What is your take on Cinavia copy protection - Page 6

If you can remove your personal feelings from the argument for a moment, what most people are missing is that you can never own the movie, book, song, etc. until the copyright expires and it defaults into public domain. Until that time the author, studio, publisher, etc. is the "owner", not the person that buys the copy. The buyer never owns the copy. The buyer owns the right to use the copy under defined conditions including "Fair use". This is what guarantees that he/she gets "recognition" and most importantly "pay" for their work. By default the person that bought a copy acquiesces to the laws of your respective country for the use of that copy. "Fair use" is a good thing in general and I think no problem if implemented as defined. The problem is many do not or will not and subsequently read "Fair use" as "Free use". For the most part, we have laws because a good many people will not do what is right or correct.

Common sense tells you that you will not show up for work tomorrow if your employer stops paying you; quid pro quo. The cats are out of the bag for DVD and Blu-ray copy protection. It only makes sense that a new one will be implemented to protect the assets of the owners. It's unfortunate that honest people pay a price for this as increased cost of the product and inconvenience in the use of the original copy.

I think we've come full circle. When VHS first came out there was no copy protection. Studio's more or less trusted the public and saw an opportunity to make money; yes, maybe even more money than they already were. Copy protection came because people didn't fully respect "Fair use" and people who created the product were loosing money.

The story will continue as a dog chasing its tail and technology will continue to drive the arguments.

At this point there is nothing illegal about protecting your assets. Therefore nothing illegal about copy protection. The catch 22 is the conflict with "Fair use".

The studio's offering a managed copy system is their own choice. In other words their answer to the question or problem. They are not required to.

Edit: Many new releases have a digital copy, a second or third disk, that can be used on your iPod, PC, PSP, etc. now. Not what I would like to see either, but it's something.

I think what's also interesting is how public libraries handle this.

Your local public library most likely has movies on DVD and maybe Blu-ray. Of course if you belong to the library you can check out the move for a defined time frame normally for free. A benefit of being a tax payer or in a tax paying family.

The library buys the copy or receives the copies via donation. Yet the library publicly distributes the movies at no cost. In other words no royalties to the artists or studios are paid. Yet it is illegal to buy and show that same move at your local pub as a public event.

How does that work? Anyhow, you get my point.

I'm not a legal expert on US laws, but the legal situation is a bit different in Sweden. We have almost the same problem as you but we don't have conflicting laws like DMCA. We actually pay tax for personal backup with blank media and flashcards/mp3players so it's clearly double standard when we can't bypass protection like Cinavia.
Digital Copy is not used that much with our regional releases. Most of the disc are based on UK transfers so some of them have it.
Digital Copy for me is not the same as a 1:1 backup to CD/DVD/ISO or other format so I can play it any device as the law entitles me to do.
Studios can have as many protections as they want but If they want to sell any movies over here they also must give us an option like digital copy with every release or lower the price if a copy must be bought.
This is not the case today here... but lobby groups are collecting their tax cuts.

About your royalty example. I'm not sure how those agreements work, but over here we have an organisation that distributes tax money to the movie/music makers so it's not really a problem for the consumer other than more tax =)

The biggest pirates on the face of the planet are the chinese. The sad part of Cinavia is that it will do absolutely nothing to deter them from making and distributing pirate copies within china -- that possibility went out the window when they cracked BD+. Cinavia is a non-factor for them, they just won't make players for their people with Cinavia.

Followed closely by the Russians and the Indians, who of course will just import Cinavia free players from nearby China!

And, once again, honest buyers continue to finance all of this nonsense.

Does anyone know any more about "Intel Insider"? I was reading an article about CES and stumbled upon this:

"One announcement that could prove interesting for the Internet TV space came from an unlikely place. Chip giant Intel Corp. announced that its new generation of processors includes a security feature, known as Intel Insider, that prevents the copying or distribution of copyrighted material.

It sufficiently assuaged the concerns of movie studios that a Warner Bros. executive appeared on stage at the event.

Kevin Tsujihara, president of the Warner Home Entertainment Group, said the company would now release new movies and popular titles for download or streaming on the same day as DVD and Blu-ray releases, directly or through online partners like CinemaNow.

That same technology could easily be integrated into Internet TVs or set top boxes, said Rob Enderle, technology analyst with the Enderle Group."

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/...s/7371692.html

I'm wondering if this only applies to downloaded/streamed content, or if this would also prevent the backup of physical media to a hard drive.

Intel Insider could probably hacked as everything else... Cinavia is worse atm.
Anyway we'll end up with a situation where we won't be able to watch even the discs that we buy soon... oh wait, it's called bluray firmware =)

"Intel® Insider™ is a hardware-based content protection mechanism. Requires a 2nd generation Intel® Core™ processor-based PC with built-in visuals enabled, an Internet connection, and content purchase or rental from qualified providers. Consult your PC manufacturer. For more information, visit www.intel.com/go/intelinsider."

It seems similar to the protection the Sigma 8654 chip has for Netflix (to prevent copying streamed material).

Thought I read that SB was going to have this protection built in...does this mean that covers htpc streaming now?

It is extremely unlikely that this sort of protection will affect the PC platform. The Intel Insider feature will only help when the playback is done through certain types of software which support that 'DRM wrapper'

The PC platform relies on user created programs for decode and playback of videos, and I just can't imagine Cinavia or any similar watermark feature taking effect if the program which is decoding it doesn't want to act on the watermark (which is what many of the user created decoders will do). It is possible that Windows might implement such draconian DRM measures (unlikely, again), at which point the 'freedom loving users' will just shift to Linux

...or to open source media players also available for Windows.

Let us not forget that most of the playback abilities of truly free open source media players are based on reverse engineering.

Every software can be reversed, Cinavia uses software for the detection algorithm. Complex software will always have loopholes. If not the Cinavia algorithm itself, then a vulnerable implementation, e.g. in a poorly coded commercial software player supporting Cinavia.

Time will tell, but I'm confident that Cinavia will be taken care of when it starts to become a serious problem / annoyance.

Of course. That’s because folks who bought iTunes downloads with DRM are not affected by DRM’s absence. They might not even know, let alone care, that it happened.

If that was true, Apple wouldn't have had a reason to remove it in first place. Many customers complained about the restrictions, hence Apple removed it (even Steven 'Guru' Jobs commented on it). It's not like Apple is the Salvation Army treating their customers exceptionally well - it was also a business decision. Apparently, the risk of losing revenue due to copying is more than compensated with the greater appeal of the product. Apple today is the most valuable company in the world, and the success of iTunes is one of the main reasons for it.

The movie industry on the other hand tends to blow this risk way out of proportion, and neglect the opportunity a freely copyable digital distribution format can bring. They could at least give it a try, a test ballon of some sort.

I think this is the first time this subject has ever been debated on the internet.....I could be wrong though.

Sony has released the first DVD with Cinavia on it -- "Takers"

So it's not just a BluRay problem anymore and will probably be on every Sony release on out. My money is on Disney to be the next one on the Cinavia bandwagon.

From the DVD Fab forum (updated today)


The only way around Cinavia at this point is to buy a media player with mature firmware that at least plays most of the formats you use, and never upgrade it.

Why not just stay away from players that are bound by the AACS license?

That's not even close to true. One of the biggest complaints of iTunes earlier was the DRM and the fact that because of the proprietary DRM that could only be unlocked on Apple equipped devices (or PCs with iTunes) people could not play their iTunes purchased music on other devices.

I can now play my purchased iTunes music on my Logitech Squeezebox players, and pretty much anything else I want to play it on.

This was not possible prior to the removal of DRM.

http://www.the-numbers.com/market/

Look at the figures. Yes their revenue was higher this year but look at the tickets sold. Figures have been dropping every year. And the sheer fact is that
1. 3D ticket attracted viewers to the movies
2. Because of the high movie tickets it has forced people to not go to the theatres.

Think about it. All those blockbuster flops like someone said before they force me not to go on TOP of the ridiculous ticket prices. Furthermore, the ticket sale revenue all goes to the movie industry. Now because of the greed of the movie industry they have taken off senior discounts, and student ticket price. There's a specific day for those tickets now instead of having it all the time. Well with that move, the movie industry just lost the market share of broke college/high school students and senior citizens. Next there's no more matinee...instead it is replaced with early bird showing which is right when they open. So now you lost most of the general public that usually attends the theater during this time.

Next on the list quality of the movie. I would pay to go watch a really good movie. I would go more than once. I'm the person that watched Dark Knight 5 times including once on IMAX. If you do the calculations $10/ticket = $40 and IMAX = $20...I spent $60 on Dark Knight in the theaters. AND I bought the Blu-Ray. So I spent $90 on a movie. Now on something else lets say Legion (just watched it last night). I waited until the Blu-Ray was on sale for $9.99 at Best Buy. Compared to Batman taking $90 of my money Legion only took $10. You see the difference? Quality is important as well as pricing.

The more, the better I say. Increases the pressure to find a workaround and bury this nonsense once and for all.

Btw., it's interesting how with the exception of The Social Network maybe, all those movies are rather crappy quality wise. All this effort for content most people wouldn't even want to watch for free, at least I wouldn't.

Good point about quality eTerNiTyw2o4. It has been going down the drain for a while now. It's not just a business crisis, but an intellectual one, too IMHO.

Cinavia on DVD now... it's getting worse
Today the swedish maffia lobby stated that they want 23 dollar per harddrive as a tax on top of our normal 25% tax.

If it was up to the producers of content there would be no pvr, no copying of any kind, fair use or otherwise, if they could jail you for recording from AM radio they would, im sure i remember networks griping about skipping commercials with a pvr. They have in many ways become the master of their own demise, oh but wait, they seem to be doing fairly well still, and would do even better if they would provide the content people want for reasonable prices. When it costs more than 10 bucks to rent a dvd something is wrong.

Ok, SOME iTunes users are glad the DRM went away--I accept that. The point was that removing DRM would not reduce the sales of iTunes since the folks who wanted iTunes already had access to free files, but chose iTunes for various other reasons.

Again, irrelevant. Even a guy on the street selling bootleg DVDs makes money. Lots of money. The issue is do the content owners make money. Why is that so hard to understand?

Does that guarantee Cinavia will never be implanted with a future firmware update? You tell me. For my money, I'll buy a player that satisfies as many of my requirements or desires as possible right out of the box and never let it update on it's own until I get a confirmation that any new firmware is Cinavia-free.

I agree, in a sense, although it is uncomfortable to watch the cloud of locusts approach. It is my personal expectation that most if not all new disk players introduced in this new model year will be Cinavia compliant -- all Sony models, for sure. Recent model players that are still being supported also run the risk of contracting Cinavia with a new firmware update unless the user knows enough to disable that function. So it is my expectation that Cinavia will gain a good foothold in the player space this year.

I use DVD FAb so I read their forum. I would say >98% of the people who post there are concerned with burning backup disks (DVD and BD) for use on players and not streaming. So the vast majority of DVD Fab's customer base is going to run smack into Cinavia sooner than the rest of us. If DVD Fab wants to stay in business, they will have to do "something" about Cinavia. If they can't we're all screwed in the long run.

I expect the solution to this problem to come from a different source than the "usual suspects" DVDFab and Slysoft. Maybe an initially unrelated hack, e.g. the complete defeat of the Playstation 3 protection mechanisms just recently, will reveal Cinavia.

The content owners make money with every single non-restricted audio file Apple sells via iTunes. Since iTunes sales have not exactly gone down ever since DRM was removed, the content owners are actually benefitting from the increased sales, too. What is so difficult to understand about that I figure...

I find it interesting that all the people pro Cinavia (I'm not saying I'm against it but I can see where other people are coming from. Plus I buy all my movies) have nothing to say about what I claim with quality issue. Which is really the biggest issue with the industry not "making" enough money.

Honestly, if the movie industry found a way to lock everyone out from downloading etc the general public will just wait for the movies to get on to tv instead of buying it or watching it in the theaters. You would still be loosing money. Are you going to ban cable tv next? QUALITY!!!

Wonder if this post will go unnoticed by the pro Cinavia crowd again

Just found out more about Cinavia in media streamers after a visit to Netgear and discussing with the PM:

Verance has already provided Cinavia code to Sigma around 1 year back. Sigma will integrate it in their SDK and supply it to their customers who have BDA licensing or will get it in the future (Popcorn Hour / HDI Dune / Netgear NTV 550). But this hasn't happened in last 1 year. No one is sure why this is the case.

When Sigma integrates Cinavia into the SDK, any future firmware releases based on that SDK will fail with Cinavia enabled files.

Netgear NTV 550 has an option to disable firmware updates and they also promised to let people know beforehand that a particular firmware update would be containing Cinavia (not sure whether they can be trusted on that -- told them as much)