Those who have been following my few comments about the continued Academy Screener dustup here or on NRO may be interested to know that a (full disclosure!) ABSOLUTELY FREE DVD player arrived at my door today. Given to all Academy voters and produced by Dolby subsidiary Cinea, it is meant to play something called S-VIEW DVDs – specially encrypted discs to prevent pirating. How secure are they? Says the flyer accompanying the player: “According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which developed the encryption that protects the S-VIEW disc, it would take a computer faster than any existing today approximately 149 trillion years to crack the key.”
Meanwhile, we have yet to receive a single disc to play on the sucker. Of the thirty or so DVDs I have already received, none are encrypted.
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19 Comments
1. Duke:The encrypted discs will play perfectly on an old ALTAIR or CP/M.
Dec 11, 2004 - 11:20 am 2. Terrye:Maybe some time in the next 149 trillion years they will send you a disc you can watch on it.
Kinda secretive aren’t they?
Dec 11, 2004 - 11:20 am 3. Lem:A Kerry 2004 Nuanced Flipflop would play it just fine.
Dec 11, 2004 - 11:40 am 4. Kyda Sylvester:“…it would take a computer faster than any existing today approximately 149 trillion years to crack the key.”
So I’m guessing no secret decoder ring was included (149 trillion years – LOL – I guess that’s pretty secure).
Actually, as a zealous advocate of personal and private property rights, I’m in sympathy with Hollywood on this one. Intellectual property in particular is getting harder and harder to hang on to.
Dec 11, 2004 - 12:14 pm 5. richard mcenroe:So you’re saying the Academy actually bought, paid for and shipped players that ONLY play these encrypted DVD’s?!
Dec 11, 2004 - 4:41 pm 6. Charlie (Colorado):Richard, the manufacture cost for a DVD player is around $30, and they already come with an encryption chip, so it’s not a big change, just a different algorithm.
Compared to the gimme bags they give the presenters, it’s nothing.
Dec 11, 2004 - 5:16 pm 7. richard mcenroe:Charlie(Colorado) ó I get that, but the exclusivity thing is just dense, seems to me… I mean, if you’re gonna comp the members, give ‘em something they can play with after the party…
Dec 11, 2004 - 5:23 pm 8. John Moore ( Useful Fools ):Whether it can be broken in a short time is a complex issue, butif someone can get their hands on the disk AND the player, the answer is likely to be yes.
Does it have a video outlet? Capture it on the computer. If they have at least one brain cell, it doesn’t.
But someone with access could probably tap the video stream at some point in the circuitry.
Or if worse comes to worse, they could film the damn screen!
Is the player armored? Could tampering be detected? Do you have to return it?
The number they gave you is the time it would take someone, using the dumbest possible cryptoanalytic attack (brute force) to break the code, without possession of the player. But security isn’t just codes. The code is merely one of a number of measures needed to protect the information.
The world of security is full of cases of cracking of commercial cryptographic security systems. The original C-Band satellite descramblers were cracked in a myriad of ways. They were developed by a company that did a lot of government high security encryption work, had a sophisticated encryption code (which I don’t think was ever cracked) and used some anti-tamper measures like keeping the crypto keys in RAM.
I once met some members of a team that was using electron mycroscopy to crack it (a challenge – these were nerds, not crooks), and if they continued (I don’t know if they did), they would have succeeded. Other satellite and cable video protection systems have been broken – usually by getting around, rather than breaking, the encryption.
“Chipping” the descramblers was a big pirate business for a while, and involved attacking the part of the system that decided whether you were authorized to watch a premium program, ignoring the entire encryption system. I have the technical background to have easily chipped my descrambler=, but I didn’t – I pay for content and don’t like breakinig laws, even stupid ones.
Other content control systems on DVD’s have been cracked (in one case, DECSS, the program to crack one is so compact the whole thing used to appear on geek sweatshirts – a first amendment challenge since revealing such a program is a violation of a very poorly thought out law.
I believe it was cracked because the DVD’s wouldn’t play on Linux, and somebody wanted to do so, but I could be mixing up cases.
Dec 11, 2004 - 5:54 pm 9. ambisinistral:Sounds like the DVD pPlayer was foisted of by the same technical consultants who convinced Hollywood to make This Movie
Dec 11, 2004 - 6:11 pm 10. Roger:For the record, the Cinea DVD player plays non-encrypted DVDs perfectly well. Also, I don’t really know who paid for them. It is certainly not the Academy itself. The Screeners are sent by the studios that distribute them, so I assume some combine of the studios or the MPAA itself, paid for the machines. I agree with Charlie above that the cost was not great, but I would put it closer to $50 plus shipping.
Dec 11, 2004 - 8:01 pm 11. Charlie (Colorado):Whether it’s $30 or $50, it’s trivial compared to what the majors will spend pushing the various films.
In fact, cheap DVD players are getting socheap that I’m amazed they don’t give them away free with some of the box sets. Sort of free-razor, sell the expensive blades.
Dec 11, 2004 - 8:35 pm 12. Pat Curley:If Hollywood had any sense they’d get over the fact that somebody somewhere is watching their movies for free. It’s a time-consuming process that most people would rather not bother with; it’s easier to run down to Blockbuster and rent it for a weekend. Remember when duped tapes were going to be the death of Hollywood?
And besides, if Microsoft, the biggest software company in the world, can’t protect their products, what chance does Hollywood have.
Dec 11, 2004 - 9:06 pm 13. Lem:Disposable DVD’S! I guess it was inevitable.
Technology’s envelope is pushing an ever shorter product lifetime cicle. Disposable is as short as we can make it right now.
Although the DVD does have a disadvantage ‚Äì ‚ÄúUnopened, Mr. Arnold said, a Flexplay disc can retain its “freshness” for at least a year. Unfortunately, many movies cannot make that claim.‚Äù
Click Lem for the Dec. 2nd NYT article.
Funny, usually the Times charges for old stories.
Dec 11, 2004 - 10:18 pm 14. Lem:OOPS, sorry about that.
Here is the Times story (click Lem)
Dec 11, 2004 - 10:20 pm 15. Charlie (Colorado):As for DeCSS, I’d post one here, but the really short ones just look like line noise. However, you may find Tourestsky’s DeCSS Gallery amusing.
My favorite is #40, DeCSS the Movie, which is a (gigantic!) MPEG running the code in a 30’s-style credits scroll.
I’ve got a DeCSS t shirt.
Dec 12, 2004 - 7:11 am 16. richard mcenroe:All well and good, but let’s not get away from the important issue of persuading Roger to use his clout to get Zapped! 3 made…
Dec 12, 2004 - 11:14 am 17. Keith:According to this article the secure DVD will not be used until next year.
“This is not an all-or-nothing proposition,” said Cinea marketing veep Lawrence Roth. “Studios can make decisions now or once the system’s out there. We hope it will be used this year, but also expect it will be used in ongoing years.”
and
If the machines are indeed sent out, current DVD owners have the option of experimenting with the new machine — or leaving it in the box until next year.
Dec 12, 2004 - 12:03 pm 18. Doug Halsted:The DVD player has to have a way to send the signal to your TV, such as a cable or S-video plug. Hook a VCR or DVD+R to the “special” DVD, then the TV to the recording device and have it record on channel 3 or 4 (or whatever channel the DVD player uses).
Dec 13, 2004 - 7:49 am 19. dooley:“According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which developed the encryption that protects the S-VIEW disc, it would take a computer faster than any existing today approximately 149 trillion years to crack the key.”
Sounds like classic cryptographic snake-oil to me.
1) ‘149 trillion years’… if you’re trying to brute-force the key (presumably they have a really big key-length). There are probably other attacks which can be made. If they are relying on ’super secret’ algorithms, or even algorithms embedded in hardware, then they will soon find their algorithms and hardware reverse engineered: there’s big money in piracy (not that I would know _>;
Dec 16, 2004 - 6:08 pm