‘Rent and Rip Rampant,’ Rovi Says Of Rise In Illegal Blu-ray Copying

LONDON -- Colorful details of Rovi’s running technical battle to thwart movie rippers emerged from the Rovi road show last week as the former Macrovision rolled through London, after its stop in New York (CED July 21 p2). “It’s punch and counterpunch,” Gerald Hensley, Rovi vice president of entertainment, said of the battle against unauthorized copying. “Currently there is an upswing in Blu-ray ripping,” and indications are studios are falling behind the hackers in attempting to stop it, he said.

"Rent and rip is rampant,” TDG Diffusion Senior Analyst Colin Dixon told the briefing of reporters and studio representatives. Though infringement talk for years has spotlighted unauthorized P2P file-sharing, disc-copying continues to flourish, particularly among people who regularly rent Blu-ray movies, he said. “People who rent and rip are on average making 2.89 additional copies,” he said. “Around 30 percent share with family, friends and colleagues."

The wider availability of Blu-ray-ripping programs is contributing to the rise, Dixon said. “In 2008, there were just two BD ripping programs,” he said. “Now there are six. If you think the size of the file is a barrier to BD ripping, you are wrong.” Technologically savvy rippers have more than kept pace with Blu-ray’s more robust encryption, he said. Blu-ray’s Advanced Access Content System copy protection is stronger than DVD’s Content Scrambling System, but the AACS key needed to rip Avatar “was available before the BD was released,” he said. “And the movie X-Men was available for free download even before theatrical release."

"Piracy prevention equals protecting revenue,” Dixon said, introducing an infomercial touting Rovi’s suite of copy protection products and services. For example, RipGuard digital DVD protection works by altering the navigational structure of a DVD, so sequences are copied in the wrong order, the video said. ACP analog copy protection for DVD uses invisible pulses buried in the DVD signal that tell a DVD recorder not to record, it said. Rovi’s CopyBlock now bundles ACP and RipGuard in a single package that works with or without CSS, it said. “RipGuard offers the market’s most effective rip control,” it said. “Over 1 billion DVDs with RipGuard have shipped in the last three years alone.” According to the video, “RipGuard protects against the vast majority of consumer piracy segments,” and CopyBlock offers “effective copy protection … at a few pence per disc."

We asked Dixon whether he thinks the research showed that existing copy-protection systems were losing pace with hackers, and if there were new systems on the horizon to stem the flow. Hensley of Rovi interjected to say he would rather have Dixon field the question “offline,” not in front of an audience. Still, Dixon chimed in to say he thinks “the industry should be considering more robust protection. Copying is very time-consuming, so failure when you try to copy a disc is painful. Making it difficult is the main goal.” Blu-ray’s AACS encryption keys regularly leak to hackers because the studios must make test pressings well ahead of release to ensure that titles play correctly, “and not all mastering houses are equally secure,” Dixon later explained.

For years, AACS supporters repeatedly touted the system’s robustness on the ground that AACS keys that have been hacked can always be renewed. The reality is that renewing hacked AACS “is a painful process,” said Andy Devitt, RipGuard’s engineering team manager at Rovi’s Maidenhead, U.K., office. For example, the hacked title would need to be pulled from the market and repressed with the new keys, he said. “Existing discs can still be ripped. And the companies that sell ripping software soon get the new key and issue a new version of their software. We know because we watch the forums."

The “BD+” add-on, which Rovi acquired the rights to when it bought Cryptography Research Inc. three years ago, “adds another level of security to Blu-ray,” Devitt said. “But not every release is using it. Far from it. It is not entrenched.” Devitt also confirmed that there is still no protection on the signals that a PC sends to an analog monitor. So these signals can be ripped or copied to a blank DVD, using one of the many inexpensive PC-to-TV converter boxes available, he said. He also confirmed that although Macrovision developed and promoted CD copy protection systems, Rovi no longer markets them.