Disney Encrypting Screener DVDs to Prevent Piracy

[Sirber]

Disney is continuing their war against piracy. To their Oscar reviewers they now send out special encrypted DVDs, which can be played only on a DVD player of the "Cinea" series. From the article: "The DVD players are encoded with recipients' names, and screeners sent to those people are specifically encrypted so they can be seen only on those particular DVD players." Yet, Disney is alone on this. Sony and Universal Pictures said they won't follow that step.

http://news.com.com/Disney+backs+antipiracy+tech+for+Oscar+DVDs/2100-1026_3-5910843.html?tag=nefd.top
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/25/0034224&from=rss

[Mug Funky]

haha! that's not going to win any favour with the academy...

all the screeners that come from my work are just DVD-R discs with fancy printing on the top (we've got a cool disc duplicator that can burn runs of up to 100 discs with 2 plextor drives and a printer. it's like the reverse of a jukebox). no CSS, no macrovision, usually no region coding. i mean, why worry about industry people pirating your stuff? they're the ones who'll ultimately be buying your products anyway. does disney actually have proof that people they send screeners to are leaking their stuff onto p2p networks? it'd take a clever geek to trace the origins of a divx/xvid back to a particular encode. if they're that worried, why not put a hard-sub every 10 mins that says "trade use only - not for sale" on the video. that'll spoil it for downloaders, and will make it easy to trace the leak back to a screener disc.

or maybe disney have already done this and that's how they conclude that screener recipients are the source of some piracy...

[johnhamler1]

to avoid piracy, they should not sell /give their crap!

[int 21h]

haha! that's not going to win any favour with the academy...

all the screeners that come from my work are just DVD-R discs with fancy printing on the top (we've got a cool disc duplicator that can burn runs of up to 100 discs with 2 plextor drives and a printer. it's like the reverse of a jukebox). no CSS, no macrovision, usually no region coding. i mean, why worry about industry people pirating your stuff? they're the ones who'll ultimately be buying your products anyway. does disney actually have proof that people they send screeners to are leaking their stuff onto p2p networks? it'd take a clever geek to trace the origins of a divx/xvid back to a particular encode. if they're that worried, why not put a hard-sub every 10 mins that says "trade use only - not for sale" on the video. that'll spoil it for downloaders, and will make it easy to trace the leak back to a screener disc.

or maybe disney have already done this and that's how they conclude that screener recipients are the source of some piracy...


http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,62102,00.html

Those 'warning' subs have been around for years, and when the copies show up on the internet with those same subs, I'd say thats enough proof that screeners are winding up on the internet.

The new watermarks, from the studios taking that route, are much more interesting given the fact that if they stay intact, the studio can trace the copy back to the original (Unfortunately for the studios, it seems most serious movie pirates are removing the watermarks effectively.)

The Cinea DVD player has to display on an analogue device eventually, that's when it's output will be nabbed. Remember, to a pirate, even a digital->analogue->digital copy (even if it has lots and lots of warning text, black and white flashes, scrolling counters, etc.) is better quality than the in theatre recorded alternative.

[Doobie]

The Cinea DVD player has to display on an analogue device eventually, that's when it's output will be nabbed. Remember, to a pirate, even a digital->analogue->digital copy (even if it has lots and lots of warning text, black and white flashes, scrolling counters, etc.) is better quality than the in theatre recorded alternative.

I'm sure it still has macrovision which still messes up most devices that record analogue. I think this new strategy will be very effective at keeping screeners private.

[ChronoCross]

that's what they said about Region Coding and CSS. Someone Broke it in like 2 weeks. Silly things like this won't work.

[mpucoder]

MacroVision does not stop piracy.

[dragongodz]

I'm sure it still has macrovision which still messes up most devices that record analogue. I think this new strategy will be very effective at keeping screeners private.
macrovision became an "effective" copy protection ? when did that happen ? :D ;)

[Shinigami-Sama]

macrovision became an "effective" copy protection ? when did that happen ? :D ;)
I was wondering about that myself, hell I could probly write a script that removes macro within two months, and I"m not trained(!!)


but it seems that disney is trying to shoot itself in the foot again, it's not going to have many toes by the time next gen dvds are out in force if it keeps this up

[adam]

If I was an Academy judge I wouldn't mind at all, hey its a free DVD player. And I think the reason they are going this route is specifically because they want that protection but don't want to have to put big 1-800-no-copy disclaimers all over the videos. The judges shouldn't have to look at that.

I remember a few years back one of the really prominent and well known (at least within that circle) Academy judges got caught supplying screeners to release groups. They found out that he had done it for hundreds of movies over many years. Big scandal at the time.

[Shinigami-Sama]

if I were a judge that'd piss me off, having to use equip that I may not want or need

[Doobie]

I was wondering about that myself, hell I could probly write a script that removes macro within two months, and I"m not trained(!!)

There's no script in the world, real or theoretical, that can break macrovision analogue protection. You know not what you speak of.

[Shinigami-Sama]

I never said it wouldn't remove wanted parts of the source, but it could kill macrovision, mostly by destruction of part of of the source at the analogue level

[mpucoder]

Macrovision analog protection can be removed by any digital frame synchronizer / TBC, and by analog TBCs - all very cheap.

[Joe Fenton]

Macrovision on a DVD is just a simple bit flag that tells the player software to turn on the MacroVision circuit in the video encoder that feeds the composite/svideo output. There are two ways to defeat it - make a program that clears the flag as the disk is copied (all rippers do this), or hack the video driver to ignore the flag (many hacks on the net for ATI and nVidia drivers to do this).

Once you reach the output of the video encoder, it takes hardware to remove the MacroVision. However, MacroVision is insanely simple to remove via hardware. They've sold $40 boxes that do that for years. MacroVision sues companies that make these boxes for "violating the MacroVision patent" to try to curb this practice, but for every company they drive under, three more spring up.

Many people have these video "cleaners" hooked between the VCR and TV because MacroVision noticeably degrades the quality of the picture. Everyone should have one of these devices simply to have a better picture.

[AceOvArts]

just wanted to bump this thread as we are seeing screeners now encrypted with cinea. anyone working on this nonsense yet ?

[Mug Funky]

i imagine it'd be too niche a market for any major haxxors to have a go at it.

annoying as it may be, there really is no fair use argument whatsoever for making a backup of a trade screener (though some i've seen have been unbelievably scratched in some way or another). you could easily request another disc from the source if you lose yours or it gets damaged.

now, if you've licensed the content of the screener, that's a different matter - you'd then have to request a rippable version of it (with the usual hardsubs and watermarks i'd imagine). i've had to work with screeners quite a bit, and it'd certainly annoy me if someone gave us one of these to use (they'd probably not be savvy enough to give us a player for it...).