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DRM Business Rules in Rollup 2

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To clarify the somewhat vague statement I made about "business rules" for DRM changing in Emerald (Rollup 2), the changes were to include the new COPP (Certified Output Protection Protocol) support in the release and to support the new version of the DRM engine.  The actual behavioral changes in Media Center are not that great: we included the new "CopyNoMore" setting (previously "Reserved" in the CGMS-A standard) in our matrix of when to apply COPP, and were the "ship vehicle" for the new version of DRM from the DRM team. 

Whether we even engage DRM at all is governed by those "business rules" I was talking about; it's a matrix that defines which protection level we apply to the recorded content based on multiple input vectors.  The entire response matrix is quite large, and defines things like whether you can create a recording1, whether DRM encryption is applied2, whether we permit recording the content to portable media, and whether to allow presenting the video over an given output3.  In a nutshell, DRM protection/encryption is only triggered in existing analog scenarios when the input content is protected by a) CGMS-A, b) PAL's Copy Protection Flag, or c) Macrovision.  Realistically, you're only going to see Macrovision if you are doing pass-through from a VCR or DVD player, or you live in Korea and get your TV from a certain satellite service. 

I've only personally seen CGMS-A broadcast on HBO & Cinemax, Showtime, and other "premium" channels.  VOD channels are usually marked CopyNever, while scheduled premium channels generally have CopyOnce tags.  I hear via forum postings that some people are seeing Fox News' "The O'Reilly Factor" getting marked as Copy Protected in Media Center, but I haven't witnessed it myself.  There's certainly nothing stopping broadcasters from setting the 2-bit attribute in their VBI data.

1 - true for everything but CopyNever content
2 - true for everything but CopyFree (or no CGMS-A at all) and no Macrovision
3 - governed by COPP

Comments

  • Anonymous
    October 21, 2005
    Thanks for the DRM tutorials. Very helpful. So, just to make sure - any content marked with a CGMS-A flag should be recordable no matter what to your local MCE drive. The flags just cover whether the data can be copied to DVD or a Portable device. Correct?

    What about the reports of people watching shows and after a minute or 2 getting a blue screen saying the content is protected and they can't watch the show anymore... is there an issue in rollup 2? There are are enough threads on this to be concerned. I had only seen the behavior with a sporadic signal from directv in a thunderstorm and on a poor OTA signal (all in rollup 2)

    And finally, i've noticed in rollup 2 for OTA HDTV recording (like Saturday Night Live), during the recording the information page says copy protected but after the recording the protection message is gone and the content can be copied, viewed, etc.

  • Anonymous
    October 21, 2005
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    October 21, 2005
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    October 23, 2005
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    October 24, 2005
    Funny how we went 25 years with media "content" that could easily be copied and passed around and yet somehow Hollywood survived and reaped massive profits to boot. Now all of a sudden because its "digital" we need massive draconian digital restriction management there to stop us at every turn from doing anything other then hitting play. Does that not seem odd?

    I respect your opinion and still love mce for what it does(for now) but it scares me that anyone, yourself included, thinks that Hollywood et al needs more protection against consumers and not the other way around.

    I'm not one of those everything should be free people. Actually most people don't even think that way. That's a straw-man arguement put forward by content producers to make it seem like people who complain about DRM are just lazy greedy thieves who want to "steal" and never pay for anything. I'm not saying you think that btw, but when you or anyone says that it is what you are implying.

    Anyway just giving my thoughts that contrary to your opinion, DRM on content I record isn't a necessary part of doing business. We gotten this far without it and locking down our recordings is unfair and unwarrented.

    I really hope that within a year we don't start seeing forced deletion of network programming and things like not being able to fast forward through commercials. The way things are going I'm sad to say I honestly expect it, along with another explanation that "without drm we wouldn't have any content".

    Thanks for your blog which I like to read and your handy utilities.

    Regards,

    Mark Bowman

  • Anonymous
    October 24, 2005
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    October 24, 2005
    It's interesting that COPP (which sounds like it will acomplish the same type of protection as the Vista PVP-OPM mechanism) is being added to the XP version of MCE for new devices and protocols. Most Media Center users have resigned themselves to waiting for the Vista release to see new devices and protocols in MCE, such as HD cable TV and its cablecard, and HD DVD's. Would the addition of COPP satisfy the cable industry's need (or Hollywood's, whoever gives the legal OK) for the secure output protection that's been blamed as the XP weakness which prevents HD cable TV from being used in MCE?

  • Anonymous
    October 24, 2005
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  • Anonymous
    October 27, 2005
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  • Anonymous
    October 27, 2005
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  • Anonymous
    October 28, 2005
    I was just wondering why there would be a need for something like this COPP mechanism in MCE-XP since the only HD-video that Media Center can currently receive is OTA DTV, and COPP mainly affects digital video and is only in effect over HDTV-capable outputs. Since OTA DTV doesn't allow for copy protection methods, it sounds like COPP was added in anticipation of additional reception methods of DTV in MCE-XP, or perhaps, new laws allowing for copy protection in OTA DTV.
    Would you happen to know if COPP has the capability to protect DTV content carried over a firewire connection?

  • Anonymous
    October 29, 2005
    The comment has been removed

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