DVD video protected disks.

Recently I got up with a challenge to copy a protected DVD video disk... which is actually illegal, but I just did it for educational purposes.

So what is this protection? It happens that some of the data on the DVD is encrypted, the key to this encryption is supposed to be written to the lead-in area of the DVD.

What a DVD player does is read this key for purpose of decryption of the data (video) under question... so the hardware should support decryption if you want to play such a thing.


Luckily most modern DVD writers (everything else below it is obsolete) do support this, thus you can flawlessly copy such a DVD, defeating it's purpose.

Thoughtfully speaking, almost all sorts of DRM is complete crap (almost, cause few are actually effective, that I've discussed later). If any medium makes a sound and produces a video, it can be, in the modern world, captured with no losses... if it plays in a DVD player (it will) you can record the lossless data though S/PDIF DVI or HDMI... if you're applying DRM to a media which has to be played on a verity of hardware manufactured by various corporations, the technology is probably crap, i.e if you want it to be effective there should a few listed hardware devices which should be able to play it, I bet the Chinese will be the first to break such sort of DRM. This actually did happen in North Asia a few months after CSS DRM was launched... they recorded it live, making the copy protection useless.

Such sorta things cause nothing but problems to the end user... as a result they too download pirated.

So let these propritory DRM people learn a few things by NOT buying anything DRM protected. Yeah, protection of copyrighted material is good, but what's the use if it poses no effects at all?... I mean, if you're having copies of the same thing floating as torrents on the Internet what's the use of it?

So in Europe we have a ban on P2P communication, that is effective, but it's clearly in excess... I mean you're trying to deprive people off fundamental rights simply to make Britney Spears and Steven Spielberg richer?.. yeah, why not forbid people to 'record' the movie and music 'in their minds' to ensure they wont be able to reproduce it anywhere else?.. why not just forbid phone calls to ensure the copy protected lyrics are leaked out off your lips?

Hell yeah, that'll make Britney and Spielberg a lot richer...

If you want to have this thing done effectively, you need to target the sites hosting the copy protected material (not 'peers', but the trackers and the sites providing the torrents).