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The studios set the requirements. A certificate that never expires would never fly with their need to control DRM as tightly as possible. If Sony was still in

The studios set the requirements. A certificate that never expires would never fly with their need to control DRM as tightly as possible. If Sony was still in the business, they would offer a certificate renewal for a small fee like the other manufacturers have done. The root problem is that Sony exited the market and left a lot of cinema owners out to dry with the looming cost of $50,000+ per auditorium for replacement projectors.

userbinator 3y ago
IMHO a certificate that expires at the same time as the copyright on a film, and DRM that then "fails open", makes the most sense.
- nagisa 3y ago
  Not for the studios. There’s nothing more they would love than to get a continuous and non-ending stream of money for content they themselves have forgotten about owning.
- coder543 3y ago
  Okay, then I set the date on my computer to year the 2124. Now the DRM is unlocked! You can't build a "time lock" with just encryption primitives. Even if you could build a time lock with just encryption primitives, we don't know when the copyright will expire until the original author has died, since copyright term is life + 70 years. Someone would have to run a server that specifically chooses to start serving the keys on that date, which is an absurd notion given how absurdly long copyright lasts these days. If the federal government were interested in passing a law that required this, I'm sure the Library of Congress could run such a server, but no such law exists.
  - alexvoda 3y ago
    Not at all absurd. Maybe not through crypto but otherwise perfectly achievable. No reason to achieve this within a file. If you really want to, some fancy solution involving blockchains and smart contracts is probably possible but there is no need. Require by law all who desire copyright protection to register the work with a governmental agency and place a copy of the work in escrow at an archive as a condition. The archive knows when the copyright expires and starts serving the work to the public from that point forward. This is what to do if a state cares about public domain. The status quo of corporations abandoning works to bit rot, actual rot, misplacement or fires for decades is strictly worse.
    - coder543 3y ago
      >> If the federal government were interested in passing a law that required this, I'm sure the Library of Congress could run such a server, but no such law exists. > Require by law all who desire copyright protection to register the work with a governmental agency and place a copy of the work in escrow at an archive as a condition. You’re just repeating what I already wrote. By all means, call your representatives.
  - shkkmo 3y ago
    > set the date on my computer to year the 2124. Now the DRM is unlocked! It's the same. "Fail closed" means you can "just" set the system time to be before the expiration date, "fail open" means you can just set the system time to be after. Either way, having an expiring decryption key is just security theater that harms users.
  - jasonjayr 3y ago
    I imagine most systems needing a trusted clock do so with a positive GPS lock. Spoofing that now gets you in trouble with the FCC as well as the DMCA.
    - marksomnian 3y ago
      No need to spoof the GPS signal, pop open the lid and replace the GPS chip with one that outputs an attacker-controlled time signal. I suppose it could encrypt this signal with some certificate burned into the silicon, but that could still (slowly and painfully) be reverse-engineered. GP’s point stands, you can’t enforce a time lock with cryptography primitives. That’s the fundamental issue with DRM - you’re trying to restrict someone from getting your ciphertext, while at the same time allowing them to get to it if they meet certain (non-cryptographic) conditions, which standard cryptography just can’t do.
- numpad0 3y ago
  There hasn't been cryptographic algorithms nor a DRM that proved good for > 50 years, let alone 70 years + safety margin. Even 3650 days expiry is considered too long.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
saghm 3y ago
> The root problem is that Sony exited the market and left a lot of cinema owners out to dry with the looming cost of $50,000+ per auditorium for replacement projectors. That's the point I was trying to make; if someone accidentally pushed a broken update, that sucks, but its not the first or the last time it will happen, and at least there's a clear path to it getting fixed and someone being paid to do it. The cert being expired and the only company who would have been in charge of fixing that not really caring anymore sounds to me worse from pretty much any possible point of view, and selling a product that will stop working if you decide to stop servicing it seems pretty terrible.
- Libcat99 3y ago
  And yet, many of the products we buy are exactly that. Gaming consoles dependant on online stores, smart TVs with software that could become useless at any moment, hundreds of little iot devices that are dependent on the manufacturers cloud being online... The list goes on. This kind of thing is all over the consumer world. In a way it's cathartic to see it hitting businesses too.
thomaslord 3y ago
Any idea if these projectors could be made to work with other sources that don't require DRM? As much as this sucks for movie theaters, it could also be the deal of the century for a home theater build if you know the right people...
- simcop2387 3y ago
  I don't think you'd want to pay the power bill for one, nor would you want to have a large enough screen to not have it burn your retinas. That said I believe some of them do allow that (no clue what models or availability) since you can rent out theaters to play games on your own computer or console, https://www.cinemark.com/private-events/gaming/ https://www.cinemark.com/private-events/gaming/
  - BizarroLand 3y ago
    Sure, maybe you wouldn't want it for a personal movie screen, since it's massive overkill for home use, but... you could definitely get use out of it for projection mapping your home and have the most amazing holiday displays on the block.
  - MandieD 3y ago
    If you’re in Central Texas, one of my high school friends and her husband run The Beltonian in Belton (shocking), a beautiful single-screen theatre built in 1922, renovated to have about 140 modern seats with tables, featuring various classic movies, reasonably-priced pub grub, Central Texas wines and beers, and available for similar rental arrangements (gaming or movies). If you’re not in Central Texas, you likely have a similar, beautifully-restored old theatre available for similar rental arrangements. The Beltonian: https://thebeltoniantheatre.com/ https://thebeltoniantheatre.com/

userbinator 3y ago

IMHO a certificate that expires at the same time as the copyright on a film, and DRM that then "fails open", makes the most sense.

nagisa 3y ago
Not for the studios. There’s nothing more they would love than to get a continuous and non-ending stream of money for content they themselves have forgotten about owning.
coder543 3y ago
Okay, then I set the date on my computer to year the 2124. Now the DRM is unlocked! You can't build a "time lock" with just encryption primitives. Even if you could build a time lock with just encryption primitives, we don't know when the copyright will expire until the original author has died, since copyright term is life + 70 years. Someone would have to run a server that specifically chooses to start serving the keys on that date, which is an absurd notion given how absurdly long copyright lasts these days. If the federal government were interested in passing a law that required this, I'm sure the Library of Congress could run such a server, but no such law exists.
- alexvoda 3y ago
  Not at all absurd. Maybe not through crypto but otherwise perfectly achievable. No reason to achieve this within a file. If you really want to, some fancy solution involving blockchains and smart contracts is probably possible but there is no need. Require by law all who desire copyright protection to register the work with a governmental agency and place a copy of the work in escrow at an archive as a condition. The archive knows when the copyright expires and starts serving the work to the public from that point forward. This is what to do if a state cares about public domain. The status quo of corporations abandoning works to bit rot, actual rot, misplacement or fires for decades is strictly worse.
  - coder543 3y ago
    >> If the federal government were interested in passing a law that required this, I'm sure the Library of Congress could run such a server, but no such law exists. > Require by law all who desire copyright protection to register the work with a governmental agency and place a copy of the work in escrow at an archive as a condition. You’re just repeating what I already wrote. By all means, call your representatives.
- shkkmo 3y ago
  > set the date on my computer to year the 2124. Now the DRM is unlocked! It's the same. "Fail closed" means you can "just" set the system time to be before the expiration date, "fail open" means you can just set the system time to be after. Either way, having an expiring decryption key is just security theater that harms users.
- jasonjayr 3y ago
  I imagine most systems needing a trusted clock do so with a positive GPS lock. Spoofing that now gets you in trouble with the FCC as well as the DMCA.
  - marksomnian 3y ago
    No need to spoof the GPS signal, pop open the lid and replace the GPS chip with one that outputs an attacker-controlled time signal. I suppose it could encrypt this signal with some certificate burned into the silicon, but that could still (slowly and painfully) be reverse-engineered. GP’s point stands, you can’t enforce a time lock with cryptography primitives. That’s the fundamental issue with DRM - you’re trying to restrict someone from getting your ciphertext, while at the same time allowing them to get to it if they meet certain (non-cryptographic) conditions, which standard cryptography just can’t do.
numpad0 3y ago
There hasn't been cryptographic algorithms nor a DRM that proved good for > 50 years, let alone 70 years + safety margin. Even 3650 days expiry is considered too long.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

saghm 3y ago

> The root problem is that Sony exited the market and left a lot of cinema owners out to dry with the looming cost of $50,000+ per auditorium for replacement projectors. That's the point I was trying to make; if someone accidentally pushed a broken update, that sucks, but its not the first or the last time it will happen, and at least there's a clear path to it getting fixed and someone being paid to do it. The cert being expired and the only company who would have been in charge of fixing that not really caring anymore sounds to me worse from pretty much any possible point of view, and selling a product that will stop working if you decide to stop servicing it seems pretty terrible.

Libcat99 3y ago
And yet, many of the products we buy are exactly that. Gaming consoles dependant on online stores, smart TVs with software that could become useless at any moment, hundreds of little iot devices that are dependent on the manufacturers cloud being online... The list goes on. This kind of thing is all over the consumer world. In a way it's cathartic to see it hitting businesses too.

thomaslord 3y ago

Any idea if these projectors could be made to work with other sources that don't require DRM? As much as this sucks for movie theaters, it could also be the deal of the century for a home theater build if you know the right people...

simcop2387 3y ago
I don't think you'd want to pay the power bill for one, nor would you want to have a large enough screen to not have it burn your retinas. That said I believe some of them do allow that (no clue what models or availability) since you can rent out theaters to play games on your own computer or console, https://www.cinemark.com/private-events/gaming/ https://www.cinemark.com/private-events/gaming/
- BizarroLand 3y ago
  Sure, maybe you wouldn't want it for a personal movie screen, since it's massive overkill for home use, but... you could definitely get use out of it for projection mapping your home and have the most amazing holiday displays on the block.
- MandieD 3y ago
  If you’re in Central Texas, one of my high school friends and her husband run The Beltonian in Belton (shocking), a beautiful single-screen theatre built in 1922, renovated to have about 140 modern seats with tables, featuring various classic movies, reasonably-priced pub grub, Central Texas wines and beers, and available for similar rental arrangements (gaming or movies). If you’re not in Central Texas, you likely have a similar, beautifully-restored old theatre available for similar rental arrangements. The Beltonian: https://thebeltoniantheatre.com/ https://thebeltoniantheatre.com/