The TiVoToGo DRM has been cracked. This is the DRM that locks the files you move from your TiVo to your PC (something that is lawful, even without DRM). The DRM restricts how you use your TV shows, and prevents you from using it at all outside of a Windows system.
On this fascinating Wiki, a group of hackers are meticulously reverse-engineering the TiVoToGo DRM and finding ways of subverting it. They've put together a command-line app that breaks the DRM, which means that an easy-to-use graphic tool can't be far behind. TiVo owners, rejoice!
These folks are about to make your TiVo way more useful than it was yesterday.
TiVoToGo is the feature TiVo added in software release 7.1.(via )It enables transferring video off the TiVo unit to a PC over a HTTP connection. You can access a rudimentary web interface at https://tivo:MediaAccessKey@your_tivo/. TiVo's official TiVoToGo website is here http://www.
tivo.com/togo. It looks like MPEG I frames are the only thing that isn't encrypted in the tivo file.
It looks like a combination of Blowfish and ElGammal encryption (what's the evidence for this?). Is it a block cipher, or a stream cipher?
Clearly everything we need to decrypt it exists. I would guess the "fingerprint", "salt", and MediaAccessKey are needed? Is the MediaAccessKey the public key, the fingerprint the private key, and the salt is used to maybe XOR the stream first?
Or is there a nonce that gets used to initialize the cipher?
The US Trade Representative has declared victory over Russia. Russia will be required to license CD/DVD pressing plants and inspect them day and night -- the US, spreading democracy by requiring licensing of the presses!
Russia will also have to shut down AllofMP3.com and stop its collecting societies from representing artists without permission (of course, this doesn't mean that US quasi-governmental collecting societies like SoundScan will stop doing the same thing).
You might ask why collecting societies are in there at all.
That's because AllOfMP3.com claimed that they were paying licenses to a collecting society that made their business legal. Putting this last clause in the agreement sounds like the US Trade Rep is admitting that AllOfMP3.
com is a legitimate, licensed business that pays for what it sells.
Russia has to take on board the WIPO Copyright Treaty, which is the treaty that created the US DMCA, a law that has resulted in the jailing of a Russian researcher who visited the USA for talking about math.
* The United States and Russia agreed on the objective of shutting down websites that permit
illegal distribution of music and other copyright works.The agreement names the Russia-based
website allofmp3.com as an example of such a website.
- investigate and prosecute companies that illegally distribute copyright works on the Internet.
* Russia will work to enact legislation by June 1, 2007, to stop collecting societies from acting
without right holder consent,
* Russia will also work to enact legislation implementing the 1996 World Intellectual Property
Organization (WIPO) Internet treaties.
(via )
CBC president Robert Rabinovich has decried high-def TV as having no business model. This wouldn't be newsworthy except that the promise of HDTV is the excuse given for the Broadcast Flag, which says that paranoid studio executives should be in charge of what features TVs are allowed to have.
The idea is that if you don't give them their design-veto, they won't put movies on high-def, and then the money won't come in. But when the head of Canada's national broadcaster announces that there's just no way any broadcaster is going to make its money back on high-def, it makes you wonder if the Brits don't have the right idea. In the UK, a digital TV system called "Freeview" gives the public 30 free standard-definition TV channels, for life, over the air, for one setup payment.
Instead of trying to lure people into throwing away their old sets and buying all new, Hollywood-crippled ones, the Brits just created free cable for life. Amazingly, lots of people voluntarily switched -- and soon they'll be able to shut off the old analog towers and use that spectrum for better, more internetty things.
There's no evidence either in Canada or the United States that we have found for advertisers willing to pay a premium for a program that's in HD, Mr.(via )Rabinovich said. So basically they're saying if you want to shoot in HD, that's your business, we're not going to pay you more.
This Thursday, I'll introduce director Kirby Dick and his movie "This Film is Not Yet Rated" at a free screening at USC. The screening is sponsored by the USC Free Culture club, a campus organization dedicated to promoting liberty, openness, and access to information.Kirby Dick has graciously agreed to present the screening of his movie, which I . This Film is Not Yet Rated is the best documentary I've seen all year, the kind of thing that inspired outrage and sympathy. It tells the hidden story of the MPAA's rating board, and its systematic discrimination against sympathetic portrayals of gay sexuality and sex in general, and its tacit support for ultra-violence.
The ratings board is shrouded in secrecy, and exists, supposedly, to forestall Congressional censorship of the film industry (an eventuality as unlikely as it is unconstitutional). The board's membership is secret, as are the names of the appeals committee that is meant to watchdog the organizing. The whole, secretive mess was established by Jack Valenti in his capacity as head of the MPAA, and so it bends over backwards to help filmmakers from the major studios (while shafting indies).
Dick's documentary revolves around his efforts to unmask the identity of the secret censor board.
He hires a private eye and sets her to work (the CSI elements of the film are really juicy -- it's fun to see how private eyes really work). Threaded around this are interviews with filmmakers who've had run-ins with the board, and, as a climax, Dick's own Orwellian adventures in submitting his documentary to the censor board whose identities he has uncovered. I can't wait to meet him -- one viewing of This Film is Not Yet Rated turned me into an instant, lifelong fan.
I hope to see you there! Where: University of Southern California, Los Angeles: University Park Campus, George Lucas Instructional Building, 108 When: Thursday, November 30, 2006 : 7:00pm to 9:00pm Writing in the Chicago Sun-Times, Andy Ihnatko unloads on the Zune with both barrels, calling it a "complete, humiliating failure" and a "colossal blunder," because Microsoft has taken the user out of its design considerations and put the music industry (in the person of Universal's Doug Morris, "a big, clueless idiot") in their place.
Yes, Microsoft's new Zune digital music player is just plain dreadful.(via )I've spent a week setting this thing up and using it, and the overall experience is about as pleasant as having an airbag deploy in your face. "Avoid," is my general message. The Zune is a square wheel, a product that's so absurd and so obviously immune to success that it evokes something akin to a sense of pity.
.. The Zune is a complete, humiliating failure.
Toshiba's Gigabeat player, for example, is far more versatile, it has none of the Zune's limitations, and Amazon sells the 30-gig model for 40 bucks less. Throw in the Zune's tail-wagging relationship with music publishers, and it almost becomes important that you encourage people not to buy one.
Xart, a hobbyist PSP game-maker, has created a DRM system for his games.
Creators of unauthorized homebrew games for the PSP worry that others will strip their names off of their creations and appropriate credit for their work, so Xart has proposed that the splash-screens that appear before the game starts should be encrypted so that they can't be altered. Of course, the homebrew PSP scene exists because this sort of thing just doesn't work. It's impossible to deliver a game to a user with an encrypted section and the keys to decrypt it and expect that the user won't be able to decrypt it.
On the one hand, it's pretty unlikely that a homebrew hobbyist will use the DMCA to attack people who break their crypto, and it's reasonable to want to keep the credit intact on your works. On the other hand, this stuff really doesn't work, and no one should know that better than a PSP hobbyist.
With some people trying to rip off the homebrew scene, pretending to be Dark_Alex or some of our other respected devs, Xart from our forums has come up with a great new idea to prevent people ripping off others work.(Thanks, Hamish!)Xart has developed a powerful, fast Data Array Scrambling (DAS) system to protect your homebrew games and applications from hex editing and others stealing credit from your hard work. This is an example of an encryption technique and it not a yet full release. For this Xart has used his xLoader application.
It's a proof of concept to show just how quick encryption can be done to protect your work.
Karsten sez, "IP Watch has obtained a confidential report from a WIPO meeting of developed countries.
It took place just before WIPO's general assembly in September. In this meeting they decided, among other things, to sink the much-criticized Broadcast Treaty. The report also describes how these countries (US, EU, Japan and others) are honing their strategy to minimise the effect of the proposal for a development agenda.
" WIPO is the UN agency that creates copyright treaties -- it has the same relationship to bad copyright law that Mordor has to evil. The is a sleazy attempt to create new rights for broadcasters and webcasters that trump the rights of the public and of actual creators. It's been a flashpoint for activist groups, who have started to show up in force, questioning the treaty's legitimacy.
The is the plan to reform WIPO as a real humanitarian UN agency, something it promised to do when it was chartered. The idea is to force every WIPO treaty to justify itself in terms of international development for poor countries, instead of just creating windfall profits for multinational copyright companies. It's a global scandal that developed nations are planning to sabotage it.
On the proposed broadcasting treaty, the report said that several members, as well as others not in the room, "will be making sure the diplomatic conference does not go ahead smoothly this week." In the end, it was agreed to schedule the diplomatic conference, or high-level treaty negotiation, for late 2007, after more meetings and another General Assembly.
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