Sony copy protection taking heat again: now DVDs won't play
By Erik Hanson 
posted Apr 16th 2007 4:14PM
posted Apr 16th 2007 4:14PM
Reports continue to filter in about DVDs that refuse to play on standard players from Toshiba, LG, Pioneer, Sony, and others. The culprit is titles that utilize Sony's ARccOS copy protection scheme, such as Disney's "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest," The Weinstein Company's "Lucky Number Slevin," and Sony's "Casino Royale," "The Holiday," and "Stranger Than Fiction." ARccOS artificially scrambles sectors on the disc in an attempt to keep users from ripping the disc to a drive. Many older (or less sophisticated) players simply skip these corrupted areas as unreadable and continue on. Computers -- and unfortunately, some newer players -- try to perform error correction on these areas and fail playback. When contacted, Sony seems to deny the problem, much like Microsoft and the 360 disc scratching, and simply passes the buck onto the player manufacturers to upgrade their firmware. Meanwhile, many users have simply downloaded programs to bypass the protection and make copies without the "defect." So, is this a rootkit-like class action lawsuit in the making? Is it just overblown hype over a few players that don't follow standards? Another example of copy protection that bites legitimate users and ignores the real problem? And do average consumers even care?
Way to go Sony. This reads almost exactly like the Rootkit situation.
How can they constantly change stuff around and expect firmware updates to solve it all. Here is a hint Sony, stick with the SPEC!
Since this is not a standard DVD format or mechanism, they should not be allowed to call the discs DVD. Sony was warned about this type of thing a few years ago when they tried to pull the same with audio CD's.
I don't know why they even bother with DRM. AACS on high def media has been hacked to death already. Millions in R&D down the tubes. Show's over for DRM. Anyone who copies DVD movies knows that AnyDVD, DVDFabDecrypter, etc. can bypass whatever they come up with.
It's silly for them to continue to fight it.
Do average consumers care? Yes! I returned 3 copies of "Stranger than Fiction" to Netflix because I thought there was an error with the disc when it crashed my TiVo DVD and plays scrambled if at all on 3 out of 3 computers. I had to watch it in the car. When then average consumer can't pop in a disc and have it play with one button as average consumers expect to do, somebody made a bad decision.
DRM is entirely counter-productive now. How is this not obvious to them?
Scenario: I'm a "legitimate" consumer, paying for my content. I buy a DRM "infected" disk that doesn't play on my system. I return it, costing the retail outlet profits. The replacement disk also gets returned--more lost profits. Disk number three confirms to me that it's not a manufacturing defect, and I hop online to find out what's up. One of the first three search hits sends me to a software solution that allows me to duplicate the disk, removing the DRM defects. Sony has now directly turned a paying customer into a pirate, forcing me to learn how to illegally copy disks in order to perform the previously legal function of simply playing the disk. Do they think I'm going to pay for the next disk now that they've taught me how to get it for free? Even if I'm willing and inclined to pay, I'm less likely to now simply out of spite! So they have provided both the means and an additional reason to pirate.
What can they possibly be thinking?
simply retarded. i'd like to know how many people as a percentage of DVP player owners have EVER upgraded their firmware. A tenth of one percent?
As always, DRM harms only the consumer and doesnt do squat to true pirates.