High-Def's Holy Grail: Superior Copy Protection

[npaulie2000]

"Digital Maginot line" Did anyone else chuckle at this line from the original article?

[AlecWest]

"Digital Maginot line" Did anyone else chuckle at this line from the original article?

I didn't notice it until you mentioned it. But, yes, that was good for a chuckle. This is from the Wikipedia reference to the Maginot Line:

The term "Maginot Line" has been used as a metaphor for something that is confidently relied upon despite being ineffectual.

In WWII, the Germans didn't directly attack the line itself, they just "found a way to get around it." Likely, this will be the fate of any new protection scheme.

Years ago, Macrovision was considered the be-all and end-all of VHS tape copy protection. And the Macrovision people not only copyrighted their process, they also had their people attempt to "crack" it ... copyrighting the cracking methods used as well ... so that they'd have a legal footing upon which to challenge those who cracked it. To my knowledge, it was never really "cracked." But, an enterprising company in my hometown (Portland, Oregon) called VidiCraft did 2 things to "get around" it. They created a normalizer box that, while not removing or cracking the copyguard, merely ordered the flashing bar to normalize to a single gray color. The Macrovision signal itself "remained" on the tape ... but the normalizing process made it ineffectual (grin). A good friend of mine was one of the normalizer's developers. But, it was developed for a whole different reason than Macrovision had considered.

The guy's daughter was deaf. And, he found that the Macrovision copyguard interfered with closed-captioning. He raised such a big stink over it with Disney that they sent him an unprotected VHS copy of "Sleeping Beauty" just to keep him quiet ... because he'd threatened to do a media number on them, exposing Disney as being "unfriendly" to the hearing impaired community for adopting the Macrovision copyguard. Macrovision itself later "softened" the copyguard signal to permit non-interference with closed captioning ... but the normalizer was still out there in the marketplace. And of course (ahem), people only bought one to give to their hearing impaired friends.

[tonydead]

bugster is right on target with this one....I just didn't want to copy the entire reply to EB. Well done my six legged friend!!! I don't have a hard line and Ip address changes all the time.....bla...bla etc etc...

[richdvd]

I don't think it will be cracked. At least not in any near future. Just look at DVD-Audio and Super Audio CD, these formats were around for nearly 5 years and still nobody has any idea how to crack their protection.

You are talking about 2 formats that aren't really popular at all (as far as mainstream goes).