Q: Digital rights Management
A: The Blu-ray Disc format employs several layers of digital rights management. AACS decryption processAdvanced Access Content System (AACS) is a standard for content distribution and digital rights management. It is developed by AS Licensing Administrator, LLC (AACS LA), a consortium that includes Disney, Intel, Microsoft, Matsushita (Panasonic), Warner Bros., IBM, Toshiba and Sony.
Since appearing in devices in 2006, several successful attacks have been made on the format. The first known attack relied on the trusted client problem. In addition, decryption keys have been extracted from a weakly protected player (WinDVD). However, even though some AACS cryptographic keys have been compromised, new releases will use new, uncompromised keys. BD+ was developed by Cryptography Research Inc. and is based on their concept of Self-Protecting Digital Content.BD+ is effectively a small virtual machine embedded in authorized players. It allows content providers to include executable programs on Blu-ray Discs. Such programs can: examine the host environment, to see if the player has been tampered with. Every licensed playback device manufacturer must provide the BD+ licensing authority with memory footprints that identify their devices. verify that the player's keys have not been changed. execute native code, possibly to patch an otherwise insecure system.
transform the audio and video output. Parts of the content will not be viewable without letting the BD+-program unscramble it. If a playback device manufacturer finds that its devices have been hacked, it can potentially release BD+-code that detects and circumvents the vulnerability. These programs can then be included in all new content releases.
The specifications of the BD+ virtual machine are available only to licensed device manufacturers. A list of licensed adopters is available from the BD+ website.
BD+ was made available for content publishers in June 2007.The first titles using BD+ were released in October the same year. Players from Samsung and LG had problems playing back those titles until the manufacturers updated their firmware, but this problem was later identified as being related to BD-Java use, not BD+. BD+ protection was fully circumvented with the release 6.4.0.0 of AnyDVD HD program.
BD-ROM Mark is a small amount of cryptographical data that is stored physically differently from normal Blu-ray Disc data. Bit-by-bit copies that do not replicate the BD-ROM Mark are impossible to decode. A specially licensed piece of hardware is required to insert the ROM-mark into the media during replication. Through licensing of the special hardware element, the BDA believes that it can eliminate the possibility of mass producing BD-ROMs without authorization.