No more DECRYPTER..... [Archive] - Page 3

castellanos

10th June 2005, 10:41

hm... good question freelock7... I ask my self the same.
However, the laws are different in every country, the fate of LINGHNTING UK! in England belongs at the moment only there, probably it could not happened in another country.
As long as the laws allow them, AnyDVD or DVD Region+CSS Free are going to be alive in their respective country (U.S.A?) and also, we are going to be able to use them.
Greetings! ;)

jwo62

10th June 2005, 15:18

Dvd95copy can also rip arccos discs. Its not free,but for about the same price as anydvd,it also processes/shrinks(with many options) and burns.

That said,I am now also looking closely at anydvd and DVD Region+CSS Free. I dont like having all my eggs in one basket.

absinthe

10th June 2005, 18:33

Personally, I'm anxious for someone to take a crack at RipGuard. I don't suppose it's on any major commercial DVD releases at present. I was just reading about RipGuard (http://www.macrovision.com/products/complete_dvd_protection.shtml) at Macrovision's site. They sure do sound confident in it. :rolleyes:

The more I think about the Macrovision scenario, the more I think they are the company to blame here.

-abs

mrslacker

10th June 2005, 18:43

Originally posted by freelock7
For the future, rip guard is coming with the terrific digital code created by Macrovision .
Great challenge to replace DVDdecrypter but with the risk to be prosecuted.
Who will be able -and brave!-to do it?
I think ripping and copy protection removal should be somewhat mutually exclusive. Let the rippers do their job on CSS and avoiding bad sectors. Once the files are off disc, appropriate IFO/VOB patching could be done in a separate step (with a separate program). The ripguard framework description (http://www.macrovision.com/products/ripguard/images/UniqueDigitalFramework_large.jpg) is pretty vague, but it seems to be nothing terribly unique, as they claim. Bring it on.

Princeton professor Edward Telten has an optimistic take (http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=768) on RipGuard. I agree with him... provided that ripping programs become more like DVD players. Imagine a ripping program that exhaustively navigates the disc, as a player would. Most pitfalls of blind ripping would be avoided. Other reauthoring problems would remain, but I see that as a place for less mainstream "protection management" / "standards compliance" / "compatibility assurance" tools.

Comprehensive disc analysis routines are already present in programs like VobBlanker and PgcEdit. Searching for unreferenced material and navigational impossibilities is not exactly a lingering challenge, thanks to the authors. The later program even has a habit of pointing out subtle discrepancies and authoring errors. Of course, these tools have nothing to do with copy protection, and I wouldn't want to imply any such functionality of those tools. This is just an example.

Point is: I believe that this is the "end of an era", as LIGHTNING UK! suggested. Fair use and progress will not stop, but the workflow definitely will.

wild77

11th June 2005, 01:15

LIGHTNING UK! Thanks for one of the best programs I have ever used, and will continue to use.We need more people that are as dedicated as you have been! It may have been a free program (well worth my donations) but I never had a problem and it never let me down. If only the major software companies could develope software that worked so well.I have been fooling with some of the other Rippers and none can compare to DVD Decrypter!

Best of luck to you!

S***W SONY :devil:
S***W MACROVISION :devil:
S***W Who ever is putting the SCREWS TO YOU! :devil:

niamh

11th June 2005, 14:48

I was just reading about RipGuard at Macrovision's site. They sure do sound confident in it.

Well if they're the ones threatening LightningUK, the only thing they seem confident about is that he would crack it in weeks :rolleyes: Otherwise, why bring him down now (or anytime for that matter, if the thing is going to be uncrackable)?
In a way, it's a great compliment done to you LUK, you are feared. Of course, if these people who threatened you had half the wits of a bluebottle fly, they would have offered you an extremely highly paid job, instead of trying to sue you for probably the amount of money a small country generates in a year (I guess)

Ayway, > 16000 views already, quite an impressive amount of support in general :)

Is there a place one can donate so as to provide a lawyer for LightningUk or something? I'd like to help

dragongodz

11th June 2005, 15:18

I think ripping and copy protection removal should be somewhat mutually exclusive. Let the rippers do their job on CSS and avoiding bad sectors. Once the files are off disc, appropriate IFO/VOB patching could be done in a separate step (with a separate program).
all in one go though would save extra steps and hassles. obviously having it optional would be the way to go though incase any dvds were to crop up that were not handled correctly. you may want to read what i say here anyway
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=63339&page=2

calinb

11th June 2005, 17:45

In a way, it's a great compliment done to you LUK, you are feared. Of course, if these people who threatened you had half the wits of a bluebottle fly, they would have offered you an extremely highly paid job, instead of trying to sue you for probably the amount of money a small country generates in a year (I guess)Perhaps they did! Or perhaps they purchased the rights to the program. We know nothing about this legal action! Consider the potential lure of a corporate offer vs. maybe 1/1000 users sending in $10 or $20 to support your development efforts! :devil:

This is a good argument for releasing open source; it insures software developers against any future pacts with the devil ;)

SeeMoreDigital

11th June 2005, 18:17

I would not write off DVD Decrypter's continued usefulness just yet. As Doom9 has reported today: - ....However, a while back, PS lists were introduced, and it just takes the proper PS file to beat future versions of "structure protection" (from an engineering point of view we're not dealing with protection but perversion of the specs). So all we need are some forum enthusiasts who know how to code the relevant "Protected Sector" file and we're back in business :D

Cheers

mrslacker

11th June 2005, 18:48

So all we need are some forum enthusiasts who know how to code the relevant "Protected Sector" file and we're back in business
blutach basically said that earlier in the thread, and i agree that approach will prolong DVD-D for quite some time.

But what about protection tricks introduced that are not based on bad sectors? The RipGuard "Unique Digital Framework" I linked to a few posts up seems to indicate they have plans to mess with the integrity of the disc on many levels. Maybe.

mpucoder

11th June 2005, 19:46

Well, we will just have to wait and see.
One of the mistakes made with DVD was not giving the command set enough power. When floppies were protected by the method Arccos uses (bad sectors) simply removing them, or correcting them, did not work because the protected program could check to see if a key sector was unreadable. That cannot be done in a DVD, the only way to access a sector is to attempt to play it. And the reaction to unreadable sectors is not standardized, but most players stop, some display a code. Nor can the command set check the size, which would indicate a shrunken/modified copy. Nor can it perform a checksum. In short, there is not much that can be done to make it both uncopyable and watchable.

oh, and Macrovision is usually full of hot air. I don't understand how they continue to exist. I mean, If I wanted something protected, I would also want a guarantee that the method was at least worth the cost. They don't offer that, and can't because Macrovision has never prevented any movie from being pirated.

Malphas

12th June 2005, 00:43

Looks like someone is hoping to cash in on the demise of Decrypter.

http://www.dvddecrypter.r8.org/

http://club.cdfreaks.com/showpost.php?p=1017192&postcount=98

mpucoder

12th June 2005, 00:51

Who is he trying to fool? "I lost all my programmers" and "I'm looking for a wide range of people including reverse engineer" should be enough to convince anyone that this is not the original author.

But, then again, P. T. Barnum was probably right.

geoffman

12th June 2005, 01:53

ah-huh........

mrslacker

12th June 2005, 06:08

oh, and Macrovision is usually full of hot air. I don't understand how they continue to exist. I mean, If I wanted something protected, I would also want a guarantee that the method was at least worth the cost. They don't offer that, and can't because Macrovision has never prevented any movie from being pirated.
Yeah, they're a b.s. company. It's really quite amazing. Still, once a few years ago, my girlfriend and I wanted to watch her Bridget Jones DVD on my VCR. So we tried to make an analog copy for the night. Thank's to "ACP" that didn't work out. It didn't take long to trace the ætiology of the problem and correct it, but it still got in the way.

These companies target the masses - Dumb asses like me and my girlfriend. But that doesn't concern us much any more. Right?

I'm glad you are hopeful, mpucoder. You certainly have an intimate perspective, having written your own authoring program.

After all, maybe it's just Britain... and we have the EFF on our side. ;)

Chetwood

12th June 2005, 10:20

Well, I personally don't flame that nameless company (I mean, if my future depended on an encryption, and all I do is encounter people trying to destroy and circumvent my best efforts, making them for naught, what would I do?

So who says that you as a company have any more RIGHTS to demand a constant revenue from your product than anyone else? If you saddled the wrong horse tough luck for you!

The only reason I could accept was the law itself. And even that doesn't hold true anymore since the entertainment industry managed to buy them in their favor depriving us from our fair rights use.

hhanh00

12th June 2005, 11:37

I would not write off DVD Decrypter's continued usefulness just yet. As Doom9 has reported today: - So all we need are some forum enthusiasts who know how to code the relevant "Protected Sector" file and we're back in business :D

Cheers
It's not as easy as it seems. AFAIK, Arccos use a fairly rigid structure where the first 3 cells of the main movie are bad sectors. You can skip them and rebuild the IFO. If instead, you use a scheme where some random cells contain bad sectors but are yet referrenced by some unreachable program chain, it becomes difficult to figure out how to recognize them. The DVD instruction set contains registers and conditional jumps, so it's quite easy to make a innocent looking PGC be unreachable.

Doom9

12th June 2005, 14:06

The DVD instruction set contains registers and conditional jumps, so it's quite easy to make a innocent looking PGC be unreachable.Still.. what a player can parse, any other software can parse. So after authentication of the disc, a PSL writer could parse the disc's structure and commands and spit out the proper PSL file.

And if you've seen the news, the company is no longer unnamed. Here is their contact information: http://www.macrovision.com/company/directions/index.shtml. Keep it civil though, flames will not help.

hhanh00

12th June 2005, 18:47

Still.. what a player can parse, any other software can parse. So after authentication of the disc, a PSL writer could parse the disc's structure and commands and spit out the proper PSL file.

But if you parse the IFO, you will find that the sectors are in use. The problem is similar to automatic dead code removal, which is not solveable.

dirio49

12th June 2005, 19:52

what do you people think of this site?
http://www.dvddecrypter.r8.org/

iNFO-DVD

12th June 2005, 21:23

That site's a con.....

It's not 'Lightning UK'... He didn't have 'a bunch of programmers'

dirio49

12th June 2005, 23:22

But if you parse the IFO, you will find that the sectors are in use. The problem is similar to automatic dead code removal, which is not solveable.

what about if the software just look for bad sectors and whatever was bad would be used to create a psl file out of it
would that work?

hhanh00

13th June 2005, 00:27

what about if the software just look for bad sectors and whatever was bad would be used to create a psl file out of it
would that work?
Yes, I think this would work. It was mentioned in another thread actually. But finding a bad sector means reading it and getting an error from the drive. That takes a long time and I personnally wouldn't want to submit my drive to thousands of hard read errors. I don't think it's good for it. CloneCD has a 'fast bad sector skip' where it would only try to read every Nth sector after the first bad one in order to avoid too many hard read errors. In theory, they could also circumvent that method by scattering bad sectors all around the disk.
The good news is that as long as they are going for an out-of-the-box protection mechanism, it will be possible to recognize its 'signature'. And companies like protections like that. It's even marketed as a feature of Ripguard. In the game business, Safedisk, SecureROM, etc. are likewise, and they have been cracked. DVD protections are much more limited in what they can do as compared to the PC - so most likely, they will be cracked even faster.
I just don't see how an universal program can make the PSL.

m1ckran

13th June 2005, 00:33

Interesting news item on Doom9 today. It was Macrovision! Now they seem to be turning on Doom9. Is Doom9 safe?

From the news item, it looks as though Macrovision have no real claim against LUK. I suppose, though, they have the money to bulldoze justice their way.

I've always regarded Macrovision protection as being remarkably ineffective. Perhaps they continue in business by using the law to generate income by way of damages.

I wonder if Macrovision would explain why, if they are acting ethically, they try to remain anonymous.

Glad it's not Sony as previously suggested.

Does anyone have any news of LUK? Doesn't have to be DVDD-related. Just to know he's ok.

dirio49

13th June 2005, 03:29

I just don't see how an universal program can make the PSL.

i think all the program will have to do is write a text file of where it found the bad sector. that is what a psl is, isn't it?
but phasing the ifo is probable faster.

how would be able to recognize its "signature"?
if that was true we would not need to update any program.

wild77

13th June 2005, 03:35

MACROVISION the company who shut down LIGHTNING UK!
http://www.doom9.org/

Macrovision Corporation, a Delaware corporation founded in 1983

Based in Delaware because of the Tax Laws?, No offices or employees listed there!

CORPORATE GOVERNANCE & ETHICS

Macrovision Corporation is committed to not only developing superior technology for our customers but also building a world-class company. With this commitment to excellence comes significant responsibility to conduct ourselves in a fair, ethical and legal manner at every level of our organization and at every location where we do business. Sound principles of corporate governance are critical to achieving our goal of corporate excellence. Macrovision promotes good corporate governance and ethics through a number of policies, procedures and practices, including:

Now that’s what I call BULLS**T

Macrovision Locations
http://www.macrovision.com/company/directions/index.shtml

Board of Directors
http://www.macrovision.com/company/board/index.shtml

I WILL BE SENDING SEVERAL LETTERS TO THEM!!!

I will keep it civil, but I will exercise my Right to Free Speech before the F**ked up Politicians in Washington try to take that away.

RIPGAURD WILL BE BROKEN

dragongodz

13th June 2005, 04:02

CloneCD has a 'fast bad sector skip' where it would only try to read every Nth sector after the first bad one in order to avoid too many hard read errors. In theory, they could also circumvent that method by scattering bad sectors all around the disk.
if however the whole VTS or CELL or whatever was used as unreferenced or referenced but not reachable by menu etc then it would not matter if it contained good sectors aswell since they wouldnt be ever seen anyway. they couldnt just have a CELL that plays with errors in the middle of it as those error sectors would need to be skipped for players aswell. so a fast error skip would actually work if it was made sure a new read was done at the start of a new CELL etc.

i mentioned this in the cladxp thread but since we are talking about these things i may aswell mention it here aswell.
if someone wanted they could take something like smartripper(why start from scratch ?) and add in Vobblankers remove unreferenced material function. this should defeat most(?) current arccos dvds. then add a fast error skip with bad sectors or cells etc being replaced with dummy info or blank material(referenced material will say what the section is meant to contain). that would be good for not only badly authored(such as on purpose) dvds but also for partial recovery and backup of damaged dvds aswell. ;)

just because DvdDecrypters source was never released doesnt mean that its the end. other sources were and who knows maybe one day they will be used to "fix" future dodgy dvds. :D

hhanh00

13th June 2005, 04:08

if however the whole VTS or CELL or whatever was used as unreferenced or referenced but not reachable by menu etc then it would not matter if it contained good sectors aswell since they wouldnt be ever seen anyway. they couldnt just have a CELL that plays with errors in the middle of it as those error sectors would need to be skipped for players aswell. so a fast error skip would actually work if it was made sure a new read was done at the start of a new CELL etc.

This fast error skip would not detect a bad cell where the bad sectors are in the middle of it.

dragongodz

13th June 2005, 04:35

This fast error skip would not detect a bad cell where the bad sectors are in the middle of it.
yes it would. the cell would be read as normal, since you are ripping it, until it hit the errors. THEN fast error skipping would kick in, possibly after a set number of consecutive errors, for the rest of the cell. the good parts before the errors could be kept as-is since they are ok and only the errored section needs replacing. again thats good for partial recovery of damaged dvds aswell.

hhanh00

13th June 2005, 04:43

yes it would. the cell would be read as normal, since you are ripping it, until it hit the errors. THEN fast error skipping would kick in, possibly after a set number of consecutive errors, for the rest of the cell. the good parts before the errors could be kept as-is since they are ok and only the errored section needs replacing. again thats good for partial recovery of damaged dvds aswell.
That's cool, but you still will get one hard read error per bad cell and you can have hundreds/thousands of them.

mrslacker

13th June 2005, 04:46

I completely agree with dragongodz and Doom9 on the matter of unreferenced material and PSLs. As we have pointed out, generating a PSL amounts to finding unreferenced material. I believe (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=666810#post666810) that the solution lies in abandoning the blind copy approach in favor of a selective rip based on a full disc parse. Even so, if there are any unreadable sectors in a cell, the entire cell might as well be marked bad, as dragongodz pointed out (I think). A cell is the smallest unit of playback.

BTW, IsoBuster is an excellent tool for finding unreadable sectors on physical media.

dragongodz

13th June 2005, 04:55

That's cool, but you still will get one hard read error per bad cell and you can have hundreds/thousands of them.
do you mean cells ? ok if they decided to make a large number of cells all with errors then yes it would take a long time and a lot of errors would be read etc, but hows that any worse than reading every single sector ? atleast with skipping every Nth sector after X consecutive errors while still in the same cell you would be speeding up ripping compared to just doing every sector irrelevant of previous errors. fast error skipping would never be slower than trying every sector and in most cases probably quite faster.

Malphas

13th June 2005, 04:57

what do you people think of this site?
http://www.dvddecrypter.r8.org/
Check the previous page (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=95485&page=6&pp=20).

hhanh00

13th June 2005, 05:00

do you mean cells ? ok if they decided to make a large number of cells all with errors then yes it would take a long time and a lot of errors would be read etc, but hows that any worse than reading every single sector ? atleast with skipping every Nth sector after X consecutive errors while still in the same cell you would be speeding up ripping compared to just doing every sector irrelevant of previous errors. fast error skipping would never be slower than trying every sector and in most cases probably quite faster.
I agree - It's a good idea and very worth doing. Why do you want to keep on reading on the same cell? If it has one bad sector, you can blank the whole cell.
I was saying it was not infaillible as a very evil DVD can still take too long to rip.

dragongodz

13th June 2005, 05:02

Even so, if there are any unreadable sectors in a cell, the entire cell might as well be marked bad, as dragongodz pointed out (I think). A cell is the smallest unit of playback.
yes you could consider the whole cell as bad and just fill it with replacement data(since the length of the cell is known from the ifo then adding blank frames ,for example, of the same length with any ifo adjustment etc as needed). however if the error didnt happen until part way through you would just add the replacement data from that point and keep the partial material you ripped succesfully. that would be better for trying to rip and recover damaged dvds IMHO.

dragongodz

13th June 2005, 05:11

Why do you want to keep on reading on the same cell? If it has one bad sector, you can blank the whole cell.
yes as i said thats 1 option. depends if you are trying to recover a normally damaged dvd or a purposfully damaged dvd.
for a purposfully damaged one then just replacing the whole cell is of course fine. however for a dvd the kids dropped and scratched you may want to try and recover more if possible. in that case skipping forward and reading again within a cell may show more of the cell is readable and recoverable.
so under fast skipping you could have 2 options, 1. replace cell from damaged section on, 2. fast skip through cell.

PatchWorKs

13th June 2005, 08:49

what about join an open source backup tool (FairUse (www.fairusewizard.com)) ?

dragongodz

13th June 2005, 14:51

what about join an open source backup tool (FairUse) ?
i notice you have said this in 2 threads now, why ? is fairuse a ripper ? that is does it simply rip all files from a dvd to hd so you can process(burn, convert, whatever) with another program or is it infact a dvd to avi/ogm/mkv tool ?
of course i know the answer already, the questions should have given that away. :)

to answer you question though, of course if UMP wanted to add these types of handleing of dvds to fairuse that would be up to him. however that would NOT suddenly make it a dvd ripper like dvddecrypter. the reason i mentioned smartripper is because it IS a dvd ripper similar to dvddecrypter and IS open source. it has not been updated for years but with the types of changes we are talking about it could be made in to a more relevant program with the bonus that the source would be out there for anyone to change in the future.

none of this is anywhere near urgent of course since dvddecrypter does a fine job for now. its just some general musings by me about what could be done in the future if anyone wished to. :D

LoloMc

14th June 2005, 00:22

Does anyone have any news of LUK? Doesn't have to be DVDD-related. Just to know he's ok.

Anyone can confirm everything is OK for him ? Doom9 ? Please ;)

Malphas

14th June 2005, 00:39

He posted on CD Freaks with regard to the imposter, so I guess he's still around somewhere.

castellanos

14th June 2005, 07:36

It is getting messy!
New site pretending to be a re-born LIGHNTING UK! and also, some people offering a new version of DVD Decrypter 3.5.5.0... all fake!! :angry:
It would be nice to clarify officialy (Something in the news) that all those links are fakes. To keep people out of confusion and for LUK! sake too.
Greetings!

PatchWorKs

14th June 2005, 10:22

i notice you have said this in 2 threads now, why ?

Sorry for the doubled post, but i had not seen this 3ad before... :p

is fairuse a ripper ?
No, but this is the core problem.

A so called 'DECRYPTER' can be stopped/sued for DMCA infrightment (protections circumvention), a backup tool not (here in EU, backup copies are legal).

FairUse have the great characteristic that needs the 'original' DVD to work (or an ISO file...) so is more hard to say it is an illegal tool.

We need to circumvent the laws, not (only) the protections :D

rkr1958

14th June 2005, 15:04

http://www.dvddecrypter.r8.org/ Is this for real? DVDDecrypter is back?

Wildfire

14th June 2005, 15:25

http://www.dvddecrypter.r8.org/ Is this for real? DVDDecrypter is back?

Nope. I don't believe it all. First of all, if it was real LUK would surely be sued after all. Further more, the "Dvd Decrypter is BACK!!" newsitem is written in quite another style than the original newsitems from LUK himself. And wasn't DVD Decrypter developed by LUK himself? This site claims DVD Decrypter had a development team...

So, all in all: I suggest you don't believe it. I will only believe that DVD Decrypter is back when we see a) a newsitem on Doom9 and b) a really functioning new version of DVD Decrypter.