8 ms·

Unfortunately geolocking isn't new or unique to the pure bits movie format. DVDs were regionally locked as well and even analog media like VHS tapes used color

• the_af 4y ago
  > DVDs were regionally locked as well To be fair, those of us who tend to complain about these things also raised hell about DVDs back then. Geo-locking is such an obviously bad idea for consumers. It was such a relief when the restrictions were hacked away (was it that an encryption key got leaked? I don't remember the details).
  • gjsman-1000 4y ago
    DVD has an incredibly weak 40-bit encryption scheme due to US regulations on exporting cryptography when it was developed. As a result, it was broken very quickly after launch. It has no real key revocation system (just stop including keys for certain defeated devices in new releases), and nowadays a computer can brute-force every possible decryption key within seconds, rendering revoking stolen drive keys completely pointless. As the region lock is enforced by software only, an unofficial player like VLC does not need to pay the region lock any heed. Blu-ray on the other hand... well, where do I start? 128-bit AES, key revocation, host authentication, virtual machine fixup tables, digital signing, Media Key Block updating, Java applications... Let's just say Blu-ray is stuck in an odd place where the underlying technology isn't really that defeated, even though hackers have made keeping up with their stolen device keys from hacked players very impractical for the Blu-ray Disc Association. (Revoking a drive key requires a 90-day heads up for manufacturers to roll out new keys for the effected model, which means that if hackers manage to steal 4 device keys per year... from over a decade and a half of different players, many not receiving updates anymore...)
    • josteink 4y ago
      > Blu-ray on the other hand... well, where do I start? 128-bit AES, key revocation, host authentication, virtual machine fixup tables, digital signing, Media Key Block updating, Java applications... It would almost seem like most of the engineering for the Blu-ray format went into things which very specifically doesn’t act in the interest of the buyer. Given the current state of things, I wouldn’t count Blurays as media you actually physically own. You’re permitted to watch them, for now, but there’s no guarantee that will remain true 20+ years in the future.
      • gjsman-1000 4y ago
        The same could be said though of DVD. Remember that DVD is completely proprietary - we've just done a fantastic job reverse-engineering it. Blu-ray, ironically, is still proprietary, but the specification on how the DRM is implemented is actually public information and you can just download that online. You won't get the required encryption key for your new device without a contract though for it to work, but if you want to read the details, that's fine. https://aacsla.com/aacs-specifications/ https://aacsla.com/aacs-specifications/ Ultimately, if all the manufacturers decide to stop sale, there's nothing you can do about that. I'm not too worried about Blu-ray yet, as it is still in the PS5 and Xbox Series X, and I don't think gamers will be excited about losing physical media as an option (considering PS5 with Disc has outsold the Disc-free version, like, 4-1).
        • happymellon 4y ago
          Steam is the only online games store that has given me any levels of comfort that I'll still be able to get access to my games after 10 years. Even then, I'm still not 100% confident that I'll be able to access everything in 25 years time. I have no reason the believe that Sony and Microsoft won't shut them down like they already have done with the PS3 store.
          • mattl 4y ago
            Do you think eventually Windows will drop 32-bit support like Mac OS X did? What will that mean for a lot of those games?
  • barelysapient 4y ago
    And let's not forget, that if you brought your DVD player with you, you could still play your DVD's no matter what region you were physically in.
    • gjsman-1000 4y ago
      And if you ordered a disc from abroad, you could completely legally import a disc player from, say, the UK and play your region-locked Blu-ray Discs and DVDs that way (and still can, eBay.co.uk works fine). It's inconvenient but it does work, and is 100% legal and hack-free.
      • mixmastamyk 4y ago
        Power, tv, and plugs different.
      • ipaddr 4y ago
        Or buy a worldwide player like Philips offered in the day that would play all regions
    • makeitdouble 4y ago
      Except if your player wasn't conpatible with your TV of course. At the time DVD started prolifering more and more player and TVs had full support for NTSC, PAL and SECAM, but you could still be stuck with some hardware only supporting standard and your DVDs would be black and white or scrambled on the display side.
      • arthurcolle 4y ago
      • tjoff 4y ago
        True in theory but in practice it wasn't much of an issue. Especially as late as when the DVD came. And the purpose of it wasn't geo-restrictions either.
  • brabel 4y ago
    I havea few DVDs I bought in my previous country... I remember first time I tried to play them in a player from the new country, it asked me if I wanted to "move" it to the new region... I think there were 2 "moves" allowed. So, anyway, I was able to play it, no worries.
  • borski 4y ago
    DeCSS: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeCSS https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeCSS
  • thaumasiotes 4y ago
    > Geo-locking is such an obviously bad idea for consumers. It was such a relief when the restrictions were hacked away (was it that an encryption key got leaked? I don't remember the details). DVD region locking didn't need to be hacked away; it operates purely on the honor system. There are 8 regions, and a DVD contains a single byte specifying which regions it should be allowed to be played in. If the bit for your region is clear, you can play the DVD. Or, of course, you can just ignore that byte, and play the DVD.
    • wpietri 4y ago
      Now you can, but back in the day of hardware-only players, those were also region locked. So it was much stronger than an honor system originally.
  • wpietri 4y ago
    Overall I think geo-locking was bad, but I wouldn't go this far: > Geo-locking is such an obviously bad idea for consumers. Depends a little on the consumers, really. Region-locking enabled them to sell cheaper copies in lower-wealth areas, the same way that movie ticket prices were lower. Without geo-locking, pricing strategy gets much more complicated, but it's a fair guess that consumers in regions 3-6 (that is, the majority of humanity) would have either paid more or gotten movies later.
    • account42 4y ago
      > Without geo-locking, pricing strategy gets much more complicated, but it's a fair guess that consumers in regions 3-6 (that is, the majority of humanity) would have either paid more or gotten movies later. You are missing the most likely option: they would have "pirated" those movies. So again, the geo-locking is not realy for the good of the consumer but to ensure every last bit of profit can be extracted. Meanwhile, the main thing selling things cheaper to designated poor reason does is keep those regions from demanding fair payment for their work thus making them no longer poor regions that can be exploited.
  • babypuncher 4y ago
    People complained, but I can't imagine the user experience of playing an NTSC DVD on a PAL player and TV would have been very good, or vice-versa. There isn't a clean way to convert between 50 and 59.94 fields per second. You would have ended up with either jittery playback or incorrect playback speed. The field sizes are also mismatched, which would have required some pretty gross scaling given late-'90s DVD player technology. Region-locking on Blu-Ray is 100% unnecessary. Fortunately, it has become increasingly common for discs to ship with no region restrictions. Of course all of this is moot when you're just slapping that disc in an optical drive and ripping it to a NAS, instead of using an "official" player.
    • account42 4y ago
      Even for DVDs, the region locking also applied to computer drives (which typically only had a limited number of region changes) where NTSC vs. PAL were not a concern. Also, a 1.2x playback speed for the video is not even that noticeable - certainly a much better experience than no video. I intentially watch a lot of video contents sped up like that, even movies sometimes. Audio needs processing though to not pitch shift.
• Liquix 4y ago
  Anyone interested in the history of DVD DRM / region locking may be interested in the "illegal number": a hex code which defeated DVD AACS encryption, prompting an attempt by the industry to surpress it across the internet, leading to a streisand effect and the end of effective DVD DRM. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AACS_encryption_key_controversy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AACS_encryption_key_controve...
  • gjsman-1000 4y ago
    That was a leaked Blu-ray Processing Key that was quickly revoked - but the industry was livid that it was allowed to propagate before they could revoke it (which takes 90 days). This means, ultimately, that if you have a player that hasn't had a Blu-ray Disc made since 2008 inserted into it, and are trying to decrypt a disc made before ~2008, then maybe with the right tools you could. It's a shallow victory meaningless nowadays. [Even then, a Processing Key isn't nearly as interesting as a Device Key, plenty of which have been leaked since without much attention. Blu-ray has so many keys...]
    • account42 4y ago
      Stripping Blu-Ray encryption works just fine with MakeMKV (and other tools). Even UHD disks if you have a LibreDrive-compatible reader. Sure, it requires someone to decrypt the individual disks keys and distribute those but in practice it just works for anything that is not a brand new release.
• titzer 4y ago
  > DVDs were regionally locked as well It's easy nowadays to get a DVD/Bluray player that is multi-region, if only because of an aftermarket mod. E.g. I have a Samsung one that happily plays both media from any region.
• goosedragons 4y ago
  DVDs were region locked but not to the same degree. Digital content is on a country by country level. An American can easily buy and use a Canadian DVD while on vacation and then use it back home. The same is not true of digital content.
• happymellon 4y ago
  In the UK it was quite common to be able to purchase DVD players that were region free in most of the large electronic stores. The few that were region locked required something like the Konami code to unlock all the region's. Was region locking really that big of a deal?
  • dfxm12 4y ago
    Was region locking really that big of a deal? No. Not in the US either, at least. Even if there was a part of the world where it was a big deal, I imagine if you were so big a cinephile for it to matter, you would know how to deal with it.
• ClumsyPilot 4y ago
  > geolocking isn't new or unique to the pure bits movie format when governments ban imports / exports, its a matter of public scrutiny. So is protectionism. But apparently we allow a private cartel to do the same thing to an enrire industry with no pushback. This affects smart IoT devices, TVs, cars, etc. My xiaomi light does not pair with the app because its was meant for chinese market, and the guy that sold it to me claims its not hia problem either. The only way out of this mess is a law to properly define digital ownership. If you want a weired half renting half ownership, that should have to be explicit contract with a signature and maybe lawyers involved, so you know what you are signing up for.
  • orev 4y ago
    This is out of context and has nothing to do with what they said. The comment is about how companies were already region locking content using technical means on DVDs, not anything to do with government involvement.
• HideousKojima 4y ago
  Geolocking kind of made sense back when we had incompatible standards like NTSC and PAL. It makes zero sense (except as rent-seeking behavior by rights holders) for Blu-ray and beyond.
• pilsetnieks 4y ago
  NTSC, PAL and SECAM wasn't a case of intentional geolocking, those were simply different signal standards used in different parts of the world. NTSC had different frequency from PAL/SECAM because the signal was synchronized to the power grid; SECAM was different from PAL because the French being French had to make it their own way (and then communist-affiliated countries adopted it).
• dylan604 4y ago
  >even analog media like VHS tapes used color encoding formats that were specific in different regions (NTSC vs PAL vs SECAM). I think you're really stretching this one. These were dictated be the equipment of the regions. This was just as much of a pain in the ass to the studios as anyone else. If theStudios wanted to sell VHS in these markets, they HAD to make them in the format that would work in that region. DVD/Blu-ray region was definitely something added on top of format limitations as DVDs were still PAL/NTSC, but by the time Blu-ray and HD arrived, those format limitations were less of an issue. It was all about the region locking at that point.
• denton-scratch 4y ago
  To be fair, NTSC/PAL/SECAM were political decisions made by governments at the start of the television era, well before modern copyright maximalism had got its boots on.
  • davrosthedalek 4y ago
    Some were also technical I believe, for example with relation to the power grid frequency.
  • anikom15 4y ago
    They were not political decisions made by governments. They were technical standards developed by standards bodies primarily made up of engineers. Then government institutions like the FCC adopted them for their countries.
• Brusco_RF 4y ago
  That's like saying Bollywood movies are regionally-locked because I don't speak Hindi