The closure of SlySoft is having a chilling effect on another commercial provider of copy protection circumvention software:
The company behind the popular DVDFab software has announced it will not be supporting decryption of the enhanced Advanced Access Content System (AACS) that will be used to protect new Ultra HD (4K UHD) Blu-ray discs. The announcement comes just a day after rival copying software company SlySoft confirmed its closure.
[...] Under pressure from AACS LA, a decryption licensing outfit founded by a group of powerful Hollywood movie studios and various technology partners, SlySoft first went dark and then announced its closure this week. And now, in the space of just a couple of days, another DVD/Blu-ray copying software company also appears to be feeling the heat.
[Continues.]
Like SlySoft, China-based Fengtao Software has also been involved in a dispute with AACS LA and in 2014 was the subject of a preliminary injunction after a court found that DVDFab violates the DMCA's anti-circumvention clause. In 2015 a federal court in New York extended the injunction, further pressuring the company. Then yesterday, just a day after the closure of SlySoft, Fengtao dropped a bombshell of its own. In a press release sent to Myce the company announced that DVDFab will not be updated to crack the Advanced Access Content System encryption that will be present in the next generation of 4K UHD Blu-ray discs.
"The next version of AACS Copy Protection accompanying those newly released Ultra HD Blu-ray titles is the version 2.0 of Advanced Access Content System. According to a document called AACS 2.0 Draft, the new copy protection requires the Ultra HD Blu-ray players to support two AACS 2.0 functionalities, one named 'basic' and the other referred as 'enhanced'," the company said in a statement. "Fengtao Software Inc. makes it clear that the company will not decrypt or circumvent AACS 2.0 in the days to come. This is in accordance with AACS-LA, (which has not made public the specifications for AACS 2.0), the BDA and the movie studios."
Noting that the debate over copying commercial movie discs for home use has "raged on for decades", Fengtao says that the practice of decrypting copy protection technology has done so too and is not likely to stop in the foreseeable future. Even the fact that AACS 2.0 requires an Internet connection for Ultra HD Blu-ray discs to be played back for the first time is unlikely to stop the problem. "Now here comes the question: will there be a solution to crack AACS 2.0? Likely, there will be, publicly or secretly," the company says. Nevertheless, Fengtao insists that it won't be behind the effort.
Related Stories
SlySoft, the creator of the AnyDVD DVD/Blu-ray ripping software, has shut down following Hollywood pressure:
The Antigua-based software company SlySoft has shut down its website and ceased sales of the popular Blu-ray ripping software AnyDVD. The action comes several days after a group of Hollywood studios and technology partners asked the U.S. Government to intervene.
Earlier this month AACS LA, the decryption licensing outfit founded by a group of movie studios and technology partners including Warner Bros, Disney, Microsoft and Intel, reminded the U.S. Government about the unauthorized activities of SlySoft. SlySoft is known for selling various copyright protection circumvention tools including the popular AnyDVD software, of which it sold tens of thousands of copies over the years.
In 2014 AACS-LA won a court case against the software manufacturer in Antigua, where a local court found SlySoft owner Giancarla Bettini guilty of six charges under the 2003 Copyright Act and ordered him to pay a fine of $5,000 per offense. Failure to pay would result in six months in jail for each offense. However, despite the win for AACS not much changed. SlySoft's owner immediately filed an appeal which effectively put the convictions on hold. Meanwhile, AnyDVD remained widely available.
This changed yesterday when the site suddenly went blank as the domain's main nameservers were removed. Initially it was unclear what triggered the downtime, but a few hours ago SlySoft put up a brief statement confirming an early Myce report that legal problems are the cause.
From the above Wikipedia link:
AnyDVD is a device driver for Microsoft Windows which allows decryption of DVDs on the fly, as well as targeted removal of copy preventions and user operation prohibitions (UOPs). With an upgrade, it will also do the same for HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc. The AnyDVD program runs in the background, making discs unrestricted and region-free. In addition to removing digital restrictions, AnyDVD will also defeat Macrovision analog copy prevention. Analog prevention distorts the video signal to prevent high quality copying from the output. AnyDVD is also able to remove copy-prevention from audio CDs.
The former employees of Slysoft have regrouped as a new entity named RedFox and have released a new version of AnyDVD. The new release adds support for the Redfox Online Protection Database and new Blu-ray discs. For existing AnyDVD license owners the software will work as usual. With this release AnyDVD and its development appear to be back to normal.
Here is the changelog for this new release (version 7.6.9.1):
- AnyDVD reborn! SlySoft is dead, long live RedFox!
- This is an intermediate release, so old customers can continue to use their existing AnyDVD license to watch their discs.
- This version can access the new RedFox Online Protection Database
- This version will only work, if you already own a valid AnyDVD license
- For compatibility with 3rd party programs, AnyDVD will still use "SlySoft" for directories and registry paths
- It will replace an existing SlySoft AnyDVD installation
- New (Blu-ray): Support for new discs
- Some minor fixes and improvements
The new official forum is here | The new official download page is here.
[Continues.]
What is the best free cd ripper?
What is the best free audio cd ripper with a gui which can use all cores, for windows7 and/or linux? I want something which rips audio cds fast, not something like EAC.
It must use all cores and support 64bit.
DVDFab Still Operating
AACS has claimed in court that DVDFab has failed to shut down:
DVDFab has failed to cease its operations in the U.S. and should be sanctioned, AACS says. The decryption licensing outfit founded by Warner Bros, Disney, Microsoft, Intel and others, informs a New York federal court that DVDFab's parent company has blatantly ignored a permanent injunction that was issued last year. [...] The crippling injunction seemed to work, but not for long. In a new court filing (pdf) AACS notes that the software vendor briefly blocked U.S. purchases but went back to business as usual soon after.
"Defendants are again offering DVDFab software that circumvents AACS Technology for purchase and download from the United States via their enjoined website at DVDFab.cn," they write. "Plaintiff has been able to purchase and download DVDFab Passkey for Bluray from the United States without issue, and without using a VPN or other means of masking a United States IP address," AACS adds.
Related: DVDFab Won't Try to Decrypt Enhanced AACS Protecting Ultra HD Blu-Rays Following SlySoft Closure
AnyDVD Continues — Goodbye Slysoft, Hello RedFox
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Francis on Sunday February 28 2016, @08:23PM
There were rumors before about them stealing keys from slysoft dus to the timings of their releases being after. Anydvd releases. The timing of this would seem to reinforce the notion.
(Score: 1) by DonkeyChan on Sunday February 28 2016, @08:47PM
It's going to make some awesome cracker step up in short order.
I vote by summer this will all be moot and once again only hurt the people who pay good money for a physical copy.
(Score: 3, Informative) by SomeGuy on Sunday February 28 2016, @08:56PM
I thought the kids were all turning up their nose at spinning media, getting everything from torrents or teh cloudz. That and there haven't been movies worth keeping in ages.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Unixnut on Sunday February 28 2016, @09:36PM
well all those fancy (and cheap) methods kids use to get their desired content requires someone, somewhere, to get hold of an unencumbered copy. Physical media is the most common method, due to its relative anonymity (if there is any watermarking, it might be able to pin it down to a specific zone/region). Streamed DRM files can be watermarked with your own IP/Account info on the fly, so are rarely used for seed copies to the wider net.
Saying that, I never bothered buying a Blue-ray player/drive. DVD's give me good enough quality, and BD disks are too small to be a worthwhile backup solution for my file server.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Sunday February 28 2016, @10:08PM
Yeah, I can't be bothered to go to more than one movie a year anymore, (less than that on average) so I don't see me buying a blueray machine to watch a movie on my television. I haven't even used my DVD player to watch a movie in the last two years.
Last movie I went to was the Hobbit in Imax, and it was a total waste of time. I've never bothered to go see there rest of the series.
Not throwing any more money toward those guys.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 29 2016, @01:29PM
See Deadpool. Worth it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 29 2016, @02:56PM
everybody's got a hard-on for these superhero movies
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 29 2016, @06:43PM
If I wanted more shock humor, I'd just watch South Park.
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Sunday February 28 2016, @10:11PM
Never bought a Bluray player either, primarily because Sony was a little too involved for my liking. It worked out well as apparently encryption is not optional. I stuck with DVDs, and am likely to move to torrents, as they don't seem to want to support open operating systems.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 29 2016, @01:33AM
Never bought a Blu-ray, either, for all the reasons mentioned, and the fact that I DON'T EVEN OWN A TV! No electricity, either. Water is not wet, and has to be carried in casks from the dry spring on the back forty. Sony also put me right off Blu-Ray. But the really sweet part is the RedBox rental kiosk begging me to "upgrade" to a Blu-Ray disk! Ha!! They have to keep producing DVDs because the adoption rate is still marginal. So they beg! Almost as tragic as HD-DVD, or whatever that loverly Microsoft backed competing format which was the VHS of the wrong time against the Betamax which won this time only to lose.
(Score: 2) by Ken_g6 on Sunday February 28 2016, @11:26PM
I did buy a Blu-ray player, a Sony even, because it can play back H.264 content from DVD disks. The disks don't have to be encrypted, and the videos can just be stored as files. Compared to using a dedicated DVD recorder, this fits way more content on a disk, in way better quality.
I think it may not play back rips, due to some kind of audio watermark; but I record from OTA TV.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by takyon on Sunday February 28 2016, @10:28PM
That's very true, but there's a reason to keep spinning media around: they are likely easier to crack than streaming services.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Celestial on Sunday February 28 2016, @10:35PM
The main reason for 4K Ultra High Definition Blu-Ray is because they use up a lot of data. Considering there are still data caps in a lot of places (and Comcast promising to add data caps in more markets over the next couple of years), one or two films in 4K UHD would eat up that data quick.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 29 2016, @01:46AM
Believe it or not, not everybody has access to virtually-uncapped high-speed internet. (Four queue, Apple, with your download-only OS upgrades!)
I'm one of the umpty-thousands (millions?) who are stuck with low throughput and low monthly caps. Spinning media is the most reasonable resource I have access to.
I don't appreciate being penalized for buying my videos on disc by being forced to sit through tons of previews and "you shouldn't have pirated this disc you just bought" notices before I can finally watch what I paid for. I also don't appreciate not being allowed to watch lawfully purchased videos that don't happen to be available in North America. Despite the MPAA and AACS LA's bullsh!t claims, Slysoft's tools have been useful utilities to allow me to watch what I've bought.
(Score: 2) by digitalaudiorock on Sunday February 28 2016, @09:14PM
Maybe this is simply due to the fact that 4K UHD is a total joke [cnet.com] made to sell unnecessary TVs and disks??...just sayin...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by mmcmonster on Sunday February 28 2016, @09:25PM
There are some benefits in the 4K format. Resolution really isn't it, however. The wider color gamut noted in 4K can be very useful for TVs and movies. That being said, adoption is going to take a long time.
The economy is not doing as well as it was 15 years ago, and people have already bought their 1080p TVs. Asking them to buy a newer TV just a decade or so later is a bit much. I don't know about others, but the only reason I buy a new TV is either for a new room or the old one just died. And I'm still waiting patiently for my 50" 1080p DLP TV to die so I can get something a bit more sleek.
Not to mention if the Bluray player or HDMI cables need to be changed out for 4K to work properly.
Right now I would expect the trickle of 4K TVs to continue and hope that people like youtube in 4K a lot.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Francis on Sunday February 28 2016, @11:58PM
True, but color doesn't need 4k pixels. They could have chosen a like outlandish size.4k is great for theaters and production, but makes no sense for in people's homes.
Wider gamut and better frame rate wouldn't have been easy to market without the penis extender I suppose.
(Score: 2) by jasassin on Monday February 29 2016, @12:48AM
I've got an i5 with an nvidia 9800gt and 15mbs down 1mbs up. YouTube stutters and shits itself at 1080. 720 is all it can do. I saw something on Netflix about higher rez only working on chrome with the silver light plugin... I wonder if it would help my 1080 YouTube experience? Anyone got 1080 working on youtube? Any hints appreciated.
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0x663EB663D1E7F223
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 29 2016, @01:47AM
1080 on youtube works fine on both my Intel J2900 w/integrated graphics and my i7 w/Nvidia GTX759ti. I have 100mbs/15mbs cable. I think you need a faster internet service, 15mbs down isn't going to cut it.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 29 2016, @02:15AM
Just use youtube-dl. Watching Youtube videos in the browser is asking for trouble.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 29 2016, @03:03AM
I've got an i5 with an nvidia 9800gt and up to 15mbs down 1mbs up. YouTube stutters and shits itself at 1080.
I believe you're not getting the top of your advertised speed. Even still, 1080p@60fps needs something between 5 and 10 Mbps for most videos, but can require more if there is a lot of action or something else lowers the compression level.
Helpful hint for figuring out YouTube problems is to right click the video and select "stats for nerds." That will show you the bandwidth you are using, dropped frames, and frames per second, among other things. The basic rules are: 1. dropped frames == hardware too weak and 2. an uneven or flat bandwidth graph == not downloading fast enough.
(Score: 2, Informative) by slap on Monday February 29 2016, @04:24AM
I've got a AMD Llano w/ integrated graphics and 3mbs DSL. 720 is usually ok. I'd guess you are only getting 2-3mbs between you and youtube.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 28 2016, @09:54PM
Bought my wife a 43" 4k Vizio $500, running at 1080p, as a monitor for her computer. She had 32" 1080p for many years (1st flat screen in the family), but I had to keep lowering the line count, so the icon got bigger. When that one died (8yrs), I replaced with 2x 24" 1080p.. I had available running at 720p. Was ok, but lot of desktop was missing.
The 43" basically gave her double the desktop of 2x 24". but also the upscaling is helping make the large icon and text have smoother edges and taking the work on the GPU in her machine, so she still has 1x 24" running as a sidecar for her email only.
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Sunday February 28 2016, @10:33PM
4K will be warranted in some contexts, like VR. Movies and shows are already filming in 6K (House of Cards [theverge.com]), maybe 8K.
Having bigger discs (the 4K UHD Blu-rays are 50, 66, or 100 GB) around is a plus too. If the blanks are reasonably priced they could compete with hard disks for consumer storage. Facebook even used a Blu-ray turntable type cold storage device. Of course, we were promised stuff like 1 TB optical or 6 TB holographic discs a long time ago.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 28 2016, @09:32PM
fucking copyrights
fucking patents
fucking trademarks
fucking daisy duck
quack
fuck you slum lords!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 01 2016, @10:26PM
Fucking copyrights, how do they work?
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Sunday February 28 2016, @10:41PM
I just found out that the first 4K Ultra HD Blu-rays are out on Tuesday, so I will do a story on that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray#Ultra_HD_Blu-ray [wikipedia.org]
I want optical discs to be successful since they could potentially be useful for personal storage, or crackable for a source of 4K content. However, the capacity has only jumped from 50 GB to a maximum of 100 GB (since H.265 will be used to encode the content), so it doesn't look good for making optical disc storage competitive with hard disks. Archival Disc [wikipedia.org] will store 300 GB to 1 TB, but they will be priced for businesses, not home users (like BDXL).
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Celestial on Sunday February 28 2016, @11:04PM
March 1 was the scheduled release date for the first batch of 4K Ultra HD Blu-Ray releases, but they began shipping to consumers last week. I received my 4K Ultra HD Blu-Ray of The Martian last week. It was the only film in the initial release batch I saw worth purchasing. Although supposedly the 2009 Star Trek and 2013 Star Trek Into Darkness are scheduled for release sometime in June, so those will most likely be my next purchases.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 29 2016, @12:01AM
good. i can't wait to look into the eyes of Bender Cumbersnatch in ST:ID
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 29 2016, @03:01PM
gotta see all those lens flares in maximum resolution
bit ironic.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Monday February 29 2016, @10:47AM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Sunday February 28 2016, @11:06PM
Can anyone really say BR is much better? If I can rip BR to disk I might get them, but I feel there is no compelling reasons as long as they are
a) hard to rip
b) not much better
c) more expensive.
Beside I can rip and transcode a DVD in 5 minutes, not sure I need much more improvement!!!
It's a shame the big media corps screwed up BR-RW as that would have been a nice competitor to SSD maybe...
(Score: 4, Informative) by Celestial on Sunday February 28 2016, @11:19PM
I found the jump in quality from 480p DVDs to 1080p Blu-Ray substantial. However, the jump from 1080p to 4K resolution much less so. No, what makes 4K Ultra High Definition worth it (for me at least), is HDR (high dynamic range), and 10-bit color gamut. You can really notice the difference between the highlights and shadows. Not only that, but it goes from 16 million possible colors on DVDs and Blu-Rays to over a billion possible colors in 4K UHD.
So, IMO, yes, the jump in quality from DVDs to 4K UHD is quite a leap.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 29 2016, @02:23AM
It depends on the movie. For your standard comedy it does not matter much. But for some explosion fest like the avengers it ia noticeable.
I have found newer movies really take advantage of it. While older movies look much better but you do not really gain much. The older movies really benefit from the new scan they do and the 20 some years of advancement of digital scanning and cleanup they do. I would not mind for example getting a new copy of lethal weapon and mad max beyond thunderdome. Both being fairly poor transfers. The brightness is terrible and the telicline transfer is very noticeable. Both being a couple of the very first DVDs released ever.
Just watch out for some of the older blurays. The first ones that came out were little more than re-encodes of previous DVD scans. For example I bought commando when it first came out on bluray. The difference between it and the DVD version were unperceptible. Goonies was much the same way.
I buy bluray for movies I know I really like. But for 'hm not sure' I get a DVD.
At this point though the price difference is getting smaller and smaller in some cases in favor of the bluray. My wife bought me a bunch of movies for Christmas. I specified DVD for many of them. For a few though she got bluray anyway. She flatout told me they were priced better. Even then they usually came with both.
Out of my 2200 dvd collection I have *maybe* a couple dozen or so that I would actually upgrade.
(Score: 3, Informative) by tempest on Monday February 29 2016, @01:36PM
Subtitles are substantially cleaner.
(Score: 2) by rob_on_earth on Monday February 29 2016, @02:24PM
Bought my first BluRay disk last week "Pixels".
It was the same price as some other DVDs and I expected it to have a ton of extras. The movie was fun, nothing special, but it did look better than DVD but there were only a collection of 5min specials that did not offer anything.
The BluRay adverts in the past were punting interactive games, multiple commentaries, PIP interviews, on screen facts and links, multiple viewing angles etc.
I think I have been mislead.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by kazzie on Monday February 29 2016, @05:22PM
What you're forgetting is that they needed all these extra features to tempt the first wave of adopters to buy Blue Ray instead of DVD.
Now that many* people own Blue Ray players and have started their library, they've already been hooked.
I'm sure the likes of Peter Jackson crammed their discs with all the bells and whistles you mentioned, but I'm still playing the DVD game here.
*not all, I know
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 07 2016, @08:17PM
Bought Mom a blueray player. It's bearly used. Turns out it needed firmware updateds to continue to play new disks. She brought back the disk to the store and just buys standard DVDs.