What I love most about CD and DVD protection is that it's ultimately futile. They have to have the data in a standard format that players can read. All they can do is try to stop "unauthorized" software from being able to read it, which they can only do by either running other software to interfere, or exploiting bugs in the way that software reads the disc. The former is defeated by configuring your system to not run it (or using another OS), and the latter by using a properly-designed program that emulates the behaviour of a standalone device. Once both of these are done, no protection can be effective in the slightest, at least not without preventing use by legit players. (Nevermind that these protections frequently break legit software players.
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Recent DVD protections have been mildly effective simply because many DVD copiers are poorly/lazily designed. For example, they'll lay it out so that a standalone player will never read certain sectors, and then corrupt them, so a program that tries to just copy the whole disc will fail. Or they'll corrupt the filesystem, for example using multiple files with the same name, to confuse programs that rely on it (standalone DVD players don't). This has had some success, but retains the same two problems: Breaks legit software, and doesn't work against copiers that do things the same way as a real player.
The only other DVD protection I know of that "works" is, AFAIK, a system that confuses programs that try to automatically follow the menus. They'll use invalid menu entries, or circular references (menu 1, item A opens menu 2, menu 2 item B opens menu 1), and simply set it up so that people won't select these options, for example by hiding them amongst the background. But again, well-designed copiers will realize they're caught in a loop or following an invalid option, and just not follow it.
AACS is more effective than CSS (DVD encryption), because the encryption is more advanced. But it's still just an encryption, and players still have to be able to decrypt it. The one big difference is that they can lock out certain players, so if you get the keys from one they can just not allow that specific player to play future discs (and presumably, a firmware update will - if possible - fix the hole that allowed it and update the keys so that it can be used again). But this just means a bit more work has to be done to get working keys.
Ironically, a stronger protection can only serve to help piracy. If your average Joe wants to copy a disc, and he can simply put it in his computer and hit Copy, then he'll probably do so. Now, you can make a protection that prevents this scenario, sure. But people will still find a way around it. Now, when Joe finds he can't copy the movie himself, he's likely to turn to P2P and see if he can simply grab someone else's copy. (Sure, this is illegal, but under the DMCA, so is copying it yourself.
) Now while he's there grabbing a copy of his Spiderpig 3 disc, he's going to notice there are also copies of 0x12C, The Quick And The Angry: Osaka Drift, etc. I don't think I need to explain this any further.
Originally posted by Ranko
Anyone else thinking the ep of Futurama where Fry has dreams about that one pair of underwear and ends up getting 4 billion dollars from the 92 cents he had in the bank from 1000 years ago?
Nope. I do wonder when ads will begin appearing in our dreams though.
(Warning: This post contains excessive use of "and" and "but" as sentence starters and puns on movie titles. Grammar nazis and those who aren't fond of puns should proceed with caution.)
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Even better for blockers that don't modify the page source, such as AdBlock. You're just changing how your browser renders the page and interprets the scripts. By that logic, changing the font size would be illegal too.
