How to make Hollywood feel secure

In response to yesterday's Reuters story, "Movie Industry Sues More DVD Chip Makers on Piracy," entertainment industry consultant Tim Onosko tells Dave Farber's Interesting People mailing list:

I have some insight into this that I can share with the list, regarding what "appropriate" security features are, according to the MPAA. They are in total, three.

1) The ability to capture or intercept a DeCSS'd (unencrypted) video stream. This has upset the studios before, although there is plenty of commonly available software that effectively does the same thing, and much easier, as well.

2) The ability to defeat Macrovision and/or CGMS, copy protection systems that prevent the analog output from being recorded on a VHS or DVD video recorder. There are simple hacks for many (if not the majority) of the players that have been manufactured to defeat Macrovision and/or CGMS.

3) The ability to defeat "region coding." That is, every DVD player is designed to play programs meant for its own region only. But in most nations of the world, the players are hacked so that others outside the USA can buy and enjoy DVDs produced for the American domestic market.

In the beginning, before various nations developed their own DVD programming, this is how DVD gained popularity as a medium. Region-free players are common outside the US, and in Asia, for instance, they are the rule rather than the exception. The hypocrisy of this is best illustrated by the fact that Amazon.com sells only US discs for the US market, while Amazon sites around the world offer US discs for foreign markets, and sell region-free players to encourage the practice. (Most DVD players already play PAL TV signals on NTSC television sets, and vice versa.)

There are, by the way, common PC programs for defeating the last two of these, as well. The MPAA's action, it seems to me, is only like a finger in the dike, trying to prevent customers from doing whatever they want to with this medium. And, to some extent, this action does seem a bit like biting the hand that feeds you, since it was cheap VLSI chips like these that led to sub-$50 Chinese-made DVD players and greater than 60% penetration of the medium in the United States. A HUGE win for the movie business.