Movie and video content providers are hurting from disc piracy, illegal downloading, file sharing and camcording in cinemas. There is now DRM technology, called Cinavia, which can kill this stone dead. But content providers are so far showing surprisingly little interest in using it. So why not use it, asks Barry Fox?
The story began around ten years ago when the music industry hoped to recapture the boom years of CD by launching a new super hi-fi disc format called DVD Audio. It sported a new DRM system that would stop copying by watermarking the audio.
The DRM came from US company Verance, which had been formed in late 1999 by the merger of two high-tech startups, Solana and Aris – who had developed a watermarking system called MusicCode for the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI) to use for controlling music downloads. Verance claimed its digital mark could survive analogue copying and internet distribution because the digital mark was integrated with the analogue music waveform. So anywhere the music went, the mark went too.
Although Verance would never tell how its system worked, patents filed by Aris and Solana revealed plans to modify signal peaks in a coded pattern, and add a coded spread spectrum smear of ‘coloured noise’ to an audio signal.
Does it make sense to sell DVD-Audio on the promise of purer sound quality, while violating the sound, audio buffs asked?
This unanswered question became academic because DVD-Audio flopped. But in June 2009 the AACS Licensing Authority, which sets the standards for Blu-ray copy protection, decreed that a Digital Rights Management system called Cinavia, which relies on Verance watermark detection, should be used in BD players. Content providers could then use Cinavia marks to copy protect their software.
A few, but not many, BDs now use Cinavia. You can spot them by the small logo on the outer sleeve eg, on Battle: Los Angeles, The Social Network or The Other Guys.
Only a very few BD players, notably Sony’s PS3, have built-in Cinavia detectors. So the system is not yet biting. But the AACS rules say that from February 2012 all new BD players must have a detector built in. Marking will remain optional for BD discs, though.
“This is the first time watermarking has been used in a consumer experience,” Richard Atkinson, ex-Disney and now Chief Piracy Specialist & Consultant, Anti-Piracy Worldwide, recently told ESCA Europe: The Entertainment Retailing & Supply Chain conference. “The technology works. It is mature. That is not an issue any more. So far no-one has defeated Cinavia. It has been incorporated into key industry standards. But adoption by the hardware and software industries has been slow because AACS needed to ratify Sunrise dates, when makers of new players have to start using Cinavia, and Sunset dates, when sales of players without Cinavia are forbidden. So far it has been optional.”
I set out to test Cinavia against the latest off-the-shelf home copying hardware tool, the Hauppauge Colossus PC card which is on open sale in the UK (eg, from Amazon, for around £150). Colossus plugs directly into a standard PCI Express slot inside a PC. Like the previously released standalone HD-PVR from Hauppauge (which connects to a PC by USB lead), Colossus has its own on-board H.264 compression chips, so even a budget PC can capture and encode 1080i video, without judder, in real time.
Whereas the standalone device only had analogue component video (YCrCb) and digital optical SP/DIF inputs, Colossus also has HDMI connectors. Exactly as intended, the HDMI connection from a PS3 (or Panasonic BD player) will not deliver any signal to Colossus. However the HDMI input on Colossus can be used to capture HD footage streamed direct by HDMI cable from a Cisco Flip camera, for easy burning to blank DVD as two hours of AVCHD – which then plays like a Blu-ray Disc. The piracy implications are obvious.
Also, though some HD receivers now only have HDMI connections, which are usually encrypted, both the Xbox360 and PS3 consoles have component connections, which are unprotected even when playing HD material.
For research purposes I used Colossus with component and SP/DIF connections from a PS3 to copy test sequences from Blu-rays with and without a Cinavia logo. Test rips of non-Cinavia Blu-rays played perfectly on a PS3 and Panasonic player. But when test rips from a Blu-ray with Cinavia logo were played on a PS3 the sound muted after around 15 minutes and a Cinavia warning message appeared on screen.
PS3 playback of test sequences from an unauthorized download of Cinavia-protected material shut down completely, almost immediately. The same test rips and sequences played perfectly on a Panasonic BDT-210 BD player, which has no Cinavia detector. I drew the line at taking my Flip HD camcorder to a cinema showing a Cinavia-protected movie...
It was already clear that, when implemented, Cinavia works as Richard Atkinson says.
So why is the potential magic bullet not much used?
Says Atkinson: “Integrating Cinavia into the production workflow is complicated. There is a clear distinction between the marks used for home video and for theatrical use. The system completely shuts down playback of an illegal or camcorder copy of a cinema film in under a minute, but an illegal copy of a disc intended for home use plays for around 20 minutes before the sound mutes. This is known as ‘Birthday Party’ protection. It covers the case where someone is innocently shooting a children’s party and the camera microphone ‘hears’ a protected disc legitimately playing in the background.
“So if someone in the post production chain uses a theatrical master to make a disc for home use, for instance a DVD, it can be a problem. You can’t hear the mark but it’s in there. So the studios have been cautious.”
Says Tom Moran, Senior Director Media and Entertainment of IT infrastructure specialist Savvis: “There is also the licensing cost. The royalties all add up, on top of payments for MPEG and so on. Then there’s the cart and horse issue, why use Cinavia on content if it is not going to be detected? Everyone is asking what makes most sense.”
Sony confirms: “As it stands no Sony Blu-ray player or BDV system supports Cinavia Digital Rights Management; however, work is being done to include this in future – the date for this is currently TBC.”
And Panasonic? “Currently no, but will be from the production of 1st February 2012 (although) it is optional for BD disc titles implementation.”
What about PC player software?
Says CyberLink: “We will add Cinavia watermark next year when it becomes mandatory for Blu-ray player.”
Nero says it is, “Not yet supporting this copy protection technology and is currently working on its implementation, in order to meet the official timelines that the industry as a whole will have to meet for its support.”
Rovi (formerly Macrovision, the copy-protection evangelist and proselytizer) now owns Roxio and is currently promoting a new version of its software, Creator 2012. But Rovi confirms: “There is no existing and/or upcoming Roxio software with BD playback that supports Cinavia Digital Rights Management.”
The Blu-ray Disc Association says: “This is a company-by-company issue, and is not something that the BDA is tracking.”
Hang on! The Blu-ray format was sold on the promise of better protection than DVD. So perhaps it would be useful for the BDA to start showing more interest in the adoption of that protection.
