[ModBreak] The contents of this site are somewhat outdated and it will no longer receive updates, but it was actual when it was written a year ago. The first HD-DVD and Blu-ray devices have now made it into some rich folks living rooms and there is little to be done about the DRM now but hack it. Though this site has not yielded any result, at least I know several thousand people a month have read it and may have become a little bit wiser or at least learned something new :)

I will continue using the DRMadness.com domain as a Dr. Madness blog (planned, anyways), but I will keep these pages on here for future reference. [/ModBreak]

Piracy

Starting off, let's make one thing absolutely clear. Nothing they can do will prevent piracy. The professional pirates will always be able to get to the unencrypted content. If you can see it on your screen, there is a way to access it. Where, how and when are the only factors that change. But keep in mind that the professional pirates have much to gain by doing it, and so they will. As soon as the pirates will begin making copies, these copies will eventually end up on the internet. When they end up on the internet, they're going to spread like wildfire and everybody will be able to download them.

To go even further, we could say this new system can actually create more piracy. For example, if your expensive HDTV gets blacklisted, what would you rather do? Buy a new HDTV so you can buy the new movies? You're essentially forced to download the new releases because if you buy them you wont be able to play them!

It's clear the system will have no negative impact on the big pirates. There's only one group who will be affected by this system, and that's us, the normal consumers. We are the ones who have to make the big expenses for no good reason whatsoever to renew our equipment. We are the ones affected when a device gets blacklisted. We are the ones being restricted. Ironically, we are also the ones actually paying for the content.

So how are the pirates going to get around these copyright protection schemes? There are several ways to get to the content.

1) Hacking into HDMI/HDCP. If you are able to hijack the data stream you can access the content without quality loss. It's then a simple matter of connecting it to a computer or other specialized device which can take this stream and reencode it. Ofcourse the reencoding will result in a tiny bit of quality loss, but with the high-resolution high-bitrate MPEG-4 AVC video compression and corresponding audio compression standards you are able to store on a HD-DVD or Blu-ray disc, you will probably never even notice the difference. Doing this is probably the most time-consuming way to do it, but it is certainly possible. There are already devices on the market today that can strip the HDCP part from HDMI. For the average consumer they may be a bit pricy, but I do expect those prices to drop and many people buying these devices. However, for the pirates this will be a minimal investment. It would be safe to assume the first copies will be made in this way.

2) Hacking the player. If you can hack the software in the player (for the real hackers this probably wont be that big a deal) you can just stream out the content you want.

3) Hacking into PVP-OPM. A very real possibility (previous Microsoft protection schemes like WMV9 and WMV10 have been hacked already). Very difficult to accomplish, but with the scores of brilliant programmers around the world, I would bet it won't take very long before it happens. You would then most likely still have the uncompressed content as with hacking into HDMI/HDCP which requires reencoding.

4) Hacking AACS. This would be the preferred way to get to the content. Essentially this means removing the encryption but getting the content in compressed form. No quality loss whatsoever will occur. It will probably not be long before this happens. Even IEEE's Spectrum magazine found it to be a technology likely to fail (if the big brains at IEEE say such a thing, you can be pretty sure it's the truth). Once this happens, HD-DVD and Blu-ray discs can be copied in the same way DVD's can.

Only one of these four (possibly more) methods needs to be accomplished (and they will) to essentially undo all the protection. With options 1 and 2, they can blacklist the device. Doesn't really matter, they'll just take another device. The owners/authors/publishers can't very well blacklist every device now can they?

BD+? This might go a small way to prevent option 2, but it will ultimately fail. Really, if a pirate hacks the player, wouldn't BD+ be the first thing he'd try to disable? ROM Mark? Ways to duplicate the 'watermark' will be found. Either they will be forged, or illegal copies will just be made in licensed factories. It has happened with CD and DVD, it will happen with Blu-ray as well. Furthermore, once the content is unencrypted it doesn't matter if the mark is present or not. Most likely the players won't look for the mark if the content is unencrypted, because if they would, you would never be able to make a disc of your vacation videos and such. It does nothing to prevent distribution through the internet either. There's a danger with ROM Mark as well, if your disc gets scratched where the ROM Mark is, you won't be able to play the disc!


In the end, you don't just have to pay for the players and the discs (which will be higher in price because the costs of all this copy protection stuff has to payed for, by you), you'll probably also need to make extra expenses to buy HDCP compliant equipment for no good reason and to nobodies benefit.

Let's face it, no one likes to throw away money. Now is the time to Stop the Madness! - Related articles

Go back to: How it's used

Proceed to: Stop the Madness!