Blu-ray Content Protection Revealed
The BDA (Blu-ray Disc Association) has announced measures to protect BD content from illegal copying and mass piracy. These measures include Advanced Access Content System (AACS, also in use by HD-DVD), “BD+”, and ROM Mark.
AACS
Also used by HD-DVD. With AACS, information is stored on every disc that allows or disallows certain players to play the disc. That means that a studio can decide to revoke a player’s rights to play a disc. So if a hacker hacks your particular player to get around the content protection, studios can then place that player on a list that’s stored on every BD subsequently sold. And those BDs will not work on that kind of player. So if someone else buys the same machine you bought, and hacks it, your machine could become a blue laser paperweight.
BD+
“… a Blu-ray Disc specific programmable renewability enhancement that gives content providers an additional means to respond to organized attacks on the security system by allowing dynamic updates of compromised code. With these enhancements, content providers have a number of methods to choose from to combat hacks on Blu-ray players. Moreover, BD+ affects only players that have been attacked, as opposed to those that are vulnerable but haven’t been attacked and therefore continue to operate properly.”
ROM Mark
ROM Mark puts a unique and “undetectable” identifier on BD-ROMs such as movies, music, and games. BD-ROMs with this mark can only be manufactured with equipement only licensed BD-ROM manufacturers can buy. This prevents unauthorized copying of the disc.
Summary
All in all, I couldn’t care less what kind of copy protection is used on BD discs, as long as I can view all the content on the disc in the highest possible fidelity possible. Unfortunately, that may not be the case if (a) I cannot use my TV’s inputs to view the content or (b) my player, through no fault of mine, is revoked and refuses to play the content. So we’ll have to see how this works in practice. As to (b), I think there would be a tiny bit of an outcry if people’s player just stopped working for them. But for (a), there are just too few people with older HDTVs for Hollywood to care about them.
Link: Yahoo! Finance - Blu-ray Disc Association Adopts Comprehensive Content Management System
Link: DVDFILE.com - What the studios really seem to have in store for us
Check out our new sister blog on Home Theater, HTBlog.net
September 19th, 2005 at 12:59 pm
[…] I haven’t heard any specific measures that Sony will use to combat piracy for their PS3 games, but piracy prevention has been a big topic for Blu-ray, the disc format to be used by the PS3. I discussed this topic over on HDBlog.net. Blu-ray discs use 3 technologies to discourage pirating: Advanced Access Content System (AACS), BD+, and ROM Mark. (For details see the article.) I think that if a game for the PS3 is released on a Blu-ray disc, that the software publisher could probably use any combination of those three technologies to protect their game. As we know, every content protection system will be broken eventually, but these three tools will make it very difficult for miscreants to copy games illegally. […]