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5C Copy Protection | by bldyrlms | 2001-11-09 01:28:05 |
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You mean... | by nin_man | 2001-11-09 08:19:26 |
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OK, how about an analogy? | by smcv | 2001-11-09 09:15:09 |
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Then tell me. | by nin_man | 2001-11-09 09:30:36 |
| How about.. |
by stoutman_2001 |
2001-11-09 11:54:58 |
..VHS casset tape sitting in our movie rack labled "Dennis' Birthdays" and the one next to it labled "John's Birthdays"? They both end at around the 8th birthday, I'm sure if Dad tride to put any more than that on tape, we'de end up with "D's B-day VOL1" and so on... But what if when moving out of hte house, my mom wants ot keep it but I want to have them to watch on occasion? A copy needs to be made. Well, I'm giving me permission to copy the tape for my own personal amusement and the amusment of my own mother. Why do I want my VCR to tell me "No, you can't do that!". I'll _not_ be against making hardware do that, if and when they make a little slot on it where you can shove notes that read "I, Steven Spielberg, give permission to Dennis Stout that he can record every showing of Animaniacs he pleases." so it's legal for me to record.
So what we're looking at, is a VCR that has a scanner with OCR enabled. Plus an encryption/decryption chip (C5?). This will of course need to have a reasonable processor (Mobile Athlon 4 will work nicely) and a SCSI controller of some sort (to run the scanner. I'm not going to wait a billion years for my 5 by 8 sheet of paper to be scanned), and a harddrive (not very big, but big enough to hold a lot of copies of notes of authorization. Probebly a 2GB will work fine. And since we already have a SCSI controller for the scanner... Hell, they're small enough, 9GB. Never have to worry about it.). Course, the OS will be Linux :) So we have an Embedded Linux system running on a VCR that can scan and process letters of authorization ot copy things. Next, it'll have to verify that it's not a forged letter. A modem or ethernet card will be installed (both? who knows what the future holds, we may all have fiber optic lines running to our homes in a few years. *shrugs*) so the machine can connect to a server thats got copies of these letters, so they can be matches. Now here's how the system will work... You write a letter to Stevel Spielberg asking permission to copy his TV shows. He sends a letter of authorization to MegaHollywood Corporation who scans it and puts the copy on a central server. Tehy then send a notice of filing plus hte letter of authorization back to Steven Spielberg. Steven can then take the letter of approval and mail it to you. Once you recieve it, you cna shove it in the slot on your VCR. Your VCR scans it, then connects to the remote server and downloads their copy of it. It then matches the two together and if it's within such a tolerance of accurate (for say, 90% of the scanned image matches the downloaded image. To account for folding of hte paper, innacuracies in scanning hardware, dust, coffee spills, and so on) it'll allow the copy to occure. Now, it needs to match the signature of the producer with the producer of hte show. OCR reads the signature so it knows who signed it. Instead of showing credits athte end of hte show, they'll be shown at hte beginning. This way, OCR can also read the name on the screen. If they match, the copy is allowed ot occure. Or rather, the recording.
That's a pain in the rump :P Now as for copying my birthday video so that my mom and brother both have copies, and I have na original.. There are no credits, so that portion of authentication fails. Therefore, my tape cannot be copied and I get really really annoyed. This results in my making some MegaHollywood Corp. people really annoyed, and probebly through the use of a pitchfork, soda pop bottle, pink salmon, and a road cone.
My system would work for copying from TV to tape, and the system could easily be adapted to DVD and so forth. However, there's still some fundamental development thats required for tape to tape copies of home videos. Perhaps all blank cassette tapes could be marked from the factory and all said tapes get no copy right protection? Then the VCR could be set to modify that sticky bit so when I copy Animaniacs to it, and you barrow hte tape and try to copy it yourself, it refuses to copy without hte consent of Steven Spielberg.
I can very very foresee Steven Spielberg becomming outragously annoyed atthe influx of mail he'd begin to recieve. I wouldn't blame him. Writing out "I, Steven Spielberg, give <name> my permission to copy Animaniacs onto VHS" several hundred times per day would give him writers cramp, then how could he produce such an awesome cartoon? Course, this would have positive side effects for him. His writers cramp would result in a lower quality workmanship, so people wouldn't liek the show as much, so less people owuld ask for permission to copy it. He'd become very happy at producing garbage. Which in and of itself, is pretty sad.
*shrugs* I like hte idea of my VCR being in-bed-with Linux, but not for these reasons. I'll shoot any unlucky soul who creats such a monstrosity as what I've written to you here today.
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[ Reply ] |
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stoutman has a very valid point... | by Ma Petite | 2001-11-09 12:06:46 |
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Perhaps, perhaps not. | by nin_man | 2001-11-09 13:09:07 |
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