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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.
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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.
(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.