Now Blu-ray's DRM Gets Cracked, Too
from the futility dept
Right before the New Year, a hacker reported that he'd cracked the DRM used on HD DVD, illustrating the futility of devoting resources to develop copy-protection schemes. Now, the same hacker says he's cracked the DRM on Blu-ray discs using the same method. As with the HD DVD discs, there's supposed to be a dynamic element to the Blu-ray DRM that allows for decryption keys to be updated to react to cracks, and it also uses Self-Protecting Digital Content technology, which can effectively render "bad" playback devices useless as well as change playback methods if one's found to be weak or flawed. That sounds awfully complex and expensive to develop and implement, with the payback of doing little more than causing compatibility problems for legitimate customers. All this will do is create a cat-and-mouse game between hackers and the companies supporting the DRM for content owners, and our money's on the hackers in the long run. This is yet another example of how content companies are misallocating their resources: instead of spending time and effort working on new business models and forgetting about pointless, useless, DRM, they'd rather continue to spend money pursuing ways to frustrate their customers and maintain a business model that's ill-suited for the modern market.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
DRM SUCKS
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Futility
If I were the chief strategic technology Tsar of MegaMedia conglomorates I would throw in the towel right now on trying to protect digital rights and copy protection on tangible content media. I would shift every resource away from dealing with the physical technology of transcoding and put all my money onto stream protection vis preventing anything from being able to actually store "protected" data, a la broadcast flag.
As lost causes go, that would be the only sensible strategy. But for mathematical reasons (which I wont bother to share here) that is also doomed. At most it could buy another 5-10 years operation for a protectionist model.
Right now we already have people working overtime to plug the gaps in an effectively obsolete technology, who's utility will be to protect effectively obsolete content. It's not just misguided, it's suicidal. Just you watch what happens to Microsoft in the next 18 months, trust me, "the longest suicide not in history" is an understatement. DRM will always be known as the three letters that brought down the giant, it will mean what Watergate meant to Nixon, what Poll Tax meant to the Tory party and what Russia meant to Napolean.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Interesting
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Kudos :)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
DRM
DRM only keeps the neophites from copying. if you have a determined person whose intent on illegally copying things... they will.
DRM is the industries way of thinking they have control over things they truely have not even had a glimmer of hope of keeping up with.
when they figure out drm just costs them more money than they save maybe they will put the money into quality content which will always sell better than bad.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
A Theroy
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
As opposed to...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
customers are the enemy
the music, movie, and other industries are just too stupid to see that better content with a better distribution model is the way to go. they are fighting a battle against their own customers. they have made themselves a public enemy.
as for Microsoft, it will be real easy for them to remove DRM restrictions from their products. if they are smart, they will end up doing that, or face the wrath of the consumer. Linux is going to keep getting better and better, and Microsoft is in real trouble once Linux gets something akin to DirectX that will allow top-end gaming on their platform. gaming is the only thing keeping Microsoft alive.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: customers are the enemy
i like open source but many times it falls short of paid developement. but many times it surpasses it. it is simply not what i would recomend mom and dad rush out and installl as they are not that simple to run and gui's are still not running out of the box on any but ubuntu. so they have quite a few years before they can be viable.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: customers are the enemy
Each day, the battle to "protect" content is only going to get harder for the producers, not easier. No matter what technologies they come up with, I think its been proved time and time again.
Anthony:
"but linux is still 10 years away from being a platform that can work as a competition to microsoft. it wont' be adopted in the boardrooms and does not have an oem component. the other problem is a matter of the users. they are simply not educated in the realm of open source. while techs and hackers may love to play with it. it can be a royal pain in the butt as well. i simply can't hand a disk to a client and say sure... you will not have any problems installing this. NO chance that is going to happen for a while."
I would argue the Windows installation is more difficult and less friendly than a fedora install. Either way, to do it right your going to need instructions for either one.
i like open source but many times it falls short of paid developement. but many times it surpasses it. it is simply not what i would recomend mom and dad rush out and installl as they are not that simple to run and gui's are still not running out of the box on any but ubuntu..."
GUI's run out of the box on most linux distros.. just as long as the hardware is supported. Even if thats not the case, GUI's are usually running out of the box, just with generic drivers, with poorer performace... kinda like Windows. Its just a matter of grabbing the correct drivers for your video card from the manufacturer (both ATI and Nvidia provide them), and most Intel chips work out of the box.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Protecting Hollywood Content..........
Considering the level of crap coming from the brainless twits on the Left Coast, who really cares if it can't be copied? Are there still people buying this crap?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
It has been clear to me for years now that as this will only increase - storage devices becoming smaller, cost going down, users entering the billions, the dream of an information-based economy is a house of cards.
It sounded good to me 15 years ago. Several years ago I saw that our choice to move in that direction will eventually be our downfall.
Our downfall if it fails, because we'll have no manufacturing base and our economy will collapse. That's the good scenario.
Worse is if it succeeds. Because to continue to be able to charge for information when unlimited information reproduction and transmission is essentially free to billions will require extremely tight global controls on technology advances and transfer, along with global ability to detect and punish the illegal kind of mouse click if 100,000 or 15 or 1 of the world's 13 year olds clicks it.
Intellectual Property Law as the seed of global totalitarianism. Imagine that.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
DRM is alot like an arms race...
DRM can not hope to win against a volunteer force with no overhead but that doesn't mean they are loosing either.
What they effectively have is an added cost of business to prevent their "supply lines" from being rerouted. As long as the values of supplies received outweighs the added cost of DRM development, they will continue to develop new DRM.
At present, this is a war of attrition at best and like any other war, it will not end until someone figures out a way to appease both sides.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
What is teh alternative
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: What is teh alternative
how's this for an alternative:
let the industry go bankrupt. fire everyone and pray that they starve.
once the money is gone, all of the money grubbing purveyors of mediocrity will move on to other industries and make room for serious artists who make stuff not because they want to, but because they HAVE to.
in the last 30 years, the american people have gotten entertainment and investment banking ass backwards. if you want to be rich, go to business school and work on wall street.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
DRM? Or a bad CD?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
drm and copyright protection
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Lower Your Greed
to do that each copy of any media file needs to be sold with different fingerprint , cd/dvd pressing technology needs to be improved further and more money needed to be spent into that, not only in DRM , if fingerprint is always at same location , it will be identified and removed by cr/hackers , but if its placed in different location in each cd/dvd/media file , then piraters can starts making movies/audio files into smaller parts like each 10 minutes of vdo or each 15 seconds of ado , for example , like vdo_1of3, vdo_2of3, vdo_3of3 or ado_1of4, ado_2of4, etc , and then downloaders can simply download those 3 or 4 files , from different uploaders , and can re-join for full file , even if finger-printed parts were somehow blocked , thats how "misanthropic humanist"'s wish will be busted .
if a tool was made and SUPPORTED by cr/hackers based on server-less P2P technology and starts to remove / modify the DRM / TC stuff from Vista or other Windows, MAC OS, and if it starts to "UPDATE" itself when its user wants it to , then those restrictions will not be that much effective .
if there is some type of "restriction" ( that is encryption / encoding ) , it will be removed when media or other files are shared or tools/software is made available to remove those restrictions .... THATS HOW ITS ALWAYS IS . why some of us still try violently and unethically to implement these type of restrictions , is not understanding somestuff or lack of understanding , or lack of acknowledgment of power of community of WORLD .
PRICE NEEDS TO BE LOWERED , to a point where , its better to buy than download , again i want to remind, USA is not the only country in the whole WORLD . Stop thinking and do foolish stuff based on that . Come out of your BOX . Try at least once to respect and hear what the people from outside of the BOX is saying .
DRM / TC stuff can be even used to track, what version or copy of MS office a user have used, to write a document, or track his email, etc , if any special word or special patterns of words or sentences were used ( like criticism to some country leader ) . To me its appears as a another tool to spy-on people, and here, SPYING ON THE WHOLE WORLD , so basically it is a digital SPY . kind of like military tool as it shows the nature of military tools , which have no respect for human life, values, etc but specializes in how to kill and destroy .
though EU did slap MS again for this type of unethical, illegal type of business products , but the main show still remains to be seen .
~BrightStar
[ link to this | view in chronology ]