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MPAA ''Committed To Fair Use, Interoperability, DRM''
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Well you clearly didn't actually read the article, because it doesn't make anything you do legal.
It also isn't illegal to rip DVDs anyway; it is only illegal to break the encryption. Contrary to popular belief, breaking encryption has absolutely nothing to do with fair use. Every player authorized to play DVDs (by virtue of supporting the commercial discs) is licensed to decrypt the DVDs for playback. There actually are legal DVD players for Linux (Intervideo makes one, I believe), released in the same proprietary fashion as Adobe Flash, some drivers, and a number of other software titles made by commercial companies.
There is no need for programs currently distributed on the Internet to break the encryption. Making a personal copy, as allowed by the HRA, means making a personal copy, not extracting the contents sans encryption. If these tools left the encryption intact at the end, there would be no real problem. This company is trying to do that exact thing, and a court is simply reiterating that it's acceptable under the law.
Except that the firmware in DVD burners is explicitly designed to not burn the part of the disc where the CSS keys are stored, so you can't make a copy without decryption (unless you hack the drive's firmware and/or use an expensive "mastering" drive.)
What has been proposed in the original article is not a way to duplicate a disc without decrypting (which would completely undermine the point of CSS), but a way to decrypt the data and simultaneously apply some other form of DRM to the result.
They're designed not to copy the part where the keys are stored. They certainly read and write these sectors, otherwise they would be of little use in storing data. They could easily write a new key for authorized copies.
Which is the exact same thing. A licensed copier would decrypt the disc, copy the disc, and reinsert the appropriate encryption at the end. The result is a product that does not break the encryption on the disc. "Breaking the encryption" is not the same as "decrypting." "Breaking" involves taking it out and throwing it away, whereas "decrypting" is part of the normal process for playback (and indeed for a hypothetical backup/storage system).
The problem with copying is access control. One license to the media should and does correspond to one usable copy of the contents. The reality is, though, that creating multiple usable copies leaves room for unlawful use. Activating/deactivating copies (a la iTunes account management) is certainly a solution, but it's one that standalone players cannot embrace ("Please connect your DVD player to the Internet to play this disc" wouldn't go over well with older generations of customers). There's also the "trust the customer" approach, but customers seem to have forgotten their end of the deal. It's not their movie. Metonymy seems to have clouded the minds of modern people--it's their licensed copy of the movie, a copy which does not grant them full control.
In my opinion, the best solution is to forget about trying to prevent copying and ditch physical media altogether. Give people a good system for casual sharing with friends (for example, mark a mix as "for Sarah Generic" and aggressively pursue people in possession of large quantities of unauthorized content. In a more connected world, users would be able to transfer their content to any of their devices, and even access it from guest devices. DRM as a concept actually opens up a lot of interesting doors (like the Sony demo where an individual begins watching in his living room, moves to the kitchen and picks up at the same moment, takes it with him on an iPod-like thing, and accesses his home content from the train). The technology for the good parts of DRM isn't all the way here yet, and its implementation as a lockout has completely soured its reputation.
That's just not true. Those sectors are read-only. How is a bare drive in a computer supposed to know if the data is original or taken from another disc?
It is impossible to make a CSS-protected disc using a consumer drive, even with your own original content.
Only because the media that is sold to the general public already has those sectors written with a "blank" key. If they were not pre-filled, there would be no issue. It's not impossible; it's just currently not permitted.
And now your circular logic is complete.
The industry won't allow you to make a CSS disc, therefore you have to break the DRM in order to make a copy. The same entities that invented the DRM are the ones that make it impossible to make copies without breaking that DRM, and they are the same entities that pushed through the laws to make the process illegal.
What you are claiming is possible will only be possible if the entire movie industry gets a brain transplant. A "licensed copier" can't be developed without replacing consumers' drives and media. That won't ever happen because there are laws mandating that the drives and media disallow the creation of protected content. The entities applying the DRM are the same entities that got the laws written, and they're the same entities that would have to license this copier. It's inconceivable that they would be willing to undo the entire rat's-nest of policies that would have to come apart in order to make such a copier.
And this ignores the fact that once the technical blocks (drives and media) are removed, there would be absolutely nothing preventing the development of an unlicensed copier that leaves the encryption intact.