DVD ripping to be rendered impossible?
Found on The Register on Sunday, 24 June 2007
Buying a DVD and then copying it for use on your PSP, iPod or laptop could soon become impossible, if the DVD Copy Control Association gets its way.
The association wants to amend the licence underpinning the use of its DVD copy-protection technology, CSS (Content Scrambling System). This would, if successful, oblige you to have the original disc in your DVD drive every time you watched it.
The amendment would force, say, DVD playback software from displaying ripped content. It would also imply the use of software built into PCs and optical drives to prevent ripping software from saving an unscrambled copy of a disc's contents for later playback on a device without a DVD drive, such as a PSP or an iPod.
Yes, it will be a huge success, just like AACS. If it should really become impossible to get the decrypted data via software (something I doubt), then it's time for the hardware hackers. Theoretically, all the involved hardware would have to be secure; otherwise, you could simply plug the video-out from your DVD player into video-in of your TV card. And for some reason I doubt that everybody will replace his TV and DVD player with new, secure ones just to watch a DVD.