SlySoft takes down BD+ DRM once more
By Darren Murph 
posted Dec 29th 2008 1:28PM
posted Dec 29th 2008 1:28PM
[Thanks, Erie]
posted Dec 29th 2008 1:28PM
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It took them nearly 3 weeks to break a scheme used in 20 or so titles. This demonstrates what the entire purpose of BD+ has been all along - to delay, complicate and generally overwhelm the attacker, putting as much time between a disk's release and it being breaked as possible. Its just going to get worse for Slysoft as the scheme is switched with greater frequency. They can count their blessings that none of the other studios are using BD+ yet.
Like all DRM, it will only hurt me the paying consumer. How you ask? Longer release delays, longer load times on discs, annoyances on certain players.
I hate DRM.
Count their blessings? I think you misunderstand how exactly SlySoft makes their money. If the decryption methods were standard and unchanging, there would be numerous free tools out there and no market. The studios are actually creating the market for SlySoft. The more money they throw at different schemes, the more users rely on SlySoft's software. Case in point, look at DVD: DVD Shrink, DVD Fab, RipIt4Me, etc. are all free tools that work equally well on most DVDs. If the entire purpose was simply to complicate SlySoft's job, then the boastful statements regarding BD+'s prowess were simply idiotic. As far as "as much time between a disk's release and it being breaked as possible", like the article clearly states, this version of BD+ isn't even expected to debut until February. I'm having a hard time seeing any logic in any points in your post.
Yes, three weeks delay is going to make a major difference in the fight against piracy. That's so totally worth using something that inherently causes problems with legitimate BD players.
The people who need to be thankful only Fox are using BD+ right now are Blu-ray users. Right now the manufacturers only have one dingbat studio using the system and so only need to concern themselves making sure their players play a small number of encumbered discs. Meanwhile, Blu-ray users can avoid Fox or learn to do the firmware dance.
I can't imagine what it's going to be like when there are hundreds of Blu-ray players models out there, and multiple studios using the format. Oh wait, I can: it'll be hell.
The sooner this stupid, inane, doesn't work, impacts only the innocent, access control is removed from the Blu-ray standard, the better.
imonit, what I meant is that AnyDVD has a reputation of "just working" - stick disc in, wait a second and AnyDVD seamlessly strips off the crypto and region encoding. I own it so I know that this reputation is well deserved. However I also know this is not going to be the case with BD+. Older schemes were vulnerable to a class break, i.e. break one player or one disk and the rest fall like dominoes. BD+ is not like this since schemes are renewable. This recent delay between scheme and crack meant Fox caught 3 weeks with no break and I'm sure it has not gone unnoticed.
If BD+ becomes more prevalent then delays will become the norm and AnyDVD's reputation is going to suffer. It will "just work" except for an ever expanding list of exceptions when it doesn't. At that point the value of AnyDVD will be diminished. Slysoft are also switching to an annual subscription model (most probably due to BD+) which diminishes its value again. Clearly BD+ is costing them money which is one of its intents. People may not be willing to pay for AnyDVD if it only works on *some* blu ray discs but not all.
Maybe Slysoft will keep up or BD+ will be still be a sideshow and not matter too much. But what I suspect is that Fox is the guinea pig for BD+ and once its a proven technology (which it more or less is from a technology and business sense) that others will jump on board. If that happens Slysoft is going to have severe issues keeping up. If I were them, I would be wondering if there is any way to open up their cracking efforts to the community because they will be under severe strain otherwise.
squiggleslash, most discs sell the most in the first few weeks of their lives. If you don't think three weeks means much then you have no clue.
DrXym - do you really think people who pirate discs buy them because they'd rather get them now than wait three weeks?
Squiggleslash, yes some of them do. If someone cannot rent a title in Blockbuster and copy it, they will be more inclined to buy it. If someone cannot find a title on P2P at the quality that they want they will be more inclined to buy it. People who bother to copy / download a disc obviously place *some* value on the title or they wouldn't even waste their time trying to obtain it. A great number of those people might place sufficient value that they might buy it if there is no other alternative for owning it.
The studios know this all too well, as should you.
DrXym:
The second I hear about player problems etc. with specific titles and/or new versions of BD+, I put off my purchases untill AnyDVD HD supports the new DRM version.
If there ever comes a DRM enabled title that AnyDVD HD would not crack for me then I would probably never purchase it. Actually I would probably download a pirate copy instead of buying it.
In 2008 I on average bought 0.6 Blu-ray/HD-DVD a day. I understand I need to upgrade the Blu-ray players firmware. but the average consumer dont. If the studio's continue down this DRM road it will end up costing the studio's money in lost sales.
Thomas, I do not agree with your assumption that BD+ is at fault here. It is more likely that bugs in specific player's firmware were exposed by a more sophisticated protection scheme. There is little excuse for shoddy QA wherever its happening, and the studios and manufacturers really should be doing a lot more to minimize these issues. I really do think that Fox is a guinea pig for BD+ and when the tech is mature that other studios will jump on board.
Concerning AnyDVD, I'm just stating what should be plain to everyone. If BD+ schemes take 3 weeks+ to crack then Slysoft and their users had better hope that BD+ doesn't become widely adopted, or that the schemes change more frequently. I suspect both will happen. Slysoft already know their work is cut out as shown by their switch to an annual subscription. Some people appear to have a problem with me saying this judging by my comments being modded down. It should be pretty obvious that this is the way things will go in future. I do not think Slysoft will be able to keep up unless they can somehow rally their users to act as volunteers to discover volume keys in some way. This would be a pretty tall order unless they release tools that could help automate this process somehow.
Actually, no. The latest Beta has broken all of the new BD+ disks. Once a scheme is broken it doesn't matter how many studios use it, there disks are broken. The more studios that go to BD+, the longer it takes to change the scheme once the old one has been broken. I remember reading somewhere that it is a 3 month turn around to change to a new scheme. It might even be in a whitepaper on AACS or Blueray.
Waiting 3-6 weeks for a new version of AnyDVD does not a victory make for the studios. Those that are more likely to pirate are not going to give up and buy the actual movie. They will wait till anydvd breaks it, then rent it, then copy it. Purchasing Blue ray disks is an all or nothing proposition for most.
What many have failed to do is contrast the upside to the consumer, apparently none, to the downside of the consumer, purchased movies not playing correctly, waiting for new firmware from manufacturer; to the upside to the studio, maybe more sales but it is difficult at best to quantify, the downside to the studio, consumers getting a movie that doesnt work out of the package, has no patients of knowledge to upgrade firmware or the whole scheme creates uncertainty for the consumer, thus lost sales; to the upside for pirates, none, maybe people buying versions that are stripped of BD+, downside to pirates, they have to wait 3-6 weeks to sell pirated copies or has to wait 3-6 weeks to rent it and then copy it.
iamjoecollector, you still don't get what it's for. It's not to make disks unbreakable forever. It is to protect them during the vital period after release where most of the sales will occur and put a huge workload onto the likes of Slysoft in order to break them. Which is exactly what happened recently for Fox and it is this that studios will be interested in. Compare and contrast with CSS where as soon as one disk was broken, every disk past, present and future was broken.
I HIGHLY doubt it takes months to make a scheme. It's just a obfuscated program executed on a small virtual machine. That's it. The program that does some tests and assuming the player & disk passes the tests it spits out a key. Maybe early schemes were written by hand and took months. Later ones could easily be generated from a tool, a tool with a nice gui where someone checks off which tests to run on which players, and what the volume key is and then spits out the corresponding scheme. Such tools are quite feasible.
Obviously any autogenerated scheme must be QA tested but that would be folded into the disk's general QA testing. I really think Slysoft have big trouble if BD+ becomes more widespread and their only way out of it is to empower their users in some way to assist with cracking.
DrXYM
Do you know anything about AACS or BD+? How the consortium works or the market for DVDs, BluRay, etc?
You say:
I HIGHLY doubt it takes months to make a scheme. It's just a obfuscated program executed on a small virtual machine. That's it. The program that does some tests and assuming the player & disk passes the tests it spits out a key. Maybe early schemes were written by hand and took months. Later ones could easily be generated from a tool, a tool with a nice gui where someone checks off which tests to run on which players, and what the volume key is and then spits out the corresponding scheme. Such tools are quite feasible.
So you don't know, you are guessing. Let me tell you that you are wrong. The point of the 3 month change over is to allow player manufacturers to write new firmware if needed. That's the point. AACS and BD+ version is not released months ahead of time in order to keep companies like Slysoft from defeating them before they are out. For example, the Matrix HD-DVD. That was supposed to have the new MKV, but it was leaked and broken before release. They don't release all of their BD+ schemes months ahead of time for the same reason.
You Say:
Obviously any autogenerated scheme must be QA tested but that would be folded into the disk's general QA testing. I really think Slysoft have big trouble if BD+ becomes more widespread and their only way out of it is to empower their users in some way to assist with cracking.
The BluRay Consortium does not release multiple BD+ schemes at the same time. READ THE WHITEPAPER. BluRay would loose too much of their work at once if they release 4-5 schemes all at once. That is why these disks are broken all at one time is that they are released with different forms of BD+ at different times. Look at the BD+ release schedule over the last 18 months. You will find that they release one at a time. Plus, there are too many player manufacturers to coordinate this type of attack.
In addition, have you looked at the disks that use the scheme? Frankly, 8 out of 10 are crap titles that nobody wants to pirate anyway. Fox isn't actually protecting anything. You might have a better argument if Fox only used BD+ on there hot titles. Jane Suburbia is not out buying pirated titles anyway. It seems you don't understand the pirate market at all. First, the greater percentage of pirated copies are sold in asia. Second, US consumers are buying their titles at Walmart, Target, Amazon, etc. and are not buying copies on the corner. Thus, even if pirated versions are available, studios are not losing out on the lions share of their sales. In fact, at most they are keeping Joe Suburbia from lending his copy to Jim Neighbor to make a copy of for a couple of weeks. Most people that make copies like this are well aware of Anydvd and are willing to wait for a few weeks. Torrent downloaders are not buying these disks anyway. So your protecting their product for the first 3 weeks argument fails.
By the way, I see 6.5.0.7 is out now. We won't see a new BD+ for a month or two as the last one was released last month. When a new scheme is issued regardless of how many studios use it, it will be broken within 3-6 weeks
Do us all a favor and read up on the technology and the market before you come into this thread and tell us how you know more than the rest of us.
As far as the first 3 weeks being critical. That is an over simplified look
This "cat and mouse game" studios play with their customers is complete bull. Constantly changing the DRM scheme does nothing but alienate legit customers who are not willing, or able to, have to deal with updating their players all the time. Just take a look at how most people don't keep up with updating their computers. What makes the studios think that the average non-techy person is going to understand that every couple of months they'd need to plug their player to the internet, or contact their player manufacturer for an update. That's bull. So, most consumers will go for the old, and faithful, DVD version.
most hardware BD players haven't been affected by round 2 or 3 of BD+ changes. only people this affects are (maybe?) BD player app users and definitely people like me that only use MPC (HC) and like to format shift their media content. DMCA be damned; Fair Use (or whatever covers the right to format shift) predated you!
If the BDA thinks the average customer is going to update his/her Blu-Ray player everytime he/she wants to watch a movie, they will be in for a rude awakening. This DRM scheme is bullcrap, and it will get much worse.
i would love to help slysoft out but damn over $90 Us to buy it is a little extreme .. and thats after there always running 20% off sale
http://www.letmegooglethatforyou.com/?q=63.2+euros+in+us+dollars
This is great. Fox updates it's BD+ to prevent copy protection. They break compatibility on a number of Blu-ray players as a result. Slysoft breaks the new BD+ in a few weeks, yet about half of the Blu-ray players that don't work with the new titles still don't have firmware updates to fix the problem yet.
avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1098170
not ALL are handled yet .. not YET jailbroken (as of 6.5.0.2):
XFiles: I Want to Believe
Meet Dave (US)
In the Name of the King (US)
Planet of the Apes
Escape from the Planet of the Apes
Conquest of the Planet of the Apes
Battle for the Planet of the Apes
update: looks like "Planet of the Apes '1'" works now (6.5.0.3). not sure which else works...
"Meet Dave" hasn't been jailbroken yet because of lack of demand, not the DRM itself. ;)
LOL @ FOX
Keep trying b*tches!
Too bad they charge way too much. If they lowered their prices to something more reasonable, perhaps their software wouldn't get pirated so much. AnyDVD with the HD option is almost $100!
DVD says otherwise. People pirate the hell out of that despite recognizable movies selling for as low as $5.
So here's a question to all the blu geeks out there:
I'm having a bear of a time getting my laptop with hdmi out and blu player to output to my hdtv. I've turned off the lappie monitor, and still no dice, but it looks like some dumb rules for outputting to only one monitor.
would this slysoft fix that?