Training Videos

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You'll never BELIEVE what GCC Consulting said here...:
> John,
> 
> Unless they have some coding in their video, or they do a Sony thing, I'll
> bet the movie will run after the year is up.
> 
> Then again, at $800. per copy, they can afford to some real custom
> programming to block viewing the movie after a year on a specific PC. 
> 
> I have a strong feeling that the disk may be used on more then one PC. Are
> they going to send the movie police or demand that the disk be returned
> after the year is up?

You make it sound non-trivial, Richard.  All they need to do is implement
DRM in their files.

I had an experience with a site for a while that when you first played
their first video, it downloaded a key onto your system.  Every time you
played one of their .wmv videos it would check online and validate against
their servers that you had a valid key under a valid subscriber account.
You could use them on multiple PCs and they key would work that way.  But
once you unsubscribed to the service, *poof*, no more using the videos.

All built into WM9's DRM.  And while other players like Winamp will play
WM9 files, to the best of my knowledge nothing but Media Player will play
DRM protected WM9 files.

I have serious reservations about paying for something that they snatch
away the second you're unsubbed.  That'd be about like buying a DVD that
self-destructs as soon as you don't re-up your licensing fees.  Oh wait,
they were doing that once; it was called DiVX--and tanked thoroughly in
the marketplace...only the codec lives on.  Further, the fact that the DRM
needed to call home is a violation of privacy regarding viewing habits
that I don't agree with.  That aside, I just read an article accidentally
while finding out what digg is the other day about DRM being the entire
reason one guy becamse a music pirate...  He was a music lover, payed over
$20K for his collection legally, did everything in his power to support
the artists and stay legal--until Rhino sold him online songs that would
flat-out not play on his iPod.  Long story ensued, but he gave up and
started pirating.

Back to the DRM protected WM9 files (or any other format that plays on
Windows)...  There -are- ways around this. :) I don't know of anything
that cracks the DRM on the files directly, but it's possible to go around
it to create a non-DRM copy of it with very, very little degradation in
video/audio quality.  Really good yet inexpensive DirectX frame capture
software will nab anything going through a DirectShow filter.  That's not
its main purpose in life (capturing video game footage is), but it does
happen to be a side effect.  The downside is that you couldn't just convert
it--you have to play it in its entirety in realtime to capture it.  Then
you could convert it to whatever format you want.  Which would be unwieldly
for dozens of videos in a month, but for 1-20 over a decent span might not
be so bad.  Not legal, but technically easily attainable.

I haven't heard of a DRM yet that was more than a pain in the arse, since
they all get circumvented somehow.  Either they're directly attacked, or
can be circumvented in a roundabout way.  At -some- point in its use, the
data has to be exposed to be usable, and that's the point where it's weak.
For the guy that first claimed to break iTunes, he knew it was uncompressed
in memory, so he grabbed it there.  In the case of something like frame
servers, one exploits the fact that it has to be sent through the DirectX
layer and once in that layer, it's readable at the frame buffer level.

Now, if they had video cards that supported DRM, this might become an
issue...then you'd need to move between the card and monitor. If they
develop a -monitor- with DRM, then I'm guessing some people around the
world will implode because the industries went wayyyy too far.  I can't see
technology like that ever making it to that area--people are already
revolting against DRM in its current forms.

But to the point at hand, yes, it's extremely possible to "protect" the
videos with DRM.  You just need an authoring tool that supports DRM
deployment.  MS will likely be happy to help.  I imagine there's not much
"programming" involved at all as it's more or less a key encryption spin on
protection.  In the volume these are produced, it can't be very difficult
or time-consuming to do.

mark->