Shane, I posed this message on another forum I visit, but I will post it here as well since this is the forum I regular most. So anyway, here goes.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mssturgeon
It is not an objective piece. It was not meant as a standard "tech spec comparison", you can find enough of those on the 'net. I wanted to write a piece to tell those who are about to make a decision what they should care about. If my research would have pointed toward Blu-ray, I would have written the article the other way around.
Glad to answer any other questions you all might have about it.
Thanks,
- Shane Sturgeon
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Shane on the topic of Consumer Friendliness & DRM with the two HD formats I think its worthwhile to investigate the capabilities of BD+ Advanced Countermeasure. According to the BDA (link:
http://www.mediafanatics.net/BD-ROMSecurity.pdf), BD+ Advanced Countermeasure - which is called into action when Basic Countermeasure fails - is able to execute native code on the host process. Translated into English, this means basically it is essentially permitted in the BD spec for a BD disc/player to run a program of the studio's choosing without your permission on your player/computer.
Now, what Pioneer's reps have gone on record to describe to the public in avenues such as AVSFORUM and in interviews once this feature was exposed is not Advanced Countermeasure, but rather Basic Countermeasure. Basic Countermeasure works through virtual machine technology and hence any changes that are made are temporary and do not affect the host process. Pioneer actively chose to ignore the capabilities of Advanced Countermeasure when discussing BD+, completely leaving out the info in BDA's own BD+ security presentation.
The concern for "consumer friendliness" here is that the BDA is purposefully deceiving the public by failing to inform them of the full capabilities of BD+ Advanced Countermeasure. Instead, they are choosing to focus only on Basic Countermeasure tactics as these are much less intrusive in nature and simply ignoring the Advanced Countermeasure capabilities within the BD spec.
Therefore a consumer may be exposing themselves to a security risk with BD+ unknowingly as its full capabilities have not been publically discussed by the BDA. It seems both shady and dishonest for BDA members to continue to discuss Basic Countermeasure while ignoring the bigger security & privacy concerns of Advanced Countermeasure... I mean, I could think of a million ways Advanced Countermeasure could be used maliciously not only by hackers but also studios! It would give them the perfect backdoor to run whatever software they please on your computer - it just seems like another "Sony Rootkit" fiasco waiting to happen. IMO the consumer should be more informed about BD+ Advanced Countermeasure and the BDA should be more upfront about ALL of its capabilities both now and in the future. It would be very useful to the consumer if someone were to do an expose on this specific facet of the BD+ DRM technology and get some real concrete data on it from the primary people involved in its creation & deployment (Sony, Fox, and Pansonic - who have now sold the technology to Macrovision). Thanks for the reply, and thanks for the fantastic article.