Cryptography Expert Paul Kocher Warns: Future DVDs Prime Target for Piracy, Pay TV Foreshadows Challenges

[Bill Frantz]

At 10:40 AM -0700 4/20/04, R. A. Hettinga wrote:
>"While it's unfortunate that security on the current DVD format is broken
>and can't be reprogrammed, HD is what really matters. Once studios release
>high-definition content, there will be little or no distinction between
>studio-quality and consumer-quality," said Kocher. "This means that HD is
>probably Hollywood's one and only chance to get security right."
>
>According to Kocher, Hollywood is following a path common to other
>industries facing similar problems. "Typically, first-generation security
>systems fail irrecoverably, but later generations are designed to recover
>from failures," Kocher said. As an example, he cites K-band ("big dish")
>satellite TV systems, which suffered from devastating piracy because
>security flaws could not be corrected. Having learned this lesson, modern
>pay TV systems place critical security components in smart cards or
>security modules that can be replaced. While this approach is not optimal
>because hardware upgrades are expensive, it has enabled the industry to
>keep piracy at survivable levels.

Continuously changing the protection on permanent storage media is a much
more difficult problem than changing broadcast protection.  With broadcast,
you give current subscribers the new smart card, change what's broadcast,
and away you go.  With permanent storage media, once the protection is
broken, the content is still available to pirate.  Only new releases can be
protected with new protection schemes.

These technical considerations would seem to lead to a marketing strategy
of short product cycles driven by big advertising campaigns, to reap as
much profit as possible while piracy is still difficult.  This approach is
not new to the movie industry.  In recent years, the number of theaters
opening a big movie release has increased greatly, and the time it runs in
theaters has become shorter.

It is ironic to compare the marketing strategy of reaping most of the
profit quickly, with the public policy stance that long copyright terms are
necessary to provide incentive for production.

Cheers - Bill


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Bill Frantz        | "There's nothing so clear as a | Periwinkle
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