AS3 Blu-Ray : once again, AACS ruins it all...
The Golden box Atlas Shrugged part III Blu-Ray I ordered last month arrived yesterday, together with a few other goods, and I was expecting to spend a nice evening watching it while sipping a hot drink with my Askton Dinner mug cup...
Alas, it didn't go well. You see, I use a USB Blu-Ray player and VLC on my Linux PC to watch Blu-Rays, and sometimes, when the disc has just been released, it arrives encrypted with yet another MKB version (this time, 39), which makes it a mere shiny plastic coaster for my Akston Dinner mug cup.
Oh, it didn't go down without a fight, of course, I spend the better part of a couple of hours trying various methods to open the video stream, to no avail.
So, in short, the nice movie evening I planned to spend was ruined by a completely unneeded copy protection scheme, and who do I have to thank for it ? The list of culprits is proudly printed at the very beginning of the AACS specification document:
Intel Corporation
International Business Machines Corporation
Microsoft Corporation
Panasonic Corporation
Sony Corporation
Toshiba Corporation
The Walt Disney Company
Warner Bros.
So, what now ? The Blu-Ray is clearly broken, but it's not one of those defects that can be fixed by having another item sent, it's a fundamental, systemic defect which intentionally prevents me from enjoying a two hours screening I paid for.
What's going to happen next, is that, like I had to do for the first two parts, I will just wait for a cracked movie to spread on the net.
Merry Christmas !
Alas, it didn't go well. You see, I use a USB Blu-Ray player and VLC on my Linux PC to watch Blu-Rays, and sometimes, when the disc has just been released, it arrives encrypted with yet another MKB version (this time, 39), which makes it a mere shiny plastic coaster for my Akston Dinner mug cup.
Oh, it didn't go down without a fight, of course, I spend the better part of a couple of hours trying various methods to open the video stream, to no avail.
So, in short, the nice movie evening I planned to spend was ruined by a completely unneeded copy protection scheme, and who do I have to thank for it ? The list of culprits is proudly printed at the very beginning of the AACS specification document:
Intel Corporation
International Business Machines Corporation
Microsoft Corporation
Panasonic Corporation
Sony Corporation
Toshiba Corporation
The Walt Disney Company
Warner Bros.
So, what now ? The Blu-Ray is clearly broken, but it's not one of those defects that can be fixed by having another item sent, it's a fundamental, systemic defect which intentionally prevents me from enjoying a two hours screening I paid for.
What's going to happen next, is that, like I had to do for the first two parts, I will just wait for a cracked movie to spread on the net.
Merry Christmas !
There was a term 'third party forcing' which may apply here. It means that one company is forcing you to buy the product of another company in order to use what you bought, without being told beforehand.
Try going to the forum of the particular Linux distro that you use, ask there.
You may get a solution, it may even be legal.
Sony is in big doodoo at the moment. Many are actually happy at that.
Not just because of the crass emails now revealed.
AACS is an infuriating encryption scheme aimed at forcing people who buy a Blu-Ray to play it only within a defined geographical area and using only approved playback device. Moreover, even if at one point your device can read it, it's cryptographic key can be revoked at any time, making it useless thereafter.
In addition, in the US, it is backed by the infamous DMCA, which makes it illegal to decrypt the contents.
This scheme is yet another example of the complete idiocy of the RIAA/MPAA mafia, it's a counter-productive scheme which penalizes the very people who pay to acquire the Blu-Ray, and literally forces people to seek cracked copies of the contents they purchased in order just to watch it.