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Wednesday May 31, 2006
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 BusinessWeek posted an excellent primer on the DRM features built into new Blu-ray and HD-DVD discs by David Holtzman, former CTO of Network Solutions and the editor of GlobalPOV.com. The article makes it pretty clear that the days of relying on software encryption to protect Hollywood's big-budget films are soon to be gone. Perhaps the most ambitious plan is BD+, which takes a very active approach to copy-protection. According to the Holtzman:
There's an ominous feature buried in this so-called protection mechanism: If a particular brand of player is cryptographically "compromised," the studio can remotely disable all of the affected players. In other words, if some hacker halfway across the globe cracks Sony's software, Sony can shut down my DVD player across the Net. Now that is reaching out and touching someone. I wonder if BD+ will work with the internal Blu-ray drives that ship with PCs? I tend to be the Blu-ray fan on staff, at least compared to some, but that is just creepy.
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June 1, 2006 8:45 AM
But what if you don't have your player connected to the net? How would they shut it down? Unless they do something like embedding a kill list in movie releases, they could never touch you if you don't touch the net. And that would bring up even more problems. You buy a new release, take it home, throw it in the player and get some screen saying "Sorry, this player has been deactivated". Now you have Joe Consumer mad at the player manufacturer and the guy that just sold him a new movie that killed his player. And why would you have your player on the net anyway?
June 1, 2006 10:52 AM
It's appropriate that the photo accompanying your post is a Sony product. Sony, the folks who intentionally ship (at least two versions of) root kits in their CDs. Sony, the folks who, when forced to admit they shipped root kits, said (paraphrasing) that they reserve the right to do anything they want when it comes to DRM. Since Sony is willing to trash customer PCs, I don't see why they wouldn't also be willing to trash their other customer products. All the other manufacturers have followed like sheep. I find it interesting that the quote says "the studio" can shut down the player. Not the manufacturer, nor the guy who sold it to you. If true, this is a Microsoft-like sweet deal: sell the product but make someone else be responsible for it.
June 2, 2006 9:09 PM
#VALUE!
June 2, 2006 9:10 PM
#VALUE!