet, though, and then the cat-and-mouse game starts. Currents discs already do some checks to see if they are running on a conforming virtual machine and lock up if they don't, and that'll only get stricter from now on. Shouldn't be too big a problem, though, as long as enough people put in the effort to work on i
Re:Shouldn't that be Congratulations to Slysoft? (Score:3, Insightful)
A hearty congratulations to the brilliant programmers of Doom9, including Oopho2ei - who claims not to be a "professional programmer".
I mean, it seems their programmers did it first, and then helped out the Doom9 people by providing hints here and there.
Not to diminish the value of the doom9, who gave us an open solution to the problem, but let's not forget the other guys.
Why we are giving these guys props (Score:5, Informative)
When Slysoft did this in March. I've had those versions of AnyDVD and CloneDVD for several months. Why is this news? Seriously, not trolling here, but even the submitter mentions this and links to the original Slashdot article on it.
Because their software is open. Their developments are contributions to the pool of human knowledge. Slysoft's achievement is also deserving of praise, but they while they showed us it could be done (which most of us assumed), these developers showed us how.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Unfortunately (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately this will probably just mean that a ton of consumers will be SOL when they implement new encryption schemes on BluRay that aren't supported by some existing players.
Re:Unfortunately (Score:5, Insightful)
Wonderful. Finally, people won't look at me like I'm from Mars when I tell them that DRM affects legitimate paying customers like them.
Obsolete the installed base? I think not. (Score:5, Interesting)
Sony isn't having a ton of luck building an installed base of users of BD, even after buying their competition into submission. If they obsolete their installed base they have to start over again with thet negative examples of HD-DVD and the additional strike of cyclic obsolescence against them. It would be too obvious that the purchase of their content is actually a short term lease. That would be the death of BluRay before it's even well started, and it wouldn't even buy them an additional year before it was cracked again.
It's more likely that we're nearing the end of this DRM nonsense forever. Finally!
Or am I too optimistic of their intelligence? History does weigh heavily against my hopefulness here.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Nah, this DRM nonsense is just starting to heat up. There's a new Copyright Czar on the job now, and Hollywood will throw more cash than ever at lawmakers to try and shore up their busted protections. This will continue since US export numbers are propped up by Hollywood's entertainment distribution network. They'll see this as a "must-protect" industry. In the end they'll fail, but anyone who thinks the supporters of DRM are about to give up should think again.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It's more likely that we're nearing the end of this DRM nonsense forever. Finally! Or am I too optimistic of their intelligence? History does weigh heavily against my hopefulness here.
Intelligent or not, either they will cave to market pressures, or the format will vaporize and another will take its place.
And there are benefits to a pirating marketplace. I am one of those people who would never buy a movie, but would rent/copy if the means are available to do so, rather than download. By doing so I am
Re:Unfortunately (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh I hope so. I hope that Sony and the rest of those idiots over-react hard and screw most all customers with BluRay players.
Disrupting the consumers from viewing the new shiney will actually make them sit up and pay attention. I hope this screws a lot of people really hard to the point they say "HEY! WHAT THE HELL!"
Now they need to crack HDCP.
Re:Unfortunately (Score:5, Interesting)
Disrupting the consumers from viewing the new shiney will actually make them sit up and pay attention. I hope this screws a lot of people really hard to the point they say "HEY! WHAT THE HELL!"
I think this has actually happened a couple times. My first negative experience with DRM was as a kid - I bought a video game that kept insisting I 'insert the original disc'. Turns out they fubared the pressing such that even the original disc was seen as copied - didn't impress me with the quality control. It was something where pulling even a single disc and trying it out would have found the problem.
My second was with an E-Book program. I decided to check out this 'ebook' thing, downloaded the one Stephen King wrote years ago - the idea was that if you liked the book, you paid for the next installment. While I found the installment nice, the reader broke so many things that after reading it I uninstalled the reader and therefore the book. Never again. For example, it mostly broke copy/paste, as well as various other things in attempting to stop screen captures.
I mean, if I had wanted to copy the book, it would have only taken a few hours of my time to [i]retype the bloody thing[/i] using dual screens or even two computers. It wasn't a hugely long book, and I am a trained(if out of practice) typist. If I wanted to do a lot of books, some sort of OCR system would work.
Or just find & download it off the internet today.
Especially with the popularity of MP3 players that are quickly turning into media players, the 'average user' is seeing the effects of DRM more and more. Especially when they buy that DVD duplicator and discover it won't work for 'copyprotected' discs.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
While I found the installment nice, the reader broke so many things that after reading it I uninstalled the reader and therefore the book.
Same for downloaded mobile games. Pay $ for a game then find a few months later that you have to master reset the mobile as it's gone funky. This wipes out the game as well. Consumers can't backup the game or other purchased content so they are screwed. Why do they do this? Because no mobile game company wants their product transferable. Same with your ebook content. That's the real problem with DRM. You don't buy content these days, you buy content with DRM which effectively means you don't own the rights
Re:Unfortunately (Score:4, Interesting)
Unfortunately this will probably just mean that a ton of consumers will be SOL when they implement new encryption schemes on BluRay that aren't supported by some existing players.
Good! Maybe then the consumers can start to understand why DRM sucks, especially systems where their decryption keys can be disabled after the purchase. It's unfortunate that they'll have to learn this the hard way, but there is not much we can do about that.
cool! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:cool! (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, that sounds interesting. I would like to hear a legal opinion on that matter, though.
OTOH, wasn't there something about this kind of hack making copy protection "inadequate" and therefore unenforceable, i.e. legally circumventable in Finland?
Re: (Score:2)
Ed Felten called HDCP "A hook onto which to hang lawsuits" when if first came out.
I haven't heard much on BluRay Super Duper Double Plus Awesome DRM... but I've been ignoring it. I figure the whole HD-TV market is based on deception. I don't have the patience or tolerance to unravel all of it in order to make an informed purchase.
Hopefully HD-DVD, BluRay, HD-TV will all completely fail and something else a lot more open will take its place.
Re: (Score:2)
Hopefully HD-DVD, BluRay, HD-TV will all completely fail and something else a lot more open will take its place.
You're joking, right? Digital broadcasts are just the start (and required by law). Soon, all broadcasters will be foregoing "regular" digital for HD broadcasts complete with broadcast flag.
Re:cool! (Score:4, Informative)
The broadcast flag was defeated (which isn't to say that it won't be resurrected in the future, but there's way too much silicon out there which ignores it for that to be a practical matter for a long time). HD broadcasts are just as open as analog; they're just an MPEG-2 transport stream with AC3 audio (usually).
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Why do you say "usually"? To the best of my knowledge, AC3 is the only supported audio codec in the ATSC standard* (defined in A/52). MPEG-2 is similarly the only supported video codec.**
*To be pedantic: 2-channel AC3 is actually called AC2, but nobody cares, and even Dolby screws up the notation on a regular basis.
**Also being pedantic: MPEG-2 decoders are all backwards compatible, so a broadcaster
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Since the court of appeal thinks CSS is still quite adequate I'd say no for now.
See http://www.turre.com/blog/?p=156
Re:cool! (Score:4, Insightful)
Fortunately, citizens outside the United States of Asshats* doesn't have to bother with this whole DMCA crap.
* Referring to lawyers et.al.
Re: (Score:2)
WIPO (Score:3, Informative)
Member of WIPO [wikipedia.org]? Then yes you do [wikipedia.org].
Freedom Fighters (Score:2, Insightful)
Well done.
Kudos to them (Score:5, Informative)
That being said BluRay burners are expensive enough, and the blank media is expensive enough that I'll probably still buy my BluRay movies on Amazon.com (where I routinely find cheap deals as opposed to retail stores charging $35 per movie).
Re:Kudos to them (Score:5, Interesting)
> That being said BluRay burners are expensive enough, and the blank media is expensive enough that I'll probably
> still buy my BluRay movies on Amazon.com.
Which is perfectly good. I didn't buy my first DVD though until the protection was broken and I have no intention of buying anything BD until it is broken. I'm sure I'm not alone in this. Who wants to buy a BD movie until they can pull a copy to a DVD for portable players off in the rest of the house, the in car players, etc. Until we can yank clips out of one. Until we can play then on our non-Windows machines.
Once stable build of mplayer support this stuff and the battle of key revocation settles down I'll think about investing in the stuff. Not before.
Re: (Score:2)
Consider it a backup at the same time.
However I'm in the same boat as you; I find it is a bit sad we don't have 100% working blu-ray playback yet. Ripping is good enough, though. Are they still recorded in MPEG2 or did they step up to h.264 yet for commercial films?
last barrier (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm hoping that won't happen because a world ruled by Sorny is surely worse off. But don't fret, Sorny will do everything in its power to prevent mainstream adoption.
Re: (Score:2)
Samsung has a $200 player which comes with 4 free movies. Given that the movies retail for $35 a pop, that is $140 in free movies with a $200 player. The rumors is said player will go for $150 on Black Friday. A player for $150 with $140 in free movies is a pretty good deal.
The biggest problem with BluRay is retail stores charging $35 for movies. DVDs are often selling for $10 or less. Knock BluRay prices down to $25 a movie or less and I'll bite.
Re:last barrier (Score:5, Insightful)
Samsung has a $200 player which comes with 4 free movies. Given that the movies retail for $35 a pop, that is $140 in free movies with a $200 player. The rumors is said player will go for $150 on Black Friday. A player for $150 with $140 in free movies is a pretty good deal.
The biggest problem with BluRay is retail stores charging $35 for movies. DVDs are often selling for $10 or less. Knock BluRay prices down to $25 a movie or less and I'll bite.
Gotta be careful with that math. The movie is WORTH $10-$15 (based on DVD pricing and people's apparent willing to pay that), so it's $60 worth of movies claiming to be a $140 dollar value, just like the blue-screen commercials where they give away the '$100 value' worth of the stuff they couldn't sell in the last blue-screen ad and really just don't want cluttering up their warehouse (here, you throw this away!).
Millions bought our "shiny penny" for $100 and millions more bought our "crisp 10 spot" for $150, but if you act RIGHT NOW, you (yes, you) can have BOTH for the low low price of $99.95! You know It the deal of a lifetime BECAUSE I'M SHOUTING!
Not quite the last barrier for linux (Score:4, Informative)
For reading BD+ BRs on Linux, the problem is they had to use patched firmware. This doesn't bode well for widespread adoption on Linux by non-technical users. Patching firmware is scary for most consumers, who will face the possibility of bricked drives.
The key will be to either bypass the drive's firmware with virtualization or to somehow have the firmware patch to happen safely and automatically on as many drives as possible. Hopefully something that could be done in the Linux kernel drivers for the BR drives and/or the SCSI drivers.
Or a reputable Linux user could... (Score:3, Interesting)
Skip the BD player deal, buy the Disc at retail and then download their platform shifted unencrypted movie backup through P2P*. The full BD+ library should be available within a few days, if it wasn't already.
* Even though it's inherently fair, this method may not be legal in your jurisdiction. Consult your attorney before using.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Patching firmware is alrealy something that any BD user needs to get used to.
This has nothing to do with Linux. All of the HD video technology from cable
to high definition DVD formats are all inherently problematic and thus
ultimately user hostile.
And YET AGAIN... (Score:5, Insightful)
The common man proves that if man can make it, man can break it.
This is a lesson companies will NEVER LEARN when it comes to DRM.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Except bank vaults don't also vastly decrease the usefulness of banks for legitimate customers...
Re: (Score:2)
Forget copying, I want to play my BR under Linux (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't really care if I can copy my BluRay disks or not (I'm too lazy to back up my movies - if I break a disk and I like the film, I get a new one).
But I would love to be able to play my legally bought films under Linux without having to reboot (or having to go to jail for that matter). Maybe one day. :)
Re:Forget copying, I want to play my BR under Linu (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't really care if I can copy my BluRay disks or not (I'm too lazy to back up my movies - if I break a disk and I like the film, I get a new one).
Clearly you have no children living with you.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't really care if I can copy my BluRay disks or not (I'm too lazy to back up my movies - if I break a disk and I like the film, I get a new one).
But I would love to be able to play my legally bought films under Linux without having to reboot (or having to go to jail for that matter). Maybe one day. :)
Tell that to Sony then stop buying the discs until you can.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
if I break a disk and I like the film, I get a new one
You are exactly the kind of customer that all big movie and music companies would like every customer to be. DRM is a way to make that happen. That way, they can make customers pay for the same content multiple times, growing their profits by leaps and bounds. While you pay through your nose, they laugh all the way to the bank.
So this might be the breakthrough for BluRay? (Score:4, Interesting)
How does it work? (Score:5, Insightful)
Hoping some expert can describe how this all works to the masses out here. From a quick glance through the forum, this is what I think is happening...
BD+ movies are released with corrupted data
A conversion table is required to fix the corruption
The conversion table is built using code on the BD+ disk that runs on the BDVM.
The bulk of the work on the forum thread seems to be an effort to reverse engineer the opcodes and libraries (called TRAPs?) available in the BDVM, and to reimplement the VM.
I'm not a security or crypt expert, but I can't imagine how anyone can expect this kind of security to remain secure for 10 years.
Re:How does it work? (Score:5, Insightful)
The short answer is - think of it as a computer application, a simple one can simply to its job. An advanced one can try to determine if it's being debugged, running in a VM clone or whatever. They can still pull new rabbits out of the hat that can cause problems. As usual though, the pirates will share the good copy and the "casual" guy trying to use alternative OS/software will have a broken player. What you're seeing here is not new by any standard, AnyDVD HD was there first and obviously output from it has been doing the rounds on P2P. This is mostly a battle to make it so that you can pop in a BD, fire up an open source player and have it work.
Your secure edifice... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think a quote from a famous internet wordsmith [penny-arcade.com] is in order here:
I have a blue ray drive (Score:2)
Great (Score:3, Informative)
I'm sick of my VirtualBox/WinxP/AnyDVD-HD setup. I'd MUCH rather a native Linux command-line tool to automate the process when inserting the disc. ;-)
Thank you to all developers! Great work!
direct link (Score:2, Interesting)
Congratulations! (Score:2, Insightful)
Obviously, "10" was in binary... (Score:5, Funny)
Subj.
Support the forums (Score:5, Insightful)
I am proud of having been a contributor of the Doom9 forums. Go and pay you tribute: they demonstrated to the industry once again that DRM is a sick idea and will NEVER work.
P.S. Now I can go and buy a BD recorder. Just as I did with the first DVD Writer after deCSS.
PS3 Ubuntu/Intrepid Package? (Score:4, Interesting)
Anyone want to package this tool up with the PS3 mplayer vo driver [ps2dev.org] for the PS3 Ubuntu Intrepid release?
Re:Physical access FTW (Score:4, Informative)
What? Cracking DRM has NOTHING to do with the 'analog hole'.
Re:Patent trouble (Score:5, Informative)
Second, you need to understand what the remedy is for a patent holder whose patent is violated. There are no "patent police" who go out and look for patent violators. Patent owners have to keep their own vigilance, and when they think their patent is being infringed the remedy is to sue the infringers. The result of such a suit is usually an injunction to force the infringer to stop selling his competing products. (Probably the most famous case of this was Polaroid v. Kodak, where Kodak was forced to abandon their entire line of Polaroid-like instant cameras, of which they had sold millions.)
Now bearing this in mind, exactly what would Sony or Fox or whoever get by suing Doom9? They aren't making money off of this, they just gave it away. Injunctions notwithstanding it's almost impossible to stop the dissemination of software whose authors have deliberately tried to make it available for free. There are no profits to seize, and any effort to show a dollar amount for damages would be very iffy. Patent infringement is not fraud and is not criminal, so there is no risk of anybody going to jail. All in all, there's not much the patent holder can do in this case except suck it up and go on to the next project.