Blu-Ray DRM Plans Released

[Suhit Gupta]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1845993,00.asp' target='_blank'>http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1845993,00.asp</a><br /><br /></div><i>"The Blu-ray Disc Association said Tuesday that it has settled upon the AACS rights-management system to secure its discs, together with an additional identification and update scheme. Both the competing Blu-Ray and HD-DVD formats will use the Advanced Access Content System, which was specifically designed for next-generation optical discs. However, the Blu-Ray group will also secure its discs with ROM Mark, a method to identify authentic Blu-Ray discs, as well as "BD+", which will serve to dynamically update the rights-management schemes in case workarounds or other cracks are discovered and exploited ... While the ROM Mark scheme doesn't appear to have quite the scope that the Video Content Protection Scheme scheme that Hewlett-Packard and Philips proposed, it does embed "a unique and undetectable identifier in pre-recorded BD-ROM media such as movies, music and games". "</i><br /><br />Apparently, unauthorized copying of DVD discs costs the industry $3 billion per year. And while they acknowledge that this new scheme will not necessarily be perfect, Blu-Ray content protection scheme will allow studios to do, however, is play an active role in content management, and be able to react to attacks upon it with its own updated code.

[Felix Torres]

"If an exploit is published for a particular player, that player may be "turned off," or disabled, according to Setos, a process known as "revocation". He described a scenario where an exploit was published for a particular model of player. The player provider would then be obligated to update the player via BD+, while the serial number of an actual hacked machine could be detected and disabled."

Wow!
That's pretty draconian stuff.
But it seems to me the only way this can be done is if the players are permantly connected to some kind of communications system, either the internet or a broadcast signal.

I suspect they must be working on the latter cause otherwise portable players wouldn't be possible. Doable with some variation of the technology MS uses for their SPOT watches...

Gotta wonder just how tight they want to lock the system down though.
False positives are always a possibility and if they kill a whole vendor's line of players because of an obscure hack somewhere there will be some really ticked off customers...

Oh, well; this is where we're headed without question. :roll:

[Jeremy Charette]

From what I've read I'm inferring that the ROM updates will be on the disc itself (they're relatively small files). The player will check the version on the disc vs. the version on the player, and update if necessary before allowing the disc to be played.

Microsoft has done this numerous times with Xbox games, and with Xbox live updates. It's transparent to the end user, and allows them to update Xbox consoles that are not connected to the Live service without the user knowing otherwise.

[Damion Chaplin]

Apparently, unauthorized copying of DVD discs costs the industry $3 billion per year.

That sounds like a BS number to me. Sure there are probably people out there who are populating their entire DVD libraries with pirated copies, but I don't think that's very prevalent. First of all, the process of ripping and/or copying a DVD is pretty complex. It's not exactly like hitting play on one machine and record on the other. It's complex enough that for the most part, only power users do it. Those same power users are the ones with 500+ DVD libraries, all legitimately purchased.

I am one example of that. When a new, good movie comes out and I want it, I buy it. I spent over $400 to buy the entire Farscape series. I could easily have rented them and copied them, or downloaded them off the internet. The only movies that I've ever copied were ones that I was not going to buy in the first place. I'll bet that's probably true for most people. The movies they copy are ones that they're not going to buy at all, or, in the example of Star Wars or something like that, they're going to download it off the internet and then buy the DVD when it becomes available.

That $3 billion number (if accurate) does not apply to end users. It's the professional pirates that are making the industry loose money by making 10,000 copies and selling them on the streets of NY for $5, not end users. Creating a scheme that may disable the end users' players is just plain wrong if you ask me. Oh, you didn't ask me? Oh. Sorry.
:wink:

[Felix Torres]

From what I've read I'm inferring that the ROM updates will be on the disc itself (they're relatively small files). The player will check the version on the disc vs. the version on the player, and update if necessary before allowing the disc to be played.

Microsoft has done this numerous times with Xbox games, and with Xbox live updates. It's transparent to the end user, and allows them to update Xbox consoles that are not connected to the Live service without the user knowing otherwise.

That would work for some of the stuff they discuss.
But they talk of two-way connections and deactivating whole regions or specific serial numbers.
Not sure a disk-based system can do that; for *those* things, MS relies on XBOX phone home features...

However they do it, it is definitely a *big* escalation of the Piracy/DRM wars...