RSSMacrovision to acquire Blu-ray's BD+ for $45 million
By Scott M. Fulton, III | Published November 19, 2007, 6:25 PM
Already the provider of a key element of the copy protection schemes in Blu-ray and HD DVD, the content protection software company will acquire the embattled BD+ from its creator.
Cryptography Research, Inc., the R&D firm that developed a virtual machine environment protected by a layer of encryption -- the tool whose viability was one of the catalysts for the split between the HD DVD and Blu-ray camps -- has agreed in principle to sell BD+ to Macrovision for $45 million in cash, plus stock warrants.
While the deal itself may not be telling, the terms are extremely revealing: Macrovision is getting CRI's patents, its existing ciphers, its customer agreements and partnerships, and even some of the employees involved in devising the scheme.
Thus, CRI isn't sublicensing the concept in order to maximize its IP investment. It's getting out of the Blu-ray encryption business, and handing it over to someone who may care more about it.
Macrovision's existing contribution to the content protection realm -- for which it's already notorious in many circles -- is analog content protection (ACP), which is part of the AACS scheme and licensed through AACS LA.
The basic concept was introduced back in the days of the VCR, making Macrovision synonymous in many users' minds with consumer-unfriendliness. ACP makes delicate, pulsating adjustments to the gain control in order to prevent copies from having anywhere near the same quality as the original - pulses that an analog TV display misses but that a recorder writes to tape.
In 1997, Macrovision was contracted to devise a next generation of that concept for the digital realm: an ACP for DVD. Its solution was the infamous "color stripe" pulses encoded into the video stream, which would be in sync with the display but out of sync with a recording device. That lack of synchronization caused early VHS tape copies of DVDs to have unavoidable color banding.
A few years ago, Macrovision branched out into different areas of the digital content protection realm, acquiring InstallShield in 2004.
Today, a joint statement from the selling and buying companies reveals Macrovision's intent to incorporate BD+ into its broader suite of digital content protection properties - a move which could enable it in the future to bundle their licenses.
But now that the system appears besieged by malicious users a mere five months after its premiere deployment by 20th Century-Fox. Macrovision, a larger and more capable company than CRI, may be able to come to its defense, perhaps not only patching the virtual machine-based encryption scheme but quite possibly extending its reach and expanding its purview into the realm of consoles and computers.
I would hardly quantify breaking the BD+ (or CSS for that matter) encryption to enable transformative use for other media players "malicious".
If the government is seeing that there are legitimate reasons to placeshift dvd's and other protected media, thus allowing people to break the encryption to put that media on a portable device and keeping the original disc safe at home, then I would think that the act isn't really "malicious" or "besieged" at all. And probably neither do they.
I'd consider it more along the lines of "promoting fair use" by companies breaking the encryption so that the media conglomerates start to realize that a) DRM is bad for their business, b) DRM doesn't protect the consumer, it's quite obviously for the only the media producer's benefit, and c) it only stops the honest folks, not professional pirates.
No matter what they do, people are wanting to use the media they fairly purchased in the way they want.
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|Nobody knows that BD+ is broken yet, the original claimant has yet to show any proof, and may just be full of BS (like most HD DVD fanboys here).
Either way, the key and encrpyion scheme is BD+ means it's only broken for currently shipped titles.
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|If its broken once, it can and will be broken again.
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|Who cares if new keys are made if the software that was made will remove Java all together. Keys will not be needed if the software is gone.
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|“may just be full of BS (like most HD DVD fanboys here)”
Oh that’s terribly ironic coming from the person who single handed managed to talk more BS in a week than anyone else managed in a year on this news site.
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|Can anyone say blu-ray profile 1.3 ...
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|I actually find this funny. Mostly because i'm very well aware of macrovisions products being a retired reverse engineer myself.
This news alone should make fox rethink its support for bd+ if they value security so much.
Macrovision's security solutions are still the easiest bypassed today amongst all simular products. Them supporting bd+ would make me nervous
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|Perhaps Sony is thinking the same thing. Bottom line it looks like CRI wants to avoid a lawsuit from Sony for fuc$ing up (now worthless protection), so they are passing the buck to Macrovision now.
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|That would explain the cheap sale :)
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|It'll make sense when the ink on the page of a book starts disappearing right before your eyes, thinking your losing your mind you turn to the back cover to find the only words left are "Protected by Macrovision" and a link to go re-authorize your book license it detected passes from one too many hands.
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|but at least Blue-rays are cheaper than HD-DVDs here in Japan.
sub-$200 drives aren't that expensive in my opinion...
although $45 million is kinda really cheap...
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|DUDE!!!!!
How about you stop bulls***ting and ****en start telling us where you are picking up your fantasy priced blu-ray drive so we can all go out and grab one??? Every time you post the same thing and **** off never to return again until the next blu-ray article pops up.
Seriously, can we ban people that outright lie and continue to do so? Or would that leave **** all people
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|I think I know what the BS stands for in your name.
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|Damn.
That's got to be some damn good crack you're smoking.
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|What drug is that you take so we can have some.
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|While your opinion is utterly worthless... you do provide priceless entertainment to all the readers here. Keep up the good work.
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|My bet is that it's some kind of a tax ruse.
Pile all that pointless sh*t up in the one (known for it) company and see it all stop/go bust sooner rather than later.
But you can be sure that the gravy-train will just move on somewhere else.
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|That much for a broken product that makes a lot of sense.
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