arizona republic
Mistake allows DVD movie copies
Software key cracked, put on the Internet
By Mike Musgrove
Washington Post
A group of programmers has duplicated the software equivalent of a skeleton key and placed it on the Internet for anyone to download. Using the program, anyone with a PC and DVD-ROM drive can unlock a DVD movie and record a digital copy onto his hard drive.
DVD (digital video disc) is easily the biggest change in watching movies at home since since videotape. It projects a crisper, clearerimage on the screen than tape, improving the picture much as the compact disc improved sound over that of vinyl records. Almost 4 million DVD players have been shipped in the United States.
The movie studios were relying on the technology's built-in encoding scheme to protect its DVD releases from piracy. This software, called DeCSS, can work remarkably quickly; a Washington Post freelancer used it to duplicate a DVD, movie within minutes.
This is not the first time DVD's security has been compromised,, DVD's "regional protection" software, which was supposed to keep DVD players sold on one continent from playing digital video discs sold on another, has been cracked repeatedly.
The way the encryption system referred to as "Content Scrambling System," or "CSS", works is that each digital video disc carries a set of keys to -unlock its data; each DVD player comes with its own key and a CSS program to match the keys, unscrambling the movie.
That CSS software is supposed to be encrypted itself, so that outsiders can't examine its workings. But XingDVD Player, a program from Xing Technologies, a subsidiary of RealNetworks Inc., reportedly left this CSS software unscrambled. A small team of computer program_ mers in Norway used this vulnerability to design the DeCSS software. A spokesman for RealNetworks did not have a comment.
While the issue of piracy and "cracking" security programs is of great interest to the computing industry, it is not a concern to the average home user. Although re- cordable DVD drives are supposed to appear on the market next year, getting a pirated copy off of a computer today is difficult. And sending a copy around the Internet is impractical, owing to the huge size of the resulting file.
Corey Wade, research director at Alexander & Associates, downplayed the impact of the DeCSS hack on the entertainment industry. "Despite the hype, I don't think a lot of people want to watch a movie on their computer," he said.