[mythtv-users] CD Copy protection?

[Michael T. Dean]

Richard Bronosky wrote:

> Ryan Steffes wrote:
>
>> The trick of the whole situation is that the only protections that 
>> even kinda work are the ones that use bad data.  However, it can't be 
>> TOO bad or you wouldn't be able to play it at all, and the amount of 
>> peopel who watch movies/listen to music on their computers is too 
>> large a segment to ignore.
>>
>> ... Even the best CD copy protection isn't going to stop people from 
>> connecting line-out to line-in -- old school tape recorder style.
>>
>> Ditto for DVDs, it's not that hard to play your DVD out to PVR in.  
>> Standard formats just can't be protected too much or they become 
>> useless, and you aren't going to sell a new standard to people who 
>> are very happy with the old standard.  No one is going to be able to 
>> force everyone to change their TV, stereo equipment, computer 
>> hardware, car stereo, radios, boomboxes, dvd players, VHS players, 
>> and put special DRM chips in everything, including ALL speakers and 
>> microphones and video cameras.  That's what you'd have to do to keep 
>> any copies from being made ever.
>
Don't be so sure.  The EFF may have won a battle with the "delay" of the 
broadcast flag, but don't think that means we've won the DRM war.  
Playback of "premium content" on Microsoft's next OS (currently called 
Vista, unless MS decides it's easier to change the name than to pay off 
the 10 or so companies sueing them for the name) is even more 
constrained than playback would be under the broadcast flag.  IMHO, it 
was a brilliant move by the MPAA/RIAA to forget about trying to push 
something through US law--which would only apply to a small fraction of 
the world population--and instead make Microsoft--de facto standards 
body of the world--the primary enforcer of content protection.

Vista includes "Output Content Protection" (OCP), which is nicely 
summarized by MS at 
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/stream/output_protect.mspx .  If 
you read the whitepaper available at the link, you'll notice all the 
nefarious schemes that OCP incorporates--down-res'ing content output 
over analog links (VGA), "fuzzing" the video output when connected via 
digital link (DVI) to a device that does not support HDCP/HDMI (i.e. 
most (all?) computer monitors in use today--meaning any money you spend 
on a monitor is wasted, so there's your excuse to buy that HDCP-enabled 
HDTV), encrypting the data as it's transmitted over the PCIe bus to the 
graphics card, and similar stuff for audio (some of the details of the 
audio protections are still to be determined).

The scary part is that there's nobody to oversee the proper application 
of these restrictions.  The entire system--from the design and 
implementation of the protection scheme to the decision about what 
constitutes acceptable use and even the decision to revoke 
licenses/protection scheme that have been compromised--is in the hands 
of corporations who have a vested interest in limiting what we can do 
with their content.  (OK, the FCC was bought out by the industry, and 
did not/would not have made a good consumer-rights watchdog, but at 
least the US government has many other arms--some of which were willing 
to listen to consumer feedback regarding the broadcast flag.)

The OCP relies on MS Windows Media formats (audio and video), including 
the Windows Media licensing scheme (which involves downloading licenses 
from the Internet).  The player is embedded within the OS--at a level 
below the user application level--so every player has the same 
quality--that quality MS provides--and applications only put up a 
"remote control" interface to be used to pass commands to the player.  
Couple that with the "Trusted Platform Module Service" in Vista ( 
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/platform/pcdesign/TPM_secure.mspx 
), and it's quite likely this content will not be playable on any system 
other than Vista and "closed-box" consumer-embedded devices (i.e. 
set-top HD-DVD/BD-R0M players, set-top cable/satellite boxes, etc.).  
Since MS has already gotten the self-proclaimed DVD standards body (the 
DVD Forum) to require support for MS WMV (the VC-1 CODEC, formerly known 
as VC-9) in HD-DVD, and since Blu-Ray needed to do likewise to compete 
with HD-DVD, there's a good chance that it will be hard to find any 
content that doesn't use this type of protection.

The sad (funny?) part is that all these suckers buying Microsoft Windows 
Media Center Edition PC's  are getting systems that won't be able to 
play any content in about 2 years.  And the reason they won't work is 
Microsoft, the company that's knowingly selling obsoleted systems at 
inflated prices today.

There are two saving graces...  The whitepaper constantly refers to the 
need for obfuscation and secrecy of code (which is impossible--if it's 
digital, it's vulnerable) and the scheme will affect all users of future 
MS operating systems.  Therefore, people outside the US--people who 
aren't constrained by the Digital Millenium Copyright Act--will have 
ample reason to work on compromising the scheme.  (Since the broadcast 
flag was US-only, compromising it really only made sense to someone in 
the US, but that person would be forbidden by the DMCA from even 
attempting such compromise.)

> HDMI...  all future video out will be similar to it.  Shortly after 
> HD-DVD is defacto, DVDs will no longer be made.  All HD-DVD players 
> will only output over a protected method...  Analog cable too will 
> disappear and all the new cable and satellite receivers will also use 
> protected outputs...  Then this mailing list will be discussions about 
> the kinds of file servers, gaming boxes and home automation/video 
> surveillance machines that people are converting their PVRs into.
>
> It's sad, but it is coming.  Pessimistic?  No, informed.

Yep!  I agree completely.

Mike