Paramount boards the BD+ bus...

Re: Paramount boards the BD+ bus...

Can anyone say slower load times?

Re: Paramount boards the BD+ bus...

Makes little difference to me.

Re: Paramount boards the BD+ bus...

Or me--since I'm not one for illegally downloading and ripping films--which I consider to be another's property in the first place. And this is a problem why?

Re: Paramount boards the BD+ bus...

BD+ does nothing to stop those who wish to rip bluray movies, since it was broken long ago. All it does is cause player compatibility issues, slower load times, etc, and in the end makes the product more expensive for the consumer without any actual benefit to the studio.

Re: Paramount boards the BD+ bus...

Everyone know that 99% of the point of anti-piracy encoding is to keep honest people honest. The thieves are gonna steal no matter what.

BD+ and the like is intended to make it difficult for your average person to rip a disc without going through troublesome hoops. The point is to make it easier to just legally buy the damn thing.

The 1% of the population that insist on being criminals are fought via other means.

Re: Paramount boards the BD+ bus...

and like all other DRM, it fails miserably at that. With AnyDVD-HD installed, copying a bluray disc to an (unencrypted/unprotected) image or ripping the main movie to a file (complete with all audio tracks, chapters, etc) is ridiculously trivial.

Re: Paramount boards the BD+ bus...

IIRC isn't the general point of BD+ the ability to change keys, and render all of the previous hacks useless? Leaving only the already comprimsed discs at risk while the new ones are immune?

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Eventually the movie industry will come to realize the same thing that the music industry has, that products restrictions don't stop thieves. As long as the DRM doesn't impact my enjoyment of the film they are free to waste their time and efforts combating this endless game.

Re: Paramount boards the BD+ bus...

If I am not mistaken, it is more like the ability to change the method of encrypting and decrypting itself, not just the keys. BD+ is more like a specification for a virtual computer than a static encryption algorithm. Thus, the cat and mouse game is more like having to hack a new program each time they decide to change the software to patch previously hacked program, instead of a key discovery process.

The specifications of that "computer" are only available to licensees under non-disclosure, creating a major roadblock to reverse engineering the program protecting the content. (Although it seems that "computer" has been reverse engineered to a large extent.)


I actually would be one for illegally ripping some of my purchased blu-rays to my laptop so I can watch them at better than SD quality while traveling. I don't want to hand out copies to my friends, nor post them on the Internet, nor any other non-DMCA infringement. So yes, even for copyright respecting individuals this can be a problem.

It always irks me when people argue that a film is another person's property. The copyright is the property of another, not the copy, nor the right of copyright owner to dictate legal and illegal uses of my purchased copy.

Don't get me wrong, I realize the necessity for the protections such as BD+ and the less than ideal realities that cannot be helped as a result. I just wish people did not automatically equate illegal ripping to disrespect for copyright and theft. IMHO, it becomes theft when you copy to avoid the purchase of the film in the first place.

OK, rant done.

Re: Paramount boards the BD+ bus...

So your trying to justify breaking the law. Sorry, but it's not a gray area in this regard. If you defeat copy protection, for whatever reason - then you are in violation.

There is a legal solution to your problem. I can watch high-def discs while travelling anytime I want. It's called a Blu-ray ROM drive, and they are readily available out there.

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Just because it's the law doesn't make it right. (That's more or less the founding principle of the United States, which is where AaronMK lives, if not you.)

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I agree with Aaron. I think if there was a way in which the studios could assure that someone is only making a backup copy for personal use and not posting it online or selling it they would be just fine with it. The problem comes with not being able to prevent people from illegally sharing or profiting from it outside of fair use. The whole digital copy experiment is to tap into this very market Aaron is describing.

Re: Paramount boards the BD+ bus...

I am not a lawyer and so cannot comment on the legal aspects of the issue, but it seems to me that there's no reason I should be disallowed to make a copy of a DVD or Blu-ray disc for personal use. It is extremely convenient to do so for leaving in the car, taking on a trip, or giving to the kids (to name just a few reasons), so that there's no worry about damaging the original disc.

Recently, I purchased Slumdog Millionaire on DVD, only to learn that the copy I got was, though a manufacturing error, missing the special features advertised on the box. It is apparently a widespread problem, and Fox is mailing replacement DVDs to affected purchasers, but only after they first send in the erroneous DVD. Because I wanted to send the DVD in as soon as possible, but didn't want to be without the movie (which I was very excited about watching) during that time, I made a copy of the disc before sending it, which I plan to discard when my replacement arrives. Surely there is no reason anyone should want to have stopped me from doing this?

There are lots of legitimate reasons for wanting to make a copy of a DVD or Blu-ray disc. The notion that copy-prevention measures only affect pirates and other unscrupulous types is not only insulting, it's demonstrably false.

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Using a program like AnyDVD is critical to what I do with DVDs. Blu-ray has nothing to do with what I do, and won't ever be. I don't duplicate DVDs unless they are double-sided, in which case I absolutely duplicate one side for two reasons -

A) double-sided discs are a total annoyance and one has to be too careful (for example, I turned the double-sided Terminator SE into a 2-disc set, duplicating the bonus feature side of the disc, labeled both and put them in a 2-disc case. Also did the same for the double-sided BONES season 1, turning a 4-disc set into an 8 disc set, which caused my own issues as to where to put the discs)

B) I've found that in some cases duplicating a defective double-sided disc allows me to make a fix - it worked with a defective SLIDERS Season 3 disc.

What I do with DVDs is part of a hobby of mine - utilizing the video to make my own discs using the film's score albums and putting them together, sort of like silent films. Well, that and the extended Titanic I made a few times (took many times to get that right).

I don't sell anything, and I don't copy movies for any reason other than what I just stated. I don't think that makes me a pirate, in fact I don't know what that makes me aside from a guy with a fairly bizarre hobby.

Also, I don't think anyone who edits DVDs into funny 'mashups' and so on (Brokeback parodies, making the "Shining" trailer into a comedy film, making "Sleepless In Seattle" into a suspense thriller, the "Vader Sessions" video, all of which required people to get around said protection) are pirating movies either, and more than likely made no money doing what the makers of those videos did.

This post will likely be deleted regardless, but that won't change what I do, which affects literally no one whatsoever. No one loses anything with what I do.

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Actually, legally, he owns the disc, and the contents. It is his property to do with it as he will, for himself.

It is illegal to reverse engineer the encryption/decryption algo, it is also illegal for him to offer copies to other people.

But it is not illegal for him to copy the disc for himself, nor is it illegal for him to use a program to do it. The program itself might be illegal, but his actions are not.

The reason his actions are not illegal is because for it to be illegal, he must first have full knowledge that the program he is using has violated the legality of hacking the encryption.

Now, it is not illegal to decrypt the disc. It is only illegal if he were to hack the encryption algo to do so, if he could find another method that returns the proper values, he'd still be legal.

Of course, in general, it would take a computer something like 100,000 years or more to legally decrypt something.

It's only illegal when you're hacking the disc, or when you're offering copies for free.

This is why Emulation is legal, because so long as you don't look at the original, you're allowed to create something functionally identical. Of course, what generally happens in these instances is, to get the same output you need to duplicate the input, which results in something that is identical to what you weren't looking at.

Regardless, point being, there's nothing illegal about copying a disc for your own use. Nor does copy protection change that. It would only be illegal if you signed a contract with every purchase that you wouldn't copy it even for yourself.

I really doubt you'd find anyone in power in Hollywood who'd care if he copies it for his laptop. They care about the P2P and black market, someone copying their disc to watch on their laptop isn't an impact.

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Equating the Declaration of Independence and not liking copyright protection and laws that attempt to control copying products is a bit over the top.

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Andrew's analogy seems perfectly apt to me. Saying that two things have one specific characteristic (such as being illegal yet morally right) in common does not imply that he equates them totally. Nowhere in his post did he suggest that copy-prevention measures are as important an issue as is taxation without representation. Only that they are similar in one very narrow respect.

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Just a little bit. By that logic, anything I do is fine if I feel I'm morally correct.

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Don't confuse the issue with individual rather than a "whole". The US was founded by a group of people that were, at the time, based on the imposed laws of the time, law-breakers. If a majority of citizens deems a law to be unjust, they can change it, or by simply ignoring it, cause it to become irrelevant.

If enough of the citizenry of the US collectively decide that certain aspects of copyright law are unjust or unduly restrictive, they can change it, or in the case of a corrupt legal/legislative system, simply ignore the laws. It is entirely possible for there to be laws passed in the US that due to unfair influence of a small group do not represent the best interests of the general citizenry. That is where many believe we are vis a vie copyright law. Essentially, a small group of corporations have bought enough influence in the legislative branch of government to enact laws that serve only to protect their revenue stream, which many believe to be overly restrictive.

But that is another thread...

Re: Paramount boards the BD+ bus...

After they have paid for the initial copy, i think most people (people "a") would agree that it is their right to copy any "work" and do with that copy whatever they please. i imagine that would include the right for others (people "b") to copy those works that they (people "a") authored/manufactured/produced and distributed into the market place as well.

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Some interesting points Ryan, but surely you are not suggesting that it is OK to offer copies for sale.

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I suppose this specific discussion is irrelevant to both Lew and myself. Neither of us is in the U.S.

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Point taken, even though the international protection afforded by copyright laws are mostly honored in the breech in my neck of the woods.

Nonetheless (and aside from the use you cite in your post) I have found very few of those who actually create things (music, videos, movies, software, books or short stories) to support copyright violations.

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Of course not, that would be illegal. The only point it isn't is if it's for self-consumption of something you purchased.

Any copying for gain is illegal, any copying and sharing for free is technically illegal.

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Unfortunately, I agree there are significant number of people who feel that way. Partially, it is those people who really spoil it for those of us who just want to have transcoding flexibility for our portable devices or media centers without any intention to copy outside of devices owned by the original purchaser. Partially, I suspect studios want to be able to capitalize on additional sales for additional devices, like X-Box Live or an HD iTunes purchase, for example. And while...


is a step in the right direction, I don't think most people here will agree that the SD, 2.0 stereo encodes really do justice to the purchased Blu-ray. I wish I could make my own decisions on how to adapt bit rates and resolutions in consideration of the space available on a laptop or media server and the capabilities of such devices, transcoding directly from the Blu-ray. I might even accept some form of linking copies back to the original purchaser should they appear on file sharing networks, and licensing devices to play back and make those copies on the bases that such information would not be modified or striped.


Well said! I think that sums up the current state of copyright law quite nicely!

I remember some threads shortly before Blu-ray was released where everything DRM (morals, DMCA, reasonable expectations for both purchasers and copyright holders in the current climate, etc) was discussed at length. I think a lot of this will turn into a retread of those threads.

On the other hand, a lot has happened since then. Hard drive space, home networking, and the capabilities of portable electronic devices and those networked in the home have improved significantly, possibly influencing people's reasonable expectations of what they should be allowed to do with their media purchases.

DRM has effectively become a thing of the past in legal music distribution, but is still inescapable in legal film distribution. Thus, it might be interesting to compare and contrast the innovation that has occurred for allowing people to make the most of their purchases, the general legal framework regarding use of those purchases, the ability to enforce copyright law, and etc. in those two markets.

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IMO it is a symptom of a problem no one has yet attempted to touch, P2P. I mean, I really don't think the studios are all that worried about you letting a friend borrow your disc, they're worried about the hundreds of thousands of copies being shared, sometimes millions.

IMO, there's been alot of dancing around the issue over the last few years, but no actually tackling of the problem.

In honesty, DRM exists solely as a result of P2P.

As far as the end result? We don't need to compare and contrast anything, we've already got a ready example of the end result. PC gaming.

PC Gaming has been hit by the P2P bug for as long as the other media types, and in alot of cases has had virtually no copy protection whatsoever.

P2P and lack of DRM have done horrible things to the market. I remember one instance where a game, Pinball IIRC, had sold only 600 copies. But was pirated several thousand times on one tracker.

Another ready example is the game Titan Quest, which was heavily pirated. It ended up with a reputation for being "Bugridden". The bug was that the game would appear to work in a pirated version, then crash without warning. A legal version had no issues. The company went under. Not because the game was bad, nor because people weren't playing it. It was popular.

Companies have pulled out left and right from the PC market because of piracy, even the granddaddy of them all, ID Software, has made the choice to develop for consoles because of it.

Unrestrained, it'll happen here too. Movies, Books, Music, Games, they're all parallel markets. The end result on one is what the others face.

We require restrictions on P2P. It is not hard. The studio can submit a copy of a given film, which we could hash out a portion of it's frames, and randomly compare a subset of those frames to each upload. Get the same result, stall the upload and flag for manual review or automatically block it. Given a hash of sufficient size, the odds of a misidentify are pretty low. Problem solved. Can't pad the frames or pull the frames since it's random. Heck, could even do a straight comparision between the data contained in a number of random frames without going through the hassal of hashing.

I mean, we all know it's illegal, we all know it has some impact on sales, why screw around? Technology caused the problem, and it can easily solve it. DRM is unnecessary, if lawmakers got off their butts and actually tackled the topic of P2P and copyrighted material.

Thing is, I don't think lawmakers actually want to solve the problem.

Re: Paramount boards the BD+ bus...

No, DRM has been around in one form or another since the early 80s, if not earlier. It can be found in early computer software (uncopyable disks, software that deletes itself from the installation floppies, software requiring hardware dongles, etc.) as well as VHS videos (Macrovision protection starting in 1984).

"Virtually no copy protection whatsoever"? Really? What games from major publishers in the last five years haven't used SecuROM, SafeDisc, StarForce, or online activation?

ID is developing for consoles in addition to PC; it's not that they've moved because of piracy, it's that they're trying to gain the audience who jumped off the upgrade treadmill that is PC gaming.

All that would need to be done to defeat this is to put the video file in a password-encoded ZIP file.

Besides, the US courts have historically held that just because something has an infringing use, as long as there is non-substantial infringing use there's no problem. (See the Betamax ruling.) P2P has substantial non-infringing use, so there's no reason any such restrictions should be imposed on it.