Hacker News Reader

Comment by WheelsAtLarge | Hacker News Reader

I feel like we need an open source DVD and CD so that they will survive for the long term. Streaming is nice but I don't want to pay monthly fees forever just to hear the music I like.

View on HN

DVD and CD are completely documented formats, the DRM has been cracked, and the patents are expired. Blu-ray patents are about to expire.

The issue with blu-ray is (and will likely always be) the decryption keys, which are copyrighted and cannot be distributed legally.

Encryption keys, being purely random, are not copyrightable. (In light of recent events, this raises the question of artisanal human-created keys.) Distributing keys probably violates DMCA section 1201 though.

Spotify's offline playback DRM hinges on a HMAC key that's a human-readable phrase, based on a certain lyric. I'm curious whether it's just a fun easter egg, or if there's some kind of legal basis for the choice.

BD+ and AACS are literally that though, that’s why VLC can’t play blu-rays.

> NB: Most commercial Blu-Ray are protected by AACS or BD+ technologies and this library is not enough to playback those discs.

https://www.videolan.org/developers/libbluray.html

clicking into the libaacs and libbd+ yields:

> NB: this project doesn't offer any key or certificate that could be used to decode encrypted copyrighted material.

Key or certificate could be used to decode encrypted copyrighted material and key or certificate is copyrighted are different.

I don’t know how to say this softly.

Answering in this way has done nothing to further my understanding of the topic, you haven’t explained the difference or why there is a difference and you haven’t offered a counter-example.

I can only surmise that you’ve answered in order to feel superior, but that doesn’t make sense because while I have examples of behaviour that can be explained by my statements, you haven’t added anything to explain yours.

So, your statement stands alone, undefended and without context or explanation.

What were you trying to achieve? A key that is used to decrypt copyrighted material being /itself/ copyrighted means it cant be distributed which is what we see.

And I don't care to, so I'll say it as neutrally as I always do. The unsupported claim here is yours:

> A key that is used to decrypt copyrighted material being /itself/ copyrighted means it cant be distributed which is what we see.

But nobody (at least in this sub-thread) has shown that the keys are copyrighted. All we know is that they apperently "can't" be distributed. You are proffering one explanation as to why, but you haven't supported it.

"Key or certificate could be used to decode encrypted copyrighted material" is presumably why distributing the keys is banned by the DMCA[1]; "key or certificate is copyrighted" is apparently not true, because they can't be[2]. Those are, or are at least purported to be, statements of fact, so asking for examples is irrelevant; kind of like "So you claim two plus two equals four? But you haven't provided an example!".

The immediate consequence, which was presumably what the previous poster was trying to show (and trusted that people would understand the obvious implication), is that distributing these keys may well be a violation of the DMCA, but not of copyright per se. So even if one is all for copyright, but does not support the DMCA as a means to protect it — which, AFAICR from online discussions back when the DMCA was first legislated and implemented, is potentially quite a lot of people — one would be ethically justified to distribute the keys. Unless you can show that they actually are copyrighted.

AFAICS you haven't. So the statement that stands alone and unsupported seems to me to be yours.

___

Edited: Got the attributions wrong, hopefully correct now.

[1]: As per user "pseudalopex", in the GP comment.

[2]: As per user "wmf", a bit upthreads. Because they're just mathematical artifacts and contain no artistic / intellectual human input, AIUI. (Addition on edit: Slå upp "verkshöjd".)

> In light of recent events, this raises the question of artisanal human-created keys.

https://xkcd.com/221/

FWIW me reading the headline alone was enough to help justify a NAS purchase with my not-as-tech-inclined wife so we can just start dumping things there one way or another...

You mean, a jailbroken ps3? :)

PS3 is a great Blu-ray player IMO. Solid console, solid controller, good laser implementation. Just pop it in and it Just Works.

Seeing a native Blu-ray (god I hate typing that out) on my then 1080p Panny Plasma was a sight to behold. The quality was fantastic, incredible detail and color in a dark room. I miss the console, the television, and the couch I sat on. All of that is gone. But I still remember the glory of seeing it for the first time.

PS3 wont do 4k though will it?

No, but I believe there's 4k version of the PS4 that came out towards the end of that console's lifecycle. I'm satisfied with my regular 1080p PS4 though.

It won't play 4K blu-rays, only the PS5 will.

And the XBOneS (the reason I stopped using the PS)

if yours even works. i went through four or five with varying issues. yellow light of death, blinking red light

I have a 320GB CECH-25xxB, with evilnat it's a very usable console and can still play games online with no issues and no paid subscription. The stock player can play bdrips over upnp just fine, other than physical media such as CD, DVD, BD and also SACD!!

I think at this point it’s called vinyl.

Vinyl is far from open source CD due to limitations of phisical format and the fact that good vinyl contains specifically mastered for vinyl with those limitations taken into account.

You can still easily buy Bluray player and open source your discs with ARM (not CPU/SoCs, different one)

If you're referring to the RIAA equalization curve[1] that is completely open and well defined.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIAA_equalization

Like all analog formats, vinyl has a non-linear response. Things like total amplitude and frequency content affect noise and distortion when reproduced. Another factor is that it's a constant angular velocity medium, so the response is different at the beginning than the end. These are factors that a good mastering engineer takes into account.

This occurs in the digital world as well. When we went to DVDs, the studios had encoders/authoring engineers, who tweaked compression parameters per scene, as compression is another non-linear process. For example, they might apply a small amount of blur on a dark scene where film grain trips up the compression.

Eta: Apple provides the exact pipeline [1] they use for their services so the sound engineer can listen to the output and adjust.

[1] https://www.apple.com/apple-music/apple-digital-masters/

Point I'm making: vinyl is a lossy format and not just lossy, it degrades with plays even if your turntable is super-duper calibrated. It even degrades just by sitting in a sleave if environmental conditions aren't close to perfect.

I really hope not, there isn't a single redeeming quality to vinyls from any practical point of view.

The big album art?

I'll give it that, though the size in general is a downside for more people than it is a benefit.

Even the discs themselves can be works of art now. Even though vinyl discs are less practical than CDs they're a subjectively fun art experience.

to play a record, i don't need a computer or any electronics created after, say, 1960 or so. that's a nice benefit :)

Better yet, you don't need any components in the supply chain that weren't well within the means of people 100 years ago. Vinyls and Edison cylinders will outlive every CD ever made.

That's a fun statement. I think we already had vacuum tubes and other foundational components that would in theory have allowed someone to build a CD player a 100 years ago or very close to that. If they would have had the knowledge.

For starters, CDs are not very dense, you can see the data with a microscope: http://www.pmonta.com/compact-disc-microscopy.html

In addition to the circuitry, I was also assuming that the laser would pose a difficulty.

It doesn't really require a coherent light source, although that does allow further miniaturization.

I think it would be fair to allow a hypothetical 1920s CD player to occupy most of a room. I'd be interested to see exactly how hard it would be to produce such a thing using the available technology of the era, though I'm still somewhat skeptical regarding the complexity and precision required of the laser motor (which unlike a vinyl needle needs to be controlled manually, rather than just following a groove mechanically) and the spindle motor (which needs to accelerate precisely depending on the laser's distance from the center, unlike a record which revolves at a constant rate).

CD players came out in 80s, so one could say I don't need electronics made after the 80s to play those. Do those 20 years matter that much? I doubt it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com