Comment Some random thoughts about CSS from a DVD guy (Score 1) 895
I work for a company that, among other things, produces DVDs. One of my colleagues made the interesting point that CSS is not protecting DVDs from being copied. You can still make a perfectly good (digital) copy of a DVD, because the bits are not protected by CSS.
The real copyprotection is in the Macrovision part of the DVD specification. Macrovision is a scrambling technique that makes analog copying of DVDs impossible. (Unless you happen to have a 'signal enhancer' or other Macrovision defeater, of course.) This is the reason that some other guy could not use his VCR to generate a RF signal.
Macrovision also states in a letter that was sent to various DVD production companies that the whole CSS thing will not increase piracy overmuch, as it is not feasible to copy entire images to harddisk or DVD-RAM (which has 'only' 2.5 Gb) or DVD-R (because the cost would be too high, DVD-Rs are quite expensive).
The real reason that there is CSS is to prevent DVD production houses from using eachother's techniques in their own productions, giving competitors in this field an unfair advantage.
Just to put things a bit in perspective.
Ronald
The real copyprotection is in the Macrovision part of the DVD specification. Macrovision is a scrambling technique that makes analog copying of DVDs impossible. (Unless you happen to have a 'signal enhancer' or other Macrovision defeater, of course.) This is the reason that some other guy could not use his VCR to generate a RF signal.
Macrovision also states in a letter that was sent to various DVD production companies that the whole CSS thing will not increase piracy overmuch, as it is not feasible to copy entire images to harddisk or DVD-RAM (which has 'only' 2.5 Gb) or DVD-R (because the cost would be too high, DVD-Rs are quite expensive).
The real reason that there is CSS is to prevent DVD production houses from using eachother's techniques in their own productions, giving competitors in this field an unfair advantage.
Just to put things a bit in perspective.
Ronald
