ANYONE who circulates copies of films they鈥檝e downloaded from the Internet will soon be traceable by movie studios, if an emerging copy-protection system takes off. Called MacroSafe, the system embeds information about the buyer into any movie they download. But critics say it treats consumers like criminals.
MacroSafe will be launched this September by Macrovision of California, a firm best known for the system that prevents mass copying of movies from VHS cassettes. But with Hollywood now planning to rent films over the Internet, Macrovision is moving into Internet copy protection, and it鈥檚 learning lessons from the recording industry.
Record companies use anti-piracy measures to restrict the copying of music bought online. But no sooner has one of these systems been devised than hackers find out how to crack it, allowing pirates to record the digital material onto CDs and DVDs for mass distribution. It鈥檚 a massive problem, illustrated by the fact that the growth in the disc market is entirely due to sales of recordable discs (see Graph).
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But even if a digital protection system does prove unhackable, pirates can still grab the content at the point where it鈥檚 converted to an analogue format for playback on speakers, a computer monitor or a TV. So pirates can siphon this unprotected content from the speaker or monitor leads and record it.
But Macrovision is building in a cunning second layer of protection that will identify anyone who manages to copy films, giving studios a better chance of catching them.
MacroSafe鈥檚 first level of protection takes any digital audio, video, graphics or text and wraps it in a secure 鈥渇older鈥�. This can only be opened with a digital key which, like the content itself, is bought over the Internet. It only works a limited number of times, unless you pay again.
But the system cannot stop people buying a download and using it to copy the analogue picture and sound signal intended for the PC monitor and speakers. This is easy: cheap gadgets can convert a signal intended for a PC monitor into a recordable format for VHS, CD or DVD.
MacroSafe introduces its second layer of protection when it converts the digital content into unprotected analogue. The software ferrets around inside the PC, taking an electronic snapshot of the hardware, software and set-up preferences it finds there. It can also record details such as the model number of your hard drive, how much memory there is and the serial number of the processor. It can bundle this all up with your payment details 鈥� such as your email address and credit card details 鈥� into a unique encrypted ID code that鈥檚 buried inaudibly and invisibly in the analogue sound or picture.
From then on, the analogue content remains tagged with the details of the person who originally bought it. If the material later appears on a pirate disc or is distributed over unauthorised peer-to-peer networks, 鈥渋t could be analysed to find the ID of the party responsible鈥�, says Kirby Kish of Macrovision.
But recording personal details this way raises serious data-privacy concerns. 鈥淚f this system is used, people must be told what information on them is being held and how it can be used,鈥� warns Roger Bingham at the London-based civil liberties pressure group Liberty. Fred von Lohmann of the Electronic Frontier Foundation in the US predicts that people will reject online services which intrude on their privacy in this way.
鈥淗onest consumers will be even more confused about what is legal, and will wonder why they should pay good money to companies that insist on treating them like criminals,鈥� he says. And with copy protection pretty much an arms race, he expects hackers to develop a technology that removes the IDcode.