DVD-Audio's CPPM Circumvented

Bodysurf writes "After DVD-Video's CSS encryption was broken in 1999, the music industry chose a much more secure copy-protection method for DVD-Audio called Copy Protection for PreRecorded Media (CPPM). This protection scheme has remained publicly uncracked, but it was circumvented recently, providing the ability to save the unencrypted digital audio data. CDFreaks has the details."

And no one is shocked

[Approaching.sanity (889047)]

We deserve our free use.

And we will take it by any and all means.

Re:And no one is shocked

[by Anonymous Coward]

That is right! Even if it means we have to kill every single one of you mother....

Oh, wait, all we did was hack their encryption. Nevermind....

Re:And no one is shocked

[garcia (6573)]

We deserve our free use. And we will take it by any and all means.

That should read: We deserve our fair use and we will take it back by any and all means.

Re:And no one is shocked

[jdray (645332)]

I'm starting to wonder why anyone even bothers anymore. I'm not sure I agree that "we" (the world?) deserves free use of media content, but I think fair use would be ... fair.

Re:And no one is shocked

[redheaded_stepchild (629363)]

I think I'd rather wait for them to figure it out. It's not like I can't find plenty of other *gasp* decent artists to listen to without RIAA's hands in it.

I know it gets thrown around in here a lot, but if you really wanted to piss them off and make them think about what they are doing, STOP BUYING THEIR CRAP. But more than that, don't download it either. Embargo them on all fronts. Watch them adapt or die. Too bad I'll never see this happen, what with the majority of my country (and apparently the world) being led around by the short and danglies by the RIAA. Like bands don't exist unless they have massive media hype, a video on MTV, and a shamelessly promoted 'world tour'.

Makes me want to start my own music distribution just to show it can be done without the RIAA.

Re:And no one is shocked-Human Nature.

[Rei (128717)]

The constitutional right to be entertained must remain in force

That's what the Right to Arm Bears [northernsun.com] is all about :)

Wise man once said...

[Xunker (6905)]

What was that saying?

"To view it, we have to decrypt them. If we can decrypt them, we can rip them."

The only "secure" media format is a CD laminated between two plates of steel.

Always remember the hacker's credo

[KennyP (724304)]

"For every lock there is a key"

Gotta love fair use!

Visualize Whirled P.'s

Just wait...

[Sierpinski (266120)]

I bet in another 5 years, they'll come out with some ultra-new technology that is REALLY crackproof.

Its like Tide... its new and improved? You mean there are people STILL working on Tide? (Yeah I know, Seinfeld!)

Learn a lesson?

[balster neb (645686)]

Region coding on DVDs has caused enough headaches for people. The idea of having DVD audio disks that don't allow ripping to your computer is idiotic.

CSS for DVDs didn't stop ripped DVD movies being downloaded by millions. Why does the recording industry think that some new encryption scheme will stop music pirates? All such encryption does is make the lives of legitimate users hard.

Slashdotted already?

[Chas (5144)]

Anyhoo, this is good news.

Now I can rip this stuff off to 64K MP3, then convert it over to Real, and finally through to it's final form as a DRM'ed WMA. ;)

Tools are at RareWares

[by Anonymous Coward]

CDfreaks has nothing to do with this release. The guys from RareWares are the ones taking risks to bring these tools to the community.

http://www.rarewares.org/ [rarewares.org]

Alternative discussion here

[doofusclam (528746)]

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?show topic=34368&st=0&p=310943&#entry310943/ [hydrogenaudio.org]

they can opt out of this arms race

[milktoastman (572643)]

I know this fight against the Man is so very romantic, but the companies can opt out of this arms race in which the hackers have the advantage. The more and more this encryption breaking is done, the industry will spend less and less money on developing new encryption schemes, and instead spend more and more on buying Senators and Representatives to pass draconian measures to prevent you from legally trying (thinking about how) to break the schemes.

Software page

[by Anonymous Coward]

Link to software [rarewares.org]

"DVD Audio Tools", second from bottom.

It's a start...

[MynockGuano (164259)]

So, rather than try to compromise the DVD-Audio's encryption itself, someone has succeeded in making a patch that uses WinDVD to perform the decryption and playback, but instead pipes the decrypted audio output to the hard drive instead of the sound card.

While certainly useful for WinDVD users who aren't able to do this natively (guessing that Windows can't do this redirection natively, hence the news story), this is really "circumvention" at its most basic level. Well, almost...one step up from sticking a tape recorder next to your speakers. Not quite the "fair use" that will "break open" the DVD-Audio market that many posters will no doubt clamor over, and nowhere near a true solution to the problem.

And to those familiar with this patch: Is the output even in a standard format capable of more than two channels?

DVD-What?

[dema (103780)]

I imagine the only reason it took so long is because no one gives a damn about DVD-Audio (: The last DVD-Audio disc I actually saw was the test one that came with my previous DVD player.

Protest agasint the format

[WindBourne (631190)]

Plain and simple, the format allows the companies to disable your machine. Not only are they trying to control the music that you buy, but now they are wanting to control your machine.

Funny thing is, that kids today can control the industry as they are the main buyers of the music.

FINALLY!

[halo1982 (679554)]

As one of the 3 people in the world who actually own DVD-Audio discs I am very excited about this. Thankfully I was able to get the story and programs before the server went up in flames. I'm alredy ripping my Nine Inch Nails With Teeth DualDisc and it seems to be working quite well. I also had to rip the VIDEO_TS folder after using DVDADecrypter to get WinDVD to read the files when I loaded PPCMRipper. Now it's decoding, and I can't seem to get it to get the multichannel audio. Also, its cutting off the first few seconds of the first track on the disc, but if you hit the back button it starts reencoding the first track. Maybe I could just use a normal dvd audio ripper for this part...

Re:That took a while, eh?

[Jeffrey Baker (6191)]

Probably nobody uses DVD-Audio. The effort spent cracking the copy protection will be proportional to the popularity of the medium. When the DVD Audio section at your local record store is as large as the CD section, we may see some more time being spent on such things.

Re:That took a while, eh?

[rokzy (687636)]

> I'm a little surprised--why did it take so long for someone to do this?

because it wasn't until last week that someone actually bought a DVD-Audio disk

Re:slashdotted already

[by Anonymous Coward]

DVD-Audio's CPPM can be got around with a WinDVD patch
Posted by Seán Byrne on 06 July 2005 - 09:50 - Source: Rarewares

When DVD-Video's encryption had been broken about 6 years back, the next generation of the Audio CD, DVD-Audio had been delayed for several months. It was originally to use the CSS2 encryption scheme, but the breaking of CSS meant the music industry no longer wanted anything to do with CSS in the new upcoming DVD-Audio format at the time. As a result, DVD-Audio took on Content Protection for Pre-recorded Media (CPPM), a much more advanced copy-protection system, which includes Key Blocks and watermarking and allows revocation (for compromised devices).

It was not long ago that DVD-Audio playback software came to the PC. For example Creative's SoundBlaster Audigy 2 comes with a DVD-Audio as well as WinDVD's DVD-Audio add-on. So, rather than try to compromise the DVD-Audio's encryption itself, someone has succeeded in making a patch that uses WinDVD to perform the decryption and playback, but instead pipes the decrypted audio output to the hard drive instead of the sound card. The patch which includes several tools requires WinDVD 5, 6 or 7 to work.

Several tools to work with DVD-Audio (read: ripping)
They require WinDVD 5, 6 or 7 installed, as they don't do the decryption themselves, and instead patch WinDVD to output the decrypted stream to disk instead of the sound card.
The tools are:

* DVD-A ripper: Intended to decrypt CPPM protected AOB and VOB files on DVD-Audio discs.
* PPCM ripper: Intended to capture Packed PCM (MLP) stream (stereo or multichannel) to .WAV files.
* DVD-A Explorer: Intended to peep&grab on DVD-Audio tracks (PCM and Packed PCM).

This tool is available at Rarewares here.

While InterVideo is likely to update its software to block the use of this patch, it appears that DVD-Audio's CPPM has been compromised at least in DVD-Audio discs up until this time or until the keys used in the current versions of WinDVD that this tool works on are revoked in upcoming DVD-Audio disc releases. However, this would also mean that WinDVD users would be forced to update their software to play future DVD-Audio discs.

Why DRM is doomed to fail

[naich (781425)]

So, rather than try to compromise the DVD-Audio's encryption itself, someone has succeeded in making a patch that uses WinDVD to perform the decryption and playback, but instead pipes the decrypted audio output to the hard drive instead of the sound card.

It goes back to the old adage; if you can hear it you can copy it. DRM is ultimately doomed to failure. The money spent on trying to implement a doomed technology would be better spent on setting up a syetem were it's not needed.

Re:Copy Protection Is Dumb

[Ingolfke (515826)]

I would buy their product immediately.

Cool... would you burn me a copy or throw up a torrent?

Re:A little early, boys and girls.

[mpe (36238)]

Now the copyright cartel will probably just kill the format, and try again with stronger encryption.

The problem isn't so much the strength of the encryption. It's more that they are trying to use encryption to do something encryption isn't very good at doing.

This, of course, is not meant by me to imply that any form of mass-consumer DRM is at all uncrackable. They're all doomed in my view.

Hence they are often combined with legislation to attempt to outlaw cryptoanalysis.