BD+ Successfully Resealed 443
IamTheRealMike writes "A month on from the story that BD+ had been completely broken, it appears a new generation of BD+ programs has re-secured the system. A SlySoft developer now estimates February 2009 until support is available. There's a list of unrippable movies on the SlySoft forums; currently there are 16. Meanwhile, one of the open source VM developers seems to have given up on direct emulation attacks, and is now attempting to break the RSA algorithm itself. Back in March SlySoft confidently proclaimed BD+ was finished and said the worst case scenario was 3 months' work: apparently they underestimated the BD+ developers."
Give it some time. (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact that it's well done makes it all the more attractive to crack.
Re:Getting Old (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No thanks! (Score:4, Insightful)
Nice justification. If it truly were "garbage", you wouldn't want it at all.
Re:You kids and your newfangled slide rules (Score:5, Insightful)
I can tell I must be getting old when one of my first responses is 'Cmon, just go buy the movie already'.
Yes you are getting old but not for the reason you think.
I don't have any movies/songs that I did not buy but I also won't buy any BlueRay players or Disks until they are broken.
While I am not a huge purchaser of DVDs (I probably own less than 200 counting a few TV series that come on multiple disks) I do buy the movies/shows that I really like but I hate having to go through the cabinet, find the disk, remember to have the kids put away theirs when done, etc.
I want my movies on a central server in my house for easy access. This is not practical with stand-alone disks. I'd even be willing to pay a few dollars more for a version where the license specifically allows me to transfer the item to a server like this.
Re:Getting Old (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Getting Old (Score:4, Insightful)
I would presume that most people who buy a movie would be more interested in watching it than cracking it. That said, they would also prefer the options of making backups and storing it on hard disks, or whatever devices they may choose without having to worry about DRM issues.
Re:I guess I can't count (Score:4, Insightful)
As you all know, journalism and reading comprehension don't mix.
Open source devs have not given up (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Getting Old (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the entire point - I *want* to buy the movie, but I won't until it plays on my hardware.
I have hardware that is capable of playing HD content, but the content providers are erecting artifical barriers to prevent me from doing it. Once the stupid DRM is cracked, I'll buy it.
Re:Getting Old (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is I can't watch the damned thing under Linux, until BD+ is forever broken.
Re:Getting Old (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Break the RSA algorithm? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, its pretty much like that. If I were one of the BD+ developers, I'd be pretty proud of the fact that the DRM-hackers thought that RSA was most vulnerable part of my DRM scheme.
But seriously, if real advances are made in integer factorization because of attempts to crack BD+, I'm going to laugh my ass off.
Re:Getting Old (Score:5, Insightful)
I own about 300 movies on DVD, and a number of TV series on DVD. I've probably purchased about half of them, and the other half were given as gifts. Several of these were replacements for VHS tapes of movies. Every one of them is ripped to DVD and stored in h.264 on a large network drive. That means that I can watch it on my TV using my HTPC, or on my laptop wherever I am in the house, or on my desktop in my office while I'm doing something else. I can stream it to work if it's a slow day, and when we're on vacation, we don't have to plan on what we may want to watch and bring a lot of extra clutter. When I'm at home and watching a movie, searching through the list on the HTPC is much more convenient than looking through a bookshelf, and it also means that I don't have to keep all of my DVDs physically accessible. More space in the house, less clutter, and less obvious temptation for thieves.
I hadn't yet made the jump to Blu-ray because of the DRM. I want the same convenience that I have now, and with DRM, I can't get it. My record shows that I'm pretty willing to spend money on my media, and even replace movies I already own with higher-quality versions. All I want is to be able to exercise what I consider to be my fair use rights over the copies of the movies I've purchased.
Technology is progressing at an amazing rate. It's supposed to make our lives easier and more convenient. Everyone should be able to have a box of movies which lets them watch their media wherever they want. It's really fantastic. But for me, it won't be based upon Blu-ray.
Re:Getting Old (Score:5, Insightful)
DRM doesn't work. It never did work, it probably never will work.
I'm pretty sure this story is about how DRM does work. It keeps people from copying the movie in full HD resolution, without getting in the way of 90% of consumers, and stays within the bounds of the law. That's pretty much the definition of successful DRM, from the industry's perspective. Until there is a crack available, BD+ is the current and best example of working DRM.
You know what would change the movie company attitudes about DRM? Massive public outrage, something that just hasn't happened yet for movies (for games, on the other hand, it has, somewhat). Most people never run up against the limitations imposed by DRM. I think we have to wait until people become more accustomed to the potential of ubiquitous media sharing before they care widely about movie DRM.
Re:Getting Old (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Achieved their goal (Score:5, Insightful)
Assuming you believe the lie about DRM being to prevent piracy...
That's not what it's about at all, pirates will just watch a lower quality version (DVD, even a camera rip) or wait for the drm to be cracked, they're not gonna suddenly go out and buy an expensive drm'd version just because it hasn't been cracked yet.
The only people hurt by DRM are legitimate consumers, who want to do perfectly reasonable things like put the movie on a media server, make a backup copy so that their kids don't scratch the original and convert the media to play on a portable device like an ipod. The purpose of DRM is to force these people into buying multiple copies of the same media, ie screwing more money out of existing paying customers.
For the obligatory car analogy, consider the codes common on car stereos, if the battery power is lost you have to enter a code... Thieves already know how to bypass or reset these codes, but a law abiding user who lets his battery drain or disconnects it, now has to go to the dealer and pay money to have the code reset. I have been in this situation myself, but luckily i knew a "thief" who would unlock the radio for half as much as the dealer.
Re:Getting Old (Score:3, Insightful)
A list of movies NOT to buy (Score:3, Insightful)
That's truth right there. After being burned a few times and wasting a lot of money, I decided a while back never to buy music or movies on a medium that I can't transfer. I've lost too many CDs, scratched up too many DVDs, had too many things go mysteriously bad to continue wasting money on such an archaic concept as DRM.
It's a really simple rule. If a company treats me like a criminal from the outset, even though I have done absolutely nothing wrong and they have no reason to believe that I might, then I won't do business with them. Until I'm confident that I can copy these movies for my own personal use to back them up and play them on whatever devices I own, I consider any list of movies like this as a "do not buy" list.
Re:Getting Old (Score:5, Insightful)
And do you even have a bluray reader in your Linux machine? If not get a dedicated player and stop making excuses.
Nice solution. I really want to drag yet another piece of hardware with me while traveling.
A dedicated player has another problem, even when I'm at home: My younger kids tend to destroy optical disks. A video server has been a great solution for DVDs, and until it will work for Blu-Ray, I have no interest in buying Blu-Ray movies for them.
Yet another issue is that I like watching movies on my laptop screen, in bed. Can't do that until Blu-Ray is broken. My kids often watch movies on their computers, too, which also run Linux. Can't do that until Blu-Ray is broken.
The bottom line is that while some people -- maybe even most -- have no problem with the studios' idea of how we should watch movies, it doesn't work for others.
I don't pirate anything. Every movie and every song in my house was legitimately purchased, but EVERYTHING is ripped and the original optical disks are rarely used. When I can watch Blu-Ray content the way I want to watch it, then I'll buy it. Until then, I'll stick with DVD.
Re:Getting Old (Score:5, Insightful)
Your reply is exactly why Thyamine is 'getting old'.
Rewind to the 80's, if you will. There were no DVD players - you'd be lucky to have a CD player - and certainly no computers that would be playing back high quality video (exceptions aside, I know the Archimedes did some pretty nice things, but I wouldn't quite call it 'high quality'.).
So if you had 2 TVs in the house - say, 1 in the living room and 1 in the bedroom - and 1 VCR (let's not ponder where). So you buy a VHS (or beta or Video2000.. 'tis the 80's, after all), get home, and then curse the heavens that The Corporate Man is keeping you down by not allowing you to magically play back that same video on both TVs, just for the pathetic excuse they bring forth that you would need a 2nd VCR? .. probably not. You'd just eventually get another VCR.
If you purchased a CD, would you kick up a shitstorm about not being able to play that back on your walkman? .. probably not. You'd just get your tapedeck and record the CD straight to tape.
Fast forward to 'now'.. instead of you saying "well, I guess I'll just get a blu-ray drive for that machine as well" or "I guess I'll just have to record the video with a capture card / my computer's video-out"... you realize it's well past the 90's, everything is digital, and by jove that means you have the right to duplicate and format shift the media's content as you damn well please, and screw the corporations for making this difficult for you.
I'm not saying that that is a wrong stance on things... but the change to digital has changed how we all view these things as well. The old ways (getting a second drive, or recording to a different media - yes, you may get quality loss) still work, but now we resist due to the changed mindset that came with going digital.
Re:Getting Old (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Getting Old (Score:2, Insightful)
The Digital Copy versions on these discs are often DRM laced Windows Media files, or iPod formatted. My preferred format is neither.
If I can't use it on my devices in a way I want, then I don't own it. How hard is that to understand?
Re:Getting Old (Score:2, Insightful)
What is it exactly that I'm buying when I purchase a DVD or CD ?
In the case of a DVD, you're buying the right to watch the movie in standard definition when playing off the physical disc. Legally, you have no right to copy the disc, rip it, or duplicate its content in any way.
Why should you pay for a Blu-ray movie when you already own a DVD? Perhaps you think high-def remastering is done for free by beneficial elves? Or how about Blu-ray menu programming, which I assure you is no cake walk?
The price of a DVD, Blu-ray, or even a CD is not just the price of the content recorded or stamped on it. It's also the price of everyone who mastered the disc, the facility that stamped it, the art department that designed the disc and jacket label, the shipping, the warehousing...and a small profit for the retailer who sold it to you so they can keep people employed and the lights on (or the website up as the case may be).
The problem with a crusade against "Big Media" is it's going to hurt a lot more people than just the big boy fat cats people loathe so much. There are plenty of working stiffs out there who don't make millions of dollars a year. For that matter, I'm sure there's a sizable geek presence throughout the industry maintaining the production networks, storage, and compute clusters. Care to see them unemployed? It could just as easily be you.
Slysoft DRM-breaking has legitimate uses! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I guess I can't count (Score:3, Insightful)
If you had read the linked articles, you would have seen that SlySoft ran into problems at the start of November, that was actually before the open source VM was released. Just because I didn't spell out everything for you in the summary doesn't mean you have to be sarcastic.
Re:Getting Old (Score:5, Insightful)
Since when is 'piracy' removing DRM for personal use?
Am I a pirate because I rip my DVDs for portability so that my children can't break the original DVD?
Am I a pirate becuase I ripped Transformers and removed all the adult crap to where it's just a movie of transforming giant robots for my kids to watch?
I paid for my copies. I have a legal right to do whatever I want to the media as long as it doesn't leave my home.
Not necessarily (Score:5, Insightful)
In college I found out about something called MUDs. You know, Multi User Dungeons.
They were against the university's policy though. Play a mud and get caught, they'd shut off your access. Well, that pissed me off. I'm paying for access with my general course fee. I should be allowed to do whatever I want with the bandwidth I've purchased. Right?
So I played them anyways. And got stern warnings from sysadmins. So I started to learn how to cover my tracks. Don't use telnet. Compile some other application that does the same thing.
Eventually they caught on to that by checking netstat. So I moved to the next thing - hacking accounts. I'd snag up on expired lab accounts and use those.
Eventually the bigger and better game wound up being trying to beat the sysadmins. Much more satisfying than the stupid MUD. This was chess. Live and real, pitting my wits against theirs. Way more fun.
The same reason is why people do stuff like hack BD+. Their side has made a move. "Bet you can't beat this."
It's terribly satisfying when you can counter with "I beat it. You didn't allow for X. Try again."
Hacking is one of the best games of wits there is. I'll bet 99% of the people trying to break this don't even watch movies. They just enjoy the challenge.
No right != illegal (Score:2, Insightful)
You don't have the right, but since copyright is a civil tort and it also only talks about damages, personal copying is not a right but there is no illegality over it.
Re:Getting Old (Score:1, Insightful)
Wow, you spent all your post attacking him but made zero attempt to make his idea work.
Background: When you ask for an evaluation of your property, you get a total, broken down into two parts: the value of the land (how much you'd get if your house disappeared) and the value of the house.
They could price DVD, Blu-ray and CDs in the same way: split it into 2 (or even 3) parts:
(1) price of the content,
(2) price of the mastering,
(3) price of manufacturing/distribution.
If you want to replace a broken DVD with a new DVD, you'd pay (3).
If you want to replace a DVD with a Blu-ray, you'd pay (2) + (3).
Re:Getting Old (Score:5, Insightful)
Where was the license agreement that he agreed to, when he purchased the movie player, and the disc? You actually have to "sign" an agreement to purchase a license, hence the click-through agreements on software (that are questionable anyway, as you have to make the agreement before you purchase the license, but that's another question).
When you buy a DVD and/or player (and presumably the same is true for Blu-Ray, never bought one) nobody asks you to sign an agreement, the dvd player doesn't make you click through an EULA before you can watch the disc. As far as I can tell, no licensing contract exists. The only contract that exists is the one made when money was exchanged for a good, which is a transfer of ownership. If that's the only contract, then the buyer owns the dvd and player, and can do what he damn well pleases with it.
Re:Getting Old (Score:2, Insightful)
Since when is 'piracy' removing DRM for personal use?
If it were up to the movie studios, you'd be a pirate for not paying for content each time you consume it.
Re:Getting Old (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Getting Old (Score:5, Insightful)
You didn't purchase a movie. You purchased a license to watch that movie using that disk.
Wrong.
If you think you're right, then prove it. Produce the text of the license.
Re:Getting Old (Score:2, Insightful)
You mean you can't point a camera at your TV and record the movie? Wow. How'd they manage to pull that off?
Re:Getting Old (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem here is that apparently there's public key crypto stuff in the way. This means that you can "easily" make your emulator emulate a certain player with a certain keyset, but it'll get revoked. Theoretically, they can use the patch table to make the leaked video identify the player that produced it.
Re:Getting Old (Score:5, Insightful)
Rewind to the 1780s, if you will. There were no CD players, or tape players, or LP players, or even phonographs. So if you wanted to listen to music on demand, you'd have to hire musicians to play it, or maybe have a little sing-song with your friends and family.
If you hired a string quartet, would you kick up a shitstorm about not being able to get them to come back and play an encore whenever you wanted? ...probably not. You'd just hum the tune to yourself instead, or maybe buy another harpsichord.
Okay, I think you can fill the rest in for yourself. My point, insofar as I have one? Technology does advance, and the whole reason why we bother to encourage technology to advance is that it makes our lives better. So it is not only reasonable for us to expect to be able to stream video around our houses -- that expectation is exactly the right attitude to have. Our distant ancestors didn't put all that effort into evolving opposable thumbs and bipedal posture just to have us slouch back in our sofas and let corporations stifle innovation to protect their business models.
Re:Getting Old (Score:3, Insightful)
So you buy a VHS (or beta or Video2000.. 'tis the 80's, after all), get home, and then curse the heavens that The Corporate Man is keeping you down by not allowing you to magically play back that same video on both TVs, just for the pathetic excuse they bring forth that you would need a 2nd VCR? .. probably not. You'd just eventually get another VCR.
Actually, back in those days, it would be trivial to split the video signal coming out of the VCR and run cables across the house to the second TV(or lazier/cheaper yet, use the RF output for 1 tv, and the composite output for the second TV). I know many people who did just this to avoid buying a second VCR, back when they were still expensive enough for it to matter. The major difficulty was that you couldn't control the VCR from the other room, but the FBI warning and previews gave you plenty of time to press play and walk across the house, get some popcorn, etc.
Now, with modern consumer electronics, it is equally trivially possible to copy your entire movie library onto some networked storage, and play them back from a device anywhere on the network, thus only needing 1 Bluray drive for the house. The only thing in the way are the artificial limitations imposed by DRM.
I guess my point is that how we view these things has not truly changed. There is no "changed mindset that came with going digital"; what can be trivially done with inexpensive consumer electronics is all that has changed.
Re:What you do when you buy a SLR McLaren Mercedes (Score:5, Insightful)
How in the world you gonna *COPY / BACKUP* your brand new 2008 SLR McLaren Roadster Mercedes Benz ??
Insurance.
But how is that in any way relevant? The technology doesn't yet exist to backup a car. The technology does exist to backup a DVD, and we are prevented from using it for no good reason.
A more relevant question: How do you feel about your brand-new Benz coming with exactly one key? Lose it, and you're SOL -- better buy a new car. Is that reasonable, when it costs them nothing to let you duplicate it?
Re:Getting Old (Score:5, Insightful)
Equally, the corporations didn't put in restrictions to stop us making copies. Oh, wait, they did. Sony tried to stop betamax players having record buttons. They lost, and making your own tapes of TV shows (timeshifting) became a new fair use right.
Well, it's 1984 all over again, and the media companies are trying their damndest to stop us using our own property in our own houses as we wish. They lost using copyright law. It's perfectly legal to transcode your films to hard-disk under copyright law, so they went and got a new law, the DMCA, to make it illegal to even talk about breaking the crappy locks on the products they sold us.
He's not complaining about the convenience, or the digital nature of it. He's complaining that the media companies are deliberately putting new technical and legal restrictions to take away the rights we've had for 20 years, and make him use his own discs in the limited time and method of THEIR choosing. And we shouldn't let the tight-fisted bastards get away with it.
Re:Getting Old (Score:2, Insightful)
If you purchased a CD, would you kick up a shitstorm about not being able to play that back on your walkman? .. probably not. You'd just get your tape deck and record the CD straight to tape.
What? That was the bloody point! We had the freedom to format shift back then too. It just took longer. How many here used a CD player and tape deck to make mix tapes for yourself and friends? That was what I did in high school in the 90's before CD burners were affordable. Everyone had a walkman for that exact reason. One of your friends would say "Dude I just got this new CD!" You then borrow it and what did you do? That's right make a copy to tape. And if you only liked certain songs you only recorded those songs or did a tape to tape copy later. Yea it wasn't digital quality but it worked well enough for everyone. Hell Even my mother and father made tapes from their CD's for their cars.
As for VHS, those tapes were indestructible when compared to DVD's. People with children will know that. My friend lost four DVD's and a CD to his 1.5 year old who likes shiny things. VHS tapes were like a tank.
In my house we had Cable, a VCR and a roof antenna hooked to the TV in our living room. The VCR and cable box were all hooked to the TV via coax. I used a 3 way splitter and ran a line to the kitchen TV and my parents bedroom. Using a few switch boxes we could pipe the Cable, antenna or VCR to any of the 3 TV's. It worked perfectly as my mother could watch PBS in the kitchen and we could watch the VCR in the living room while cable was on in the bed room. Or we could watch any of the two on all three TV's if we wanted. It wasn't convenient as you had to go into the living room to work the cable box and VCR but it worked perfectly. I had my own VCR and Cable box.
Re:Getting Old (Score:3, Insightful)
Ripping a DVD is exactly interacting with a physical object.
Not in any appreciable sense--you're not after the parts and pieces, you're after the intangible expression embodied in it. Your interest has nothing to do with the object, in other words.
Taken to pedantic extremism, anything is problematic--photons emitted by your cat down the street would be trespassing on Mr. Jones' property. Thoughts are the product of the electrical impulses of the brain and thus physical. Speech, as a propagation of a mechanical process producing measurable, physical shock waves in a medium, becomes tangible.
My problem is that it becomes increasingly legal for copyright holders to break my stuff and keep secrets from me
A problem in search of harm, really, since it's their stuff you're trying to get. They're just increasingly disinclined to give as much as they did in the past, having, in their view, suffered for it. They're entitled to the secrets, as you're entitled to yours when you produce something.
becomes increasingly illegal for me to tell people various numbers
A bold reductionist argument that has relatively little to do with reality. There is no meaningful expression blocked by those "various numbers". Perhaps more to the point, it is simply impossible for anyone to be in a position to store and recite all of the "numbers" and have someone receive them and comprehend. 'Increasingly' also implies a vector not borne out by historical example. It is not as though you had an expressive purpose to the mechanized reproduction.
Re:Not necessarily (Score:3, Insightful)
You're absolutely right. It doesn't matter if most people don't want to crack things. If your audience numbers in the hundreds of millions, the odds that there will be a few brilliant people who love to crack things in it approaches 100%.
What's even worse is that there's almost no way to hire someone more brilliant than the crackers. Your talent pool for hiring is vastly smaller than the pool of potential crackers (everyone watches, or is exposed to movies -- how many people submit resumes to work at Sony?).
Re:Futurama and Firefly? (Score:2, Insightful)
Futurama in HD! Because cartoons look so much better at 1080p?
Re:Getting Old (Score:3, Insightful)
There are many other products that have limitations to their use after you buy it, even though you do not sign a contract for that.
For example, your car. You are limited to certain roads/areas to drive it, limited in speed, sometimes even in direction. Some places you are allowed to drive by but not stop.
These are limitations imposed by local laws, customs, and physics, but not by an agreement with the manufacturer of the car.
Or the house you own, even when the mortgage is over there are limitations on it's use. Maybe you are not allowed to run certain businesses their (brothels being an easy example), and more of those limitations. You can not just start expanding it for example, that you will have to apply for.
Again, these are not limitations placed on you by the seller of the house, but other branches of the law. You still own your house, even if you can't run a brothel in it. You can sell it, take it down, build a replica of it somewhere else.
So no I don't think there is the need for an explicit licence agreement to be signed when you buy the DVD to make the restrictions valid. Unless you want special liberties (e.g. republishing, showing it to an open audience, etc) in which you will have to open special negotiations with the copyright holder.
Well, no. If you don't have a license with the seller, then the seller cannot limit what you do with it; it's yours. There may be other laws governing the use (criminal laws preventing piracy, public viewings, etc) but these have nothing to do with the original seller.
The parent to my post was arguing that a buyer of DVD's is limited by license, which is patently false. No license applies.
So, though public viewings may be illegal, there is no law saying you can't resell the copy you own for example. You can show the movie to as many people as you want, in your own home. This wouldn't be true for licensed software, or presumably for licensed DVDs, if they existed.
The key distinction here is this: with a license, you have a contract with the rights-holder, that grants you privileges for a price. The contract is usually conditional; those rights can be taken away from you later, if you violate a term of the agreement.
A sale is a contract where the whole contract is done at the time of the purchase. The seller can't revoke the sale later.
Criminal or regulatory law (which is what you're talking about) is a "contract" between a government and the members of society being governed. If you break this contract (copying a DVD for example), the original seller doesn't necessarily have any direct recourse against you. The movie company doesn't generally get compensated when a commercial pirate gets busted (unless, of course, his lobbyist has purchased the necessary laws to enable that).
The movie distributor could sue you for damages, but they can't come and take the movie that you bought away from you, it's yours. They can't stop you from playing it. It's yours. For keeps. This is the difference between a sale of a good and a licensing scheme.
Re:Getting Old (Score:4, Insightful)
There are many other products that have limitations to their use after you buy it, even though you do not sign a contract for that.
For example, your car. You are limited to certain roads/areas to drive it, limited in speed, sometimes even in direction. Some places you are allowed to drive by but not stop.
Or the house you own, even when the mortgage is over there are limitations on it's use. Maybe you are not allowed to run certain businesses their (brothels being an easy example), and more of those limitations. You can not just start expanding it for example, that you will have to apply for.
So no I don't think there is the need for an explicit licence agreement to be signed when you buy the DVD to make the restrictions valid. Unless you want special liberties (e.g. republishing, showing it to an open audience, etc) in which you will have to open special negotiations with the copyright holder.
The restrictions on how you may use your car or your house are laws duly enacted for the public good. The restrictions on how you may use your Blu-Ray movie are contracts between you and the publisher, which are subject to certain laws. The laws that exist are to protect either buyers (fair use doctrine) or sellers (the rest of copyright). None of those laws exist for the public good.
If someone drives their car 100 miles an hour down my sidewalk, that threatens my own safety. If someone next door to me rips a million hours of movies, that doesn't threaten my safety one bit. It also doesn't even threaten the profits of the movie studios, *unless* the person then copies the ripped movies and distributes them.
Bad comparison. Try again.