“Content protection is a critical issue for next-generation media distribution,” said Joshua Martin, Associate Research Analyst, IDC’s Consumer Markets group. “Finalizing the content protection scheme is critical for the launch of blue laser optical disc technology, and new protection schemes should allow for increased consumer flexibility while better protecting prerecorded content compared to current DVD technology.”

The state of the art content management system AACS, used in the Blu-ray is many times more powerful than the system used in the DVDs. Additionally, AACS enables new consumer usage models around network functionality and internet connectivity including managing copies, in an authorized and secure manner.

Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) has adopted the most comprehensive Digital Rights Management (DRM) ever employed on an optical disc format in a move to protect the original buyers against unauthorized copying and large scale duplication.

In addition to AACS, the BDA took one another bold step in choosing for the battle against mass pirated production by adopting the ROM Mark. This mass piracy is something that analyst estimated to have cost around a souring 3 billion USD in revenue loss to the movie industry. This ROM mark, a unique feature in the Blu Ray disc was specially designed to combat this and prevent this huge loss. The ROM Mark technology embeds a unique and undetectable identifier in pre-recorded BD-ROM media such as movies, music and games. While invisible to consumers, this ROM Mark can only be mastered with equipment available to licensed BD-ROM manufacturers, essentially preventing unauthorized copies of a disc.

The new Blu-ray content management system also has another primary component “BD+”, a Blu-ray-specific enhancement for content protection renewability. This BD+ gives content providers an additional means to respond to organized attacks on the security system by allowing dynamic updates of compromised code. With these enhancements, content providers have a number of methods to choose from to combat hacks on Blu-ray players. Moreover, BD+ affects only players that have been attacked, as opposed to those that are vulnerable but haven’t been attacked and therefore continue to operate properly.

Obviously the Blu Ray Disc Association (BDA) has used a lot of new unique technology and also a many lot of money to combat and prevent the threat that is plaguing the movie industry and original copyrights – Piracy.

But the question automatically arises. Have they succeeded?

The same exploit used to crack part of the anti-piracy technology on the next-generation HD DVD format has been successfully used on the rival Blu-ray format, a report on Wired News stated.

A hacker calling himself Muslix64, who also claims credit for the HD DVD crack that resulted in HD copies of films including “Serenity” appearing on the BitTorrent file-sharing network, takes partial credit for the Blu-ray crack, along with another programmer called Janvitos.

There are a lot of claims and counter claims about this. A lot have argued that the new disc is indeed not that easily hack able.

Neither of the exploits completely removes the fundamental security technology on the advanced DVD formats, but can work around the AACS encryption — a digital rights management security — when coupled with a particular movie’s unique “key.”

One technique about using this key by the use of a simple flash drive has come up in a lot of websites. Initially a lot of people have expressed their doubts and failures about using this method. But not any more. Those who are already familiar with movie sites and peer to peer sites would have already come across a horde of Blu ray DVD movies even in their original 1080p resolution. Not some HDTV prints but newly released movies as well.

In countries like India where the Blu Ray is yet to make a popular entry and where people are hooking up to faster Internet connections widely, This is definitely not good news for the BDA or the movie industry.

Written by Nathesh