eBay: Burn DVD movies onto CD?

[Riad S. Wahby]

David Honig <honig at sprynet.com> wrote:
<snip>

Up to this point, I agree with everything you have said.

> The EBay advert could have been selling "cp" because there was nothing
> about playback implied.  Presumably you would copy your DVD files
> from CDs onto a hard drive and then play them back.  As the ad said,
> perfectly legal.
> 
> You don't need to decrypt to copy.  

That's true.  However, in order to read data from a DVD, you must
first "authenticate" to the DVD player.  This is before any decryption
takes place.  This is a cryptographic handshake mechanism using a key.
If you do not perform this handshake, it is not possible to read the
data.

You are correct that this does not involve decryption.  It does,
however, involve circumventing a part of the DVD protection
mechanism---the one that protects the raw bits from being read off the
disk.  

DVD player software does this handshake directly.  It is not handled
by the operating system, nor should it be, according to the DVD CCA.
No mechanism will be licensed by the DVD CCA that allows the raw bits
to be accessed, according to another post on this thread.  Thus, you
must access the raw bits using unlicensed software---i.e. a
circumvention device.

To summarize: dd if=/dev/dvd of=pirated.file *does*not*work*.  You
must first run some sort of program to authenticate with the drive.
Then you can dd as much as you like.  The problem is with the
authentication program---by the DVD CCA's licensing standards, no such
program can be legit.  Thus, according to the current 2600-MPAA
decision, what is being sold on EBay is illegal, assuming that it does
what it claims to do.

--
Riad Wahby
rsw at mit.edu
MIT VI-2/A 2002

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