Idea for copy protect

[ggodw000]

I thought about certain media file protection, not like super absolute protection but make it much harder than simple file copy and paste.
Here is the idea:
Standard format such as jpg mpg mov will not work. Period.

Design proprietary format and application for it. That will be a huge amount of work. So middle ground is altered standard format such that it is no readable by standard a appkication. Therefore come up altered application that reads the media.

The way it works is application read a file and check the disk medium characteristic i.e. sha(serial no + number of blocks). It is bound to the user account on web server which holds the hash of original content. If it did not match, then ask user to supply password.

Will it work?

[dchapiesky]

no....

people with money hack an encrypted hdmi display and record row/col of actual panel - convert to mpeg and now they can copy your mpeg as much as they want... already done...

cheers

[Boris]

What you want is plain encryption between the media provider, and... The brain.

It exists. It is called non mediatized art. Where on first glance , it is of poor quality, but which triggers good things in your mind.

[ggodw000]

no....

people with money hack an encrypted hdmi display and record row/col of actual panel - convert to mpeg and now they can copy your mpeg as much as they want... already done...

cheers

yes, there is always way, just need to make it harder to simple copy and paste. I myself actually used fraps application, another command line linux based applicatoin (forgot name) combination of python to strip off directly from netflix. It is of poor quality but decent.

[Kevin]

Let's talk about useful functionality instead of restricting users. This kind of "protection" always only hurts the honest users who are stuck with your original version. For unauthorised copies, one person finds the way to circumvent your protection (especially if it's so simple as what you proposed) and will then pass on copies in a standard format that is much nicer to use than your original file with artificial limitations.

So this kind of protection is how you make people use the copied version rather than your original.

[matt11235]

DRM just doesn't work. People will get around it eventually.
For example, I believe Netflix's content gets decrypted by the TPM so pirates just record their screens or the video output from the GPU instead.
It's the same with software and I think developers are noticing (new DOOM game update removes the Denuvo DRM)

[dozniak]

I thought about certain media file protection,

WHY did you think about it?

[dchapiesky]

just need to make it harder to simple copy and paste..

Whole reams of custom secure OS's have been written about this topic - lookup MILS - Multiple Independent Levels of Security as well as Data-Diode and Partitioned Operating Systems... They came to the conclusion it is easier to control the user's actions via the OS than have the data somehow protect its self.

[ggodw000]

I thought about certain media file protection,

WHY did you think about it?

business requirement.

[ggodw000]

thanks for thoughts, but weeks or months can be spent on whether this is right to protect file or not or works or not. we just decided that it will make sure harder. Implementation might be a lot of work, so interested looking for any biz that can give this kinda of service.

[ggodw000]

DRM just doesn't work. People will get around it eventually.
For example, I believe Netflix's content gets decrypted by the TPM so pirates just record their screens or the video output from the GPU instead.
It's the same with software and I think developers are noticing (new DOOM game update removes the Denuvo DRM)

I think actually nothing will really work in case of absolute security. No matter how you implement there is always way around. It is just a question of how much times, resources it takes and worth it. If benefit of compromised data < cost of breakin (assuming we can do comparison in quantifiable measure i.e.), it is practically safe. OK, I am getting started on crypto lecture.

[ggodw000]

DRM just doesn't work. People will get around it eventually.
For example, I believe Netflix's content gets decrypted by the TPM so pirates just record their screens or the video output from the GPU instead.
It's the same with software and I think developers are noticing (new DOOM game update removes the Denuvo DRM)

Worked a lot with tpm last few years, havent gotten expert but i can tell you tpm, being small device is not powerful and fast enough for media encryption. now what might be possible is to use powerful processor to encrypt the media then encrypt with the tpm the key (which itself a small data) used to encrypt the media.

[Kevin]

business requirement.

If you think you need to harass your honest users, that sounds like a sign that your business model isn't working and should be rethought.

[dchapiesky]

The primary purpose of the TPM is to store SHAs and keys which "attest" to whether or not the local system has been tampered with. As you said, the TPM is small, and can store a more than a few keys but not a wholesale per-video watched key store.... Think of it as a root of trust in a certificate chain. many subkeys pass by being validated but not stored in it. And yes it is slow as fck


If your target market wants TPMs or you think that they will tolerate the cost of TPM hardware, then go the Partitioned OS route and MiLS.... to restrict copy/paste - otherwise - like other posts have said - you are just gunna piss off your customers

[Schol-R-LEA]

I thought about certain media file protection,

WHY did you think about it?

business requirement.

Is this bespoke or salary work, or your own business plan? If the former, the you have my condolences, and I recommend dusting off your resume at the earliest convenience. If it is your own, I recommend changing it in to something actually viable in the current market - few consumers will work with a small business that uses DRM (and even larger businesses lose more money than they recoup from it, not just because it drives off customers, but because it almost invariably leads to increased support costs as due to flaws in the DRM system).

Regardless of whether it is right or wrong, as a practical matter copy protection is a white elephant - it costs the companies using it far more than it could possibly be worth. The development cost (or purchase cost) alone is likely to exceed anything saved by preventing casual users from copying the software, and in any case copying by casual users is not a significant monetary loss center - copying by professional pirates and torrent users can be, but DRM actually encourages those losses (by drawing attention to the program) rather than preventing them.

It makes no sense to worry about a businessman putting a program on a half dozen office computers, or some teen giving a copy of something to a friend, when at the same time you can't stop the guys who are cranking out DVDs of your program and putting their own company name on it for resale, or when some script kiddie can rip the program with a utility they got off of some website and post it to the latest incarnation of The Pirate Bay for anyone to torrent. The losses DRM can prevent aren't losses - at worst the potential customer would use something else if they couldn't do what they wanted with your software, at best casual copying would spread the use of the program and actually lead to an increase in sales - and the ones which are losses can't be prevented by any means other than not writing the program in the first place.

If you feel you must pursue this, either out of a misguided over-valuation of your own product or because someone else is paying you to do it out of a misguided etc., then I recommend focusing on two things: first, go with a SaaS model that uses micro-transactions - ones which are actually micro, that is, ones which are measured in the thousandths of a US cent, and covered through a pre-paid escrow - and have the software only download the parts actually in use at a given time, keeping the code sections in a LRU cache and never providing the whole program at any given time; and second, encrypt the object files or bytecode when not in use. It will slow the software down (though not as much as you might think), but it will at least fulfill your brief.

(And yes, this is actually quite close to something I intend to build into the document system of Kether. However, the goal there is less about the property rights - that's more of a side benefit - than about having an audit trail for provenance, which could be a valuable research tool. The difference is that in Kether - which gets the idea from the Xanadu work going back to the late 1960s, which is where the idea of micro-transactions originated - all documents and program code would be handled this way transparently. More significantly, I mean to use capabilities to control things such as link visibility, and provide very fine-grained distribution control, which would mean that, short of compromising the system itself - which can be expected to be done by some people if it were a commercial system, to be sure - a user without a capability for a given link would be unable to even learn of the link's existence from within the system. It would not alter whether a document fragment is copied or not - that is controlled entirely by the system anyway, the most a user can do is ask for it to place a cached duplicate on a given medium - and any transactions would themselves be recorded in an audit log.)