Academy may trial encrypted DVDs

[VCDHunter]

Academy may trial encrypted DVDs

Oscar voters could receive specially encrypted DVDs in the continuing battle against film piracy.

Last year, a move by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) to ban "screeners" collapsed amid legal action by the independent film community.

Instead, the major studios sent out watermarked VHS tapes, rather than DVDs, to Academy members.

If the plan wins support, members would be given a special DVD player to play the encrypted screeners.

Bruce Davis, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences executive director, said it was in "early discussions" about adopting the new technology.

"But at this point, the ball is in the various studios' courts. They are the ones who will have to sign on and say they want to try it," he added.

Anti-piracy firm Cinea presented its system to Academy officials last month.

Laurence Roth, marketing and business development at Cinea, said its product was "a secure DVD player" on which to play the encoded DVDs.

He said: "It actually plays both regular DVDs as well as encrypted DVDs.

"It has all the bells and whistles of a high-end DVD player, but it plays specialised encrypted discs.

"The discs are encrypted using the AES 128-bit encryption standard. It's a National Security Agency-level standard, a world-class, state-of-the-art encryption standard."

Experiment
Mr Roth added: "The most important sales point is that if you lost a disc, if it fell out of someone's pocket and was picked up by anybody in the world, it could not get hacked."

Mr Davis said the level of security appealed to the academy and the individual studios alike.

But as the academy has to discuss the matter with each studio individually, it would be a slow process.

"It speaks to the concerns of some of our members who worried about what would happen if their screeners were intercepted," he said.

"We'd be willing to try it on an experimental basis if the studios are," he added.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/film/3814631.stm

[Nilfennasion]

"The most important sales point is that if you lost a disc, if it fell out of someone's pocket and was picked up by anybody in the world, it could not get hacked."

This press release has garanteed it will by stating what encryption standard it uses. That didn't take long at all. On another note, I still have to wonder why they are surprised they got hacked when they insisted on using 30-bit keys.

[spiderman2k1]

So stupit some one will just use a capture card if they can not rip the DVD

[Culley]

It really sounds like a waste of money. As mentioned above, there will be other ways to pirate an encrypted DVD. Who's to say an Academy member with the "special" DVD player won't pirate it?

[Nilfennasion]

I think that if this system goes ahead, strict inventory codes and tracking systems will come with it. Since they are distributing the discs and players among a group numbering in the thousands, it won't be that hard to keep a complete record of who they sent what disc to and when. The tricky part, of course, is policing those records.

[Capmaster]

I wonder how the rest of the academy and the artists themselves feel about all this monkey-motion to try to prevent bootlegging using methods that have already been demonstrated to be obsolete and doomed to fail even before they're instituted. This has got to be an incredibly expensive circle-jerk.

Like spidey mentioned, if you can view it, you can capture it. If they can encrypt it, you can decrypt it. There will always be a disgruntled employee somewhere in the hardware world that will leak out the decryption algorithm used in the players. After that it's only a matter of a little time and a firmware hack (or even a hardware hack) will be available. They're fooling themselves, or they have a hidden agenda, if they think this will do any good :P

[Culley]

I guess it makes somebody feel better just to "fight piracy" even if it's a lost cause.

Still it will make some people paranoid, I'm sure.

[BJ_M]

i think this is ok myself ... its better than no dvd's ..... it's fair ....

[Capmaster]

i think this is ok myself ... its better than no dvd's ..... it's fair ....

I agree. They're protecting their investment, and I probably would do the same.

But way back when the PC software vendors of apps like Lotus 1-2-3 and DBase had some pretty clever protection built in. They finally gave up because it was getting more costly to implement the protection than it was to develop the software. Heck, we used to be able to buy ISA bus cards that would allow defeating any and all copy protection.

I used to have an app that would let me introduce an intentional bad sector on a floppy to generate an INT13, just like the original. Once I even used an exacto knife to duplicate an intentional laser hole in a floppy that was there for copy protection. Worked great There's always a way

[Nilfennasion]

They finally gave up because it was getting more costly to implement the protection than it was to develop the software.

The funny thing is that these companies were basically raping other companies for access to their software, and then having the nerve to wonder why the employees copied the software for home use. When you charge tens of grand for database software in the year 1990, you're going to get pirated.

[Capmaster]

They finally gave up because it was getting more costly to implement the protection than it was to develop the software.

The funny thing is that these companies were basically raping other companies for access to their software, and then having the nerve to wonder why the employees copied the software for home use. When you charge tens of grand for database software in the year 1990, you're going to get pirated.

And pirate we did

We still have software like that, like Pro-Engineer, Touchstone, etc. that charge us $30K per license and $3K/year to maintain the license. Their users are so fringe that they don't get the volume that Word or Excel would. Hardware dongles are still an effective protection. We have both the dongles and network licenses. I would imagine it would be easier to crack the network license than the hardware dongle. No doubt the dongle contains an ASIC and it would be very involved to characterize the device without destroying it.

[Nilfennasion]

The question that comes to mind is "who the hell came up with the name 'dongle'"?

[Capmaster]

The question that comes to mind is "who the hell came up with the name 'dongle'"?

I believe that came from the early days of PCMCIA when network cards had to have a cable with an RJ-45 socket on the end of it. Someone coined the term and it stuck

[Nilfennasion]

He wasn't, perchance, working on a porn film as some kind of technical assistant at the time?

[Capmaster]

He wasn't, perchance, working on a porn film as some kind of technical assistant at the time?

Maybe, maybe If he had called it a tallywhacker or a shlong, then we'd know for sure

[Nilfennasion]

He could have tried those terms. Chances are they would have never caught on.

[lpn1160]

An early 1992 advertisment from Rainbow Technologies (a manufacturer of dongles) claimed that the word derived from "Don Gall", the alleged inventor of the device. The company's receptionist however said that the story was a myth invented for the ad.

[Tidy]

Hardware dongles are not hard to get around at all. I have worked for numerous companies that have used software that required a dongle. Most of them (in my experience) are simple loop back devies with an IC in them. Not too tough to get around.