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发信人: linuxrat (叫我老鼠错不了), 信区: Linux
标  题: "好赖污"害怕了么? 关于DVD. [Forward]
发信站: BBS 水木清华站 (Fri Dec 31 15:02:31 1999)

  Copyright(C) 2000 by http://news.cnet.com/
  Forwarded by Linuxrat by the end of 1999.
   ____________________________________________________________________

     DVD piracy program propagates on the Net
     By Stephanie Miles and Michael Kanellos
     Staff Writers, CNET News.com
     November 4, 1999, 1:25 p.m. PT

     Are Hollywood's fears about DVD piracy becoming reality?

     That may be the case as a new software utility circulating on the
     Internet theoretically allows anyone with a DVD drive on her PC to
     make copies of DVD movies and store them on her hard drive or copy
     them to rewritable CD-ROM discs.

     The program is reportedly a by-product of efforts to create a DVD
     software player for Linux-based computers. RealNetworks' Xing DVD
     player lacked the traditional encryption that protects most
     software DVD players, allowing developers to create software that
     descrambles the encryption on a DVD movie and compresses the file
     to a manageable size.

     "We're certainly looking into the matter," said a RealNetworks
     spokesman, declining to comment further.

     But while the program making the rounds of newsgroups and Internet
     sites has the potential to facilitate mass piracy, the logistics of
     copying and distributing digital movies are so complicated and
     unwieldy as to render the whole process "more trouble than its
     worth," according to one observer.

     The program's illicit potential hardly marks the first threat of
     DVD piracy, industry observers say, even if it touches a sore spot.
     There has been a robust market for illegal copies of DVD movies in
     areas such as Eastern Europe and Asia for some time. And even if
     this new decryption technique is attractive to some large-scale
     replicators, it is unlikely to make a huge impact on the domestic
     market for digital movies, analysts say.

     The process could work like this. After copying a DVD movie to
     one's hard drive, the replicated movie can then be "burned" to a CD
     using a rewritable CD drive, according to Ted Pine, an analyst with
     InfoTech Research. An infinite number of copies can be then made
     from that master.

     Because of the degree of compression required to get a DVD movie
     onto the much smaller CD, however, the quality of the movie will
     not be that much better than a typical VHS tape, Pine said.

     In fact, movies copied using this utility will lack any of the
     "bells and whistles" of legitimate DVD-ROMs. The utility
     essentially lifts the digital video stream but not any of the fancy
     DVD features that allow for the presentation of background
     information or searches for particular chapters, Pine explained.

     "Not that it mitigates the significance of the problem, but the
     thing to consider is what exactly are you getting after putting
     your DVD through one of these 'rippers'? You're getting linear
     video content, but not the surround sound or interactive features,"
     Pine said. Ripping is a common Internet term, usually applied to
     the MP3 music software, referring to the process of copying a title
     into a format that anyone can play.

     "It sounds like more trouble than its worth," said Erik Corrigan,
     president of 12Cm Multimedia Corporation, a DVD production company.
     DVD movies take up about 5GB of data, unlike pirated MP3 music,
     which can be compressed to a few megabytes and is thus much easier
     to store and distribute, he said.

     "So who's going to do this? Not you, and not me, and not even a
     casual MP3 user," Pine said. "The only person interested in
     infinite copies of a video CD output is a pirate."

     The circulating software utility isn't the first technology
     enabling video piracy, according to Corrigan. But most piracy
     operations invest tens of millions of dollars in equipment, rather
     than downloading free software utilities.

     Just a matter of time
     Still, a crack in encryption technology was inevitable, said Jim
     Porter, an analyst at Disktrend.

     "What did they expect? No matter what code they put out there to
     protect [content] it is still going to happen," he said "Any
     encryption program can eventually be broken."

     DVD in certain respects presents a double-edged sword for the film
     and TV world. On one hand, DVD provides better resolution than
     videotape, which could drive demand. Revenue from rental and sales
     to homes, of course, have become a significant component for most
     studios.

     On the other hand, the technology underlying DVD disks allows for
     the production of high-quality pirated versions, once the
     encryption hurdle is cleared. Reproduction can also be easier.
     Overall, this could make illegal copies more attractive to
     consumers.

     "They aren't concerned about what happens in suburban
     neighborhoods. They are concerned about what happens in China,
     Asia, South America" and other markets where piracy, and the market
     for pirated products, have a stronger foothold, Porter said.

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