Work Around for New DVD Format Protections

An anonymous reader writes "For the new Blu-ray and HD-DVD formats, Hollywood implemented a complete copy protection scheme; almost everything has to be encrypted and authenticated. Despite the crypto-stuff in Advanced Access Content System and High Bandwidth Digital Content Protection, they left the backdoor wide open — they forgot about the PrintScreen button. Using this function you can create exact digital copies of a film picture-by-picture and reassemble them into a stream."

Never safe... Until

[SirCyn]

No consumer content will be safe from copying until they can beam it straight into our heads.
Both video and audio, you can always plug the output device into an input capture device and copy it that way. And with new digital transmission mediums the quality can be kept very high (compared to those who remember the VCR-to-VCR via RCA cables days).
Not to mention that any encryption scheme that can be decoded can be broken. It's only a matter of time.

An exercise in futility

[gweihir]

This just shows that whatever the content industry (not the content creators, btw) do to protect their distribution monopoly is doomed to fail. After all it requires just one good enough rip and the thing is out there. This specific security hole is extremely stupid, since the attack is one of the most obvious things to try. Even if ripping is harder and the domain of technology enthusiasts, distribution via P2P filesharing is easy and P2P filesharing is by now basically unkillable.

Still I think there is hope: The stuff Hollywood had been producing in the past few years is now so bad, that soon it will not be worth the bandwidth and disk space to download it, let alone the time to look at it.

Re:hrmm

[mwvdlee]

If the "Print Screen" key can do it, so can 3rd party screen grabbers.
They may be able to block the key, but there is no way to block the 3rd party programs unless they hack the OS. (Not that, i.e., Sony would mind doing that).

Yeah right

[Britz]

So the new copy protection sheme is supposed to keep professinal pirates (the guys that copy the movie and then sell th ecopies in large quantities) from gaining a copy? Gimme a break!

And it is supposed to be a hurdle to those "release groups" (the guys that compete with each other to be the fastest to release a movie to the p2p networks)? Yeah, right!

This hole (and there will be others) is another prove that there is no protection against those two groups. They will simply find another way.

But it puts a major obstacle in the way of paying customers that just want to watch movies. The movie studios don't realize it because there is no pressure from an alternative. That is also called a monopoly. And who is going to break it up? The movie industry and the record industry both seem to need a little "help" to get some competition back into their respective markets.

And just to make things easier...

[Noryungi]

You can automate the whole process using the two software below:

1. AutoIT [autoitscript.com] to create a script.
2. IrfanView [irfanview.com] to grab the entire screen and/or apply optional transforms to the captured image. This is optional, since AutoIT can probably send the "PrintScreen" command itself, and move the resulting file(s) into a capture directory.

Just set your DVD software to play frame-by-frame. The rest is taken care of by the automated script. Sure, it may take a couple of attempts, but once you have the formula down, ripping an entire DVD movie should not take more than 4x or 5x the normal duration of the movie. Just let your computer run all night and you can have a brand new DiVX in the morning.

Now, what I'd like to know is: how do you rip the soundtrack off those uber-protected DVD? Hook the DVD player to an MP3 recorder? Or do you use one of the software that pretends to be a valid sound card?

Re:In other News

[Compholio]

They took my tilde, now I cannot cheat in Half Life 2! NOOOOOOO! But honestly, no one's gonna printscreen an entire movie.

The concept of taking full-blown movies of your desktop is very old and is used a lot for computer training programs, it would be incredibly simple for one of those recording programs to record the video and audio of a playing movie and save it without the copy protection.

We own you...

[Anonymous Coward]

"When asked to comment, Toshiba confirmed the security hole found by c't, which affects the computers already sold, and announced updates for the player software and graphics card driver. These new software versions should disable the screenshot function."

So, basically, not only does Hollywood own the playback hardware you buy, but they can remotely disable your application software and drivers, too?

NEW AND IMPROVED! HIGH DEFINITION DVD! BUY NOW!

Oh, and, by the way, if we don't like how you are viewing our product, we'll remotely break it.

Remind me again why I should pay any money for something I won't actually own?

Re:form. This "front" is obvious.

[kenthorvath]

What you should have the right to do is make a backup copy for safekeeping, or for viewing on a device that doesn't have a DVD drive/player (notebook PC, iPod, whatever).

Don't forget having the ability to rip certain parts of the movie to disk to edit and play with, use for presentations (PowerPoint, etc...), and just plain old make parodies of. Making amateur derivative works without charging for them is beneficial to society as a whole. Just look at youtube.com to see countless examples. The real problem is that user-created content is starting to steal the spotlight from Big Media, and DRM is one way to lock out the non-conglomerates from competing.

History Repeats Itself

[Anonymous Coward]

The first DVD ripper program ever released, long before deCSS and various hacks to windvd/powerdvd actually used this method.

MS and the content industy will close this hole and similar ones easily with the new tools that tcpa , vista and "protected video path" gives them.

But then again, how hard is it to just strip the hdcp and capture the resulting raw video :)

how about analog duplication?

[roman_mir]

I suppose it will be possible to create a 'camera', a CCD really, that is of the same size as your screen and that goes on top of your screen like a film and captures each pixel's intensity and color in multiple points even, averages out the color of the actual pixel and records this data as a video. Audio can be also copied in analog mode. Of-course it will always be possible to just point your camera at the screen and shoot (they will try to prevent analog copies as well, of-course, but that will be nearly an impossible war.)

Re:Not so much, really

[radtea]

Yet, anyways. It's still possible to break the chain somewhere and extract content. I'm guessing that'll always be the case too, at least for a good long while. Only way to get around that with what we have today would be if MS started selling PCs that are welded shut.

And that don't have any output.

So long as it's possible to get output, it's possible to produce a nearly-perfect digital replica of any content.

A/D conversion isn't perfect because of noise, but you can play back the movie/audio/whatever as many times as you want and average the noise away, or use fancier statistical algorithms to reclaim the original content, pixel-by-pixel, frame-by-frame. If you're worried about A/D bias, run it through multiple playbacks on different hardware. It just isn't that hard. Anyone who has worked in digital imaging (my own backgroud is in realtime x-ray) knows how easy this is.

I can see the videophile's system of the future: a video driver card with an external analog output plugged into a video capture card, plus a bit of software to repeat the process of playing the movie and averaging the frames until the desired quality is reached. Instant (ok, maybe 1 day turn-around) DVD/Blur-ray/HDTV-quality non-DRM'd video.

We've hardly begun to scratch the surface of means for making DRM obsolete. People who invest in DRM Just Don't Get It(tm).

Re:And just to make things easier...

[EnsilZah]

Software that pretends to be a valid sound card?
We had a virrtualization story just four stories back, i'm thinking it wouldn't be that hard to modify an open source virtualization solution so that the video and audio output devices can be captured from.

Wouldn't be that hard for someone who knows what they are doing that is.

Re:hrmm

[DrXym]

This is kind of a stupid exploit all right. Yes it's possible to capture screen, just as it's possible to do the same with every e-book. The next question is who is going to bother to do it. It seems far easier to just hack the software player, or wait for the inevitable dongle which streams HDCP to any device of your choosing. That's even assuming your average pirate would even be bothered to go to those lengths. I'm sure even a downsampled image on a non-copy protected device is more than adequate for viewing and ripping purposes.

Re:hrmm

[Kosmatos]

Now with virtualization technology, where the OS is running virtually, or in VMWare, you'll be able to do a "Print screen" at a higher level than the OS, so it shouldn'T be a problem.

Re:hrmm

[Dun Malg]

But how long would it take to create a program that does it and syncs the audio as well?

Syncing audio is trivial. You know that clapper thing they use in filming that has the scene, shot, and movie name? The actual clapper bit is traditionally used to sync the audio with the picture (though digital filming has largely rendered the clapper obsolete). For a finished movie where they've (obviously) edited out the lead-in where some PA snaps the clapper, you need only find a scene where someone is slamming a door, hitting a table, or otherwise making a real (not foleyed in, like a gunshot) sharp, percussive noise. Line up the noise with the motion and the whole movie will be in sync.

Re:hrmm

[westlake]

I run Linux. I should not be locked out of media I purchase over the counter?

You are locked out if you are too stubborn to buy a decoder.

--which will be offered by every Linux distro sold as an OEM systen install. Every Linux distro with the slightest chance for commercial auccess in the North American home market,