The major studios release their films on encrypted DVD’s.
The titles should be “copy Proof” but private software companies always release a newer version of a program that removes the encryption.
Can this game of ‘cat and mouse’ ever be stopped?
With all the resources available to these giant companies like Sony, is it possible for them to copy protect their movies and not be cracked by hackers and people who like to “back-up” their data?
Is it theoretically possible to copy protect a DVD and not have it hacked?
No, absolute protection is impossible. Eventually whatever reads that DVD has got to turn the pixels on the screen on and off. At that point, it is possible to record the pixel changes. Viola, a copy of the movie.
It seems to me the answer is intuitively obviously no – because you have to be able to use the DVD to watch the movie. Therefore, there is some procedure that will “unlock” the DVD for viewing. If nothing else, you can capture the video signal and record it again.
No. For their product to be useful, they need anybody to be able to buy it and view it. To allow this they have to distribute the means to decrypt the movies. As soon as they’ve done that, somebody can reverse-engineer the decryption method and then anybody can decrypt and distribute the movie.
Well, it seems that even if you can’t get information off the disc itself, the information gets decrypted somewhere between the disc and the screen. If you can intercept the information at some other point, it doesn’t matter what they do to the disc.
Well, that’s the basis behind HDCP. But yes, it is impossible to plug the analog hole. It has to be done digitally.
Anyway, DRM is flawed because of a basic problem. Let’s say Amy has a message she wants to send Charlie but doesn’t want Bob to be able to decrypt. So Amy has one half of the cryptography key and Charlie has the other. Bob has no key, thus he can’t decrypt. But with DRM, Bob and Charlie are the same person and then cracking the code (in this case the DRM) should be relatively easy.
There is always the “Analogue Hole” - pointing a video camera at the screen while it plays. This is the simplest path.
Then, you have to try to create a Trusted Path between a disc and the display. Otherwise, you can put a recording device that behaves like an output device on the chain. HDMI connections are supposedly trusted, but I don’t know how.
You also need to protect the playback device itself. It contains a valid decryption key somewhere. If that key can be accessed, then encryption can be broken. Of course, both HD and Blueray have a scheme to invalidate keys that have been exposed in this way. This will disable players that have that key embedded.
Software players for PC are even easier - at some point the key exists in the executing memory and can be extracted - maybe even by stopping a virtual machine and examining the virtual memory structure. The manufacturers want PC makers to embed chips and firmware to create a “Trusted Platform for Computing” to stop these sorts of attack. But then you cannot do what you want with your own PC - something I would certainly reject.
But then of course the PC makers, in collaboration with the software and entertainment industries, will claim that you don’t “own” a PC, you merely have purchased a “license” to use their patented technology. Build your own PC? Then they won’t sell you processors without another “license” in which you promise not build a non-trusted platform. Then the Computer Police arrest people for constructing “digital theft” devices… :rolleyes:
Honestly, while I believe that copyrights should be enforcable, this is like the Vatican of the 15th century trying to control that newfangled “printing press” in order to maintain the power to ban books. The music and movie industries are trying to hammer the square peg of intellectual property into the round hole of digital technology, and it simply can’t work without an Orwellian level of information control. They haven’t come to terms with the fact that digitalization changes the rules. Some new paradigm of intellectual property is needed, based on something other than control of the physical medium that information is distributed on.
Look at it this way: The DRM systems have multimillion dollar corporations and the laws of multiple countries behind them. The crackers are frequently operating out of their parents’ houses. It isn’t even a fair fight: DRM doesn’t stand a chance.
CSS, the DVD encryption system, was broken wide open by someone looking at raw bytes of memory in RAM. The corporations have no way to counter that. There are a lot more bored and indignant geeks in the world than there are hired guns.
In short, HDMI is too difficult to make work. Especially given that this is consumer-grade gear we’re talking about, not NSA-bound thermite-wired international espionage-grade crypto equipment. Making HDMI work would require a level of deep coöperation between all hardware and all software makers I’ve never seen in my life. Not even IBM had that tight a control on the market. And if even one company screws up just a bit, the whole thing is blown wide open.