Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
As if that weren't enough, in March 2001, two MIT students published an incredibly short (only seven
lines long!) and simple program that can unscramble CSS so quickly that a movie can essentially be
unscrambled in real time while it is playing. They wrote and demonstrated the code as part of a two-
day seminar they conducted on the controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act, illustrating how
trivial the CSS protection really is.
ProtectDisc
The newest DVD copy protection system is called ProtectDisc. Its DVD-Video version changes the
standard structure of the disc to prevent copying. Unfortunately, a DVD movie created using
ProtectDisc cannot be viewed with PC-based player programs, such as WMP or WinDVD.
Cinavia
Ciniavia (
www.cinavia.com/languages/english/index.html
) is the company responsible for copy-
protection for BD movies. If you attempt to create a copy of a BD disc, Cinavia displays messages,
such as “Copying Stopped. The content being copied is protected by Cinavia and is not authorized for
copying from this device.” Similar messages are displayed when attempting to play back an
unauthorized copy. Cinavia can also mute audio from unauthorized copies. The original name for
Cinavia was Verance Copy Management System for Audiovisual Content (VCMS/AV).
Is Copy Protection “Unbreakable?”
Despite the claims of “unbreakable” copy protection, ProtectDisc's method, like the others discussed
here, was quickly overcome. Similarly, enterprising users have figured out how to bypass Cinavia's
copy protection methods (which apply only to BD set-top boxes, not to BD drives in PCs). As with
other copy-protection schemes, legitimate users who don't try to “beat the system” often wind up
being victimized—in the case of ProtectDisk, by being unable to use a PC to watch the movie.
RPC
Regional playback was designed to allow discs sold in specific geographical regions of the world to
play only on players sold in those same regions. The idea was to allow a movie to be released at
different times in different parts of the world and to prevent people from ordering discs from regions
in which the movie had not been released yet.
Eight regions are defined in the RPC standard. Discs (and players) usually are identified by a small
logo or label showing the region number superimposed on a world globe. Multiregion discs are
possible, as are discs that are not region locked. If a disc plays in more than one region, it has more
than one number on the globe. The regions are as follows:
•
Region Code 1
—United States, Canada, U.S. Territories, Bermuda.
•
Region Code 2
—Japan, Western Europe, South Africa, and the Middle East.
•
Region Code 3
—Southeast Asia and East Asia.
•
Region Code 4
—Australia, New Zealand, Pacific Islands, Central America, Mexico, South
America, and the Caribbean.
•
Region Code 5
—Eastern Europe (east of Poland and the Balkans), Indian subcontinent, Africa,
North Korea, and Mongolia.
•
Region Code 6
—China and Tibet.
•
Region Code 7
—Reserved for future use.
