[tptacek]

This isn't digital rights management, it's basic operational security. A security failure damaged their preview. Having intense security controls on one of the most eagerly awaited movie premiers of all time is not unreasonable and it's not about "rights"; in fact, it may simply be about the production company not getting sued by its investors.

[__david__]

I disagree, I think it's exactly DRM. It's not DRM that normal consumers ever interact with though (except second hand by seeing the movie, or not seeing the movie as the case may be) but it's rights management none the less. From the failure modes it doesn't sound like there was any security above and beyond the standard DCinema encryption.

[tptacek]

Cinemas have never had "ownership" over the movies they run. Do you not notice the slippery slope your argument is on? Either you're dignifying the concept of DRM, and acknowledging that there are times it's valuable, or it's not DRM.

[__david__]

I guess don't understand your argument. Why are you bringing up ownership? Cinemas purchase the right to play movies. I'm pointing out that the problem here was with the standard copy protection schemes employed by the digital cinema industry, not some sort of extra protection that you seemed to imply existed in your original comment. I would call that digital rights management myself, but it seems you are attaching some sort of extra meaning to those words that I'm not.

[NateLawson]

This kind of thing was supposed to be standardized by SMPTE's DC28 group, but I'm not sure they ever did. Of course, it's been since 2004 since I worked on this stuff.

We prototyped and delivered a secure D-Cinema device in 2002. We had a smart card for identification of the operator with backups. Each viewing of the movie would do a unique online authorization with our audit server. If that failed, there was a backup modem that operated via cellphone. All of this was in working order in 2002 as our demo included yanking the Ethernet cable and hitting "play".

Press release mentioning the system design: http://www.cryptography.com/company/prel/20021029-CRI-Digi-F...

Case study talk given at USENIX 2004: http://root.org/talks/Usenix_20040629.pdf

This system got a lot of interest, but ultimately SMPTE was dominated by existing proprietary equipment manufacturers, most of whom were afraid of Microsoft Windows Media and cheap PCs (rightly so). Anyone have an idea how many screens today are just that? I know that Landmark Cinemas here in the Bay Area mentioned that was their approach.