Just when the Cartel thought now would be a good time to hike the price of a Bluray release...
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/03/20/blu_ray_drm_circumvented/Software developers based in the Caribbean have thrown down the gauntlet to the movie industry with a product that can copy Blu-ray discs protected by the latest high definition disc copy protection technology.
BD+ is a component of the Blu-ray Disc Digital Rights Management system. BD+ creates a virtual machine within authorised players that allows the execution of "applets" on Blu-ray Discs. Some studios, such as Twentieth Century Fox, have stated that the incorporation of the technology is one of the reasons they preferred Blu-ray over HD DVD.
Both Blu-ray and HD-DVD formats support a copy protection technology called AACS, which has already been defeated. Blu-ray also supports BD+ which is more resilient because it is capable of being patched. Most Blue-Ray discs currently in circulation do not include BD+.
SlySoft, which is based in the Caribbean islands nation of Antigua and Barbuda, claims that it is ready to deal with possible enhancements to BD+ designed to protect the technology from being circumvented by tools such as AnyDVD.
I can see Dan Glickman shaking with rage at this news, but what can anyone really expect ?
By adding a protection system that stops users making fair backups of their highly priced content (and make no mistake these disks are not cheap) they are in effect stealing your right or licence to view a copy of the movie, that is after all what you purchased, the plastic the disk is made out of is secondary as the MPAA have always stated, and not one of hollywoods rip off studios has ever offered a fair deal such as scratched disk replacement at disk cost, instead they leverage their rights to force you to purchase a second licence to view, this is a swindle plain and simple, and it seems then that their customers are happy to pay a company such as Slysoft for fair use tools to ensure they dont fall pray to this swindle, its a pity hollywood has not the brain power to do something that even pc magazine vendors have been doing for years, but hey thats slowbiz
