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The Little DVD Driver That Could Change Movies 222

Posted by CmdrTaco from the stuff-to-think-about dept.
AnnaBlack writes "DVDSynth is a (currently prerelease) low-level driver tool that can sit between your physical DVD drive and any software that accesses it. So far so what, but the extremely clever thing about this is that it can filter the DVD data on the fly. The example applications included currently allow new subtitle sets to be provided for existing films (which could spawn a whole new activity for movie buffs!) but also a very neat little filter that will remove region codes on the fly from any DVD you play. Supplied with full sourcecode and programmers documentation." Wonder how long before this is contraband code like DeCSS.
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The Little DVD Driver That Could Change Movies More

The Little DVD Driver That Could Change Movies

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  • Region codes? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Piquan ( 49943 )
    I thought the region codes were handled by the DVD drive, not by the software or drivers. That's why the the regionset tool [linuxtv.org] for Linux exists, no?

    • Re:Region codes? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by homer_ca ( 144738 )
      Region codes are enforced both by the drive firmware and the player software. You'll still need a region-free DVD drive. They're hard to find, but still out there. See here [digital-digest.com].
      • "Region codes are enforced both by the drive firmware and the player software. You'll still need a region-free DVD drive. They're hard to find, but still out there."

        The linked site in the article is slashdotted, so I am going to assume that this is software for PC, as opposed to a firmware flash for home theatre DVD players.

        You can just get an easily obtainable pioneer 106s slot-loading drive which can be found for less than $70CAD these days and plays damn-well near every type of CD/CD-R/CD-Rw/DVD/etc and is relatively quiet and then flash the firware with an anti-RPC firmware.

        You can get hacked firmware for many, MANY PC dvd drives out there to make them region free or allow an infinite number of region change switches.

    • Re:Region codes? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by pioneerdvd ( 610502 ) on Saturday September 21, 2002 @08:45PM (#4305131)
      The region settings are indeed handled by the DVD drive.

      When you play a DVD, the first thing the software player does is to ask the DVD drive to return the DVD disc's title key. This key is needed to decrypt a CSS-encrypted movie.

      On a Region Protected drive (or RPC-2 drive) before acknowledging this query, the drive first checks that the region of the inserted disc matches the drive's own region.
      If they don't match, the drive will simply not return the Title Key. Hence a Region 1 DVD will not play in a Region 2 drive, etc.

      Until now, the only way to defeat this scheme was to act upon the drive itself, by flashing a "patched" firmware.
      In this firmware, the region check would have been disabled (with other things) so that the Title Key would always be returned, regardless of the disc's region.

      Because this region checking was hardware based, it seemed for a long time that no software only solution would ever defeat it, and that the only solution to make your system region free would be to flash your DVD drive.
      However, people using DVD-Rippers (DeCSS, etc.)soon noticed that they were able to rip the content of a disc on a region protected drive, regardless of whether the disc region was matching the drive's one or not.

      This gave the idea to a few people (this is the 3rd product I know of that makes use of this feature actually) to create "virtual" DVD drives, i.e., fake drives that would rip from the actual DVD drive on one side, and appear like a standard DVD device to the software player on the other side, while feeding it the ripped data.
      Of course, as such a software offers complete control on both the (virtual) device and the (unscrambled) data that flows through it, getting rid off all the annoyances like region checks, FBI warnings or Jar Jar Binks characters becomes child's play.

      This little tool looks really cool though...

      • Re:Region codes? (Score:2, Interesting)

        by testadicazzo ( 567430 )
        I have a dual boot system (win XP and redhat) I work almost exclusively in Linux, but boot to windows to watch DVD's. Why?

        Well, I live in Europe, but I'm american, so region free dvd'ing is a big issue for me. At first I noticed that yes, I can rip some other-region dvd's to my hd. But not all. It depended on the encryption. For example, I could not rip the region 2 DVD of Buffy the Vampire slayer (which I own. I just wanted to rip it so I could watch it on my computer, since it some episodes don't play correctly on my PS2).

        When I flashed my DVD's bios to make it region free, I no longer had this problem. I can rip anything. I can also play any DVD under windows. Unfortunately, I can no longer watch encrypted DVD's under linux. I know I had the software setup correctly because prior to the flashing I could watch any dvd of the appropriate region. Now even dvd's which previously played, no longer do so.

        So I'm wondering if some of the information in your posting are entirely accurate. Specifically, my experience says one cannot always rip the content of a disc, regardless of region. It seems to be possible only when the dvd is not encrypted.

        I don't know the root cause of this, but based on that experience, I'd guess flashing of the bios will still be necessary for encrypted cd's.

        that said, I'm thinking my problem is I don't have a tool like DVD genie for linux, that software sets a region code when scanning the dvd to play it. Anyone know of a solution to this problem?

    • Sounds like the next expansion-market for Gator [gator.com] if you ask me.

  • Multiple region DVD players aren't illegal... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by krinsh ( 94283 ) on Saturday September 21, 2002 @01:51PM (#4303742)
    They just aren't $40-at-Wally World cheap. That's the real clincher: if you aren't paying tariffs and exorbitant fees for your international media; then The Powers That Be get pissed off. Maybe, just maybe we should start considering the regulations that make it difficult for us (in any country) to access foreign-produced media; and then the technology itself won't matter quite as much anymore.

  • Cool (Score:4, Informative)

    by Henry V .009 ( 518000 ) on Saturday September 21, 2002 @01:51PM (#4303743) Journal
    For changing subtitles, I use DVDsubber [dvdsubber.com]. The region code thing is great, though. Couldn't everything be done better in hardware though?

  • Generalized solution to CD-encryption? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by irritating environme ( 529534 ) on Saturday September 21, 2002 @01:53PM (#4303750)
    Isn't this and example of the achilles heel of any CD-encryption/protection technology? The hardware reader has to decrypt it at some point, and then a program can just capture the unencrypted bits and reroute them as desired, for example to an unencrypted image.

    If it's dedicated hardware, you just have to make friends with an Electical Engineer.

    • Re:Generalized solution to CD-encryption? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by AvitarX ( 172628 ) <{me} {at} {brandywinehundred.org}> on Saturday September 21, 2002 @02:13PM (#4303855) Journal
      Enter pallidium. They are well aware of the inherent roblems with software playback. When the homebrew app that captures these bits is not signed, oh well for you.
      • ONLY if you want external access....Palladium is going to drive a NEW wave of NAT. Instead of just the IP, new NAT is gonna have to mask a Trusted Computer Bit as well. Then I can have just ONE Judas box and the rest of my network can be safe :)
      • ... but even with palladium, what stop you from using a palladium processor on a CORRECT dvd, and then having a driver non signed in background which takes the bits direct from the screen memory or what is sent to output ? What indeed ? As long as palladium authorise non signed application to run on the same PC as signed application, then there will always be a way. (yeah I know, in the future they will surely try to forbid any non signed app).
        • When the system is running in trusting mode unsigned apps will have to run in a sandbox. They won't have access to screen memory.... Those apps that need this kind of access and are unsigned will only be bootable in untrusted mode in which case you won't have access to the encryption key for the data.
      • Any ecryption that has to be decrypted to human readable format is breakable and copyable. While you cannot understand data on a CD or in bits and bytes on your computer, and you cannot understand the digital pulses that comminicate to your computer and TV and speakers what to do. However, the light that travles from your screen to your eyes and the sound that moves from the speaker to your ears are readable by any human, and therefore can be copied and duplicated. Maybe the technology does not yet exist to make these copies great, but if a demand arises, then they will be made.
      • Enter pallidium. They are well aware of the inherent roblems with software playback. When the homebrew app that captures these bits is not signed, oh well for you.

        I very much doubt that Palladium could possibly support region codes or anything close. In the first place it is quite likely that the EU will have found them to be an illegal device to suport differential pricing by the time Palladium launches.

        But even without that, laptops are an international comodity as are motherboards.

  • Subtitles aside.. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sweet 'n sour ( 595166 ) on Saturday September 21, 2002 @01:54PM (#4303756)
    Being able to bypass the region code stuff has been avail for a while now. http://www.elby.ch/download/SetupRegKill.exe Also, this still won't help with the dvd drives that have the region checking stuff built into the hardware.
  • I wonder what difference does it make. To write to a video stream instead of video (with a DVD payer). All problems come when compression takes place. So there would be a need for hardware that makes possible to compress on the fly.

    Intercepting video or playing video ta a stream, there's no difference.

  • "Fan comments" subtitles sound great! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Dr. Spork ( 142693 ) on Saturday September 21, 2002 @01:54PM (#4303759)
    I think it would be lots of fun to rip on some of the "great" movies in the style of MST3K or Rocky Horror. Sure, doing it through subtitles is not ideal, but it could still be a lot of fun! It would sure make the recent Star Wars releases 5000X more watchable.

  • PC DVD region coding? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Covener ( 32114 )
    Is this a mix of software and hardware? Are some DVD-ROM drives just un-regioned? Does it somehow rely on the software to participate?

    I'm curious because I paid no mind to region when I got my bare DVD drive -- I can play region 1 and 2 discs from linux (mplayer) but haven't ever tried commercial dvd software.

    Can someone lay out the steps a PC takes when verifying that it's the proper region?
    • I think it's mainly software based. I know my DVD software (for Windows) allowed you to set the region when you installed it, and then you could only change it a certain number of times. Which is really stupid, because you can just use free software which won't check the region.

    • Re:PC DVD region coding? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Jucius Maximus ( 229128 ) on Saturday September 21, 2002 @03:12PM (#4304071) Journal
      "Is this a mix of software and hardware? Are some DVD-ROM drives just un-regioned? Does it somehow rely on the software to participate?"

      There are two schemes:

      RPC-1 (the old one) - The drive itself physically has no region protection and relys on the software to check the region of the disc and act appropriately. Your average windows DVD playing software has these protections. This is very easy to bypass and usually involves some easily obtainable freeware program. Linux dvd players usually ignore regions to begin with, so an RPC1 drive + linux player = 100% region free. Judging from your comments, this is what you have.

      RPC-2 (new age, ubuiquitous today) - The drive itself has region checking so first you have to bypass the hardware protection via firmware patch (often but not always available) and THEN bypass the software protection in whatever DVD playing software you use. So, an RPC-2 drive + correct firmware patch + linux player = 100% region free.

      Even if you are using VideoLAN or Ogle for linux which ignore region control, your RPC-2 drive will shut you down unless its firmware is patched.

      If you are buying a DVD drive for your PC, you might want to go look around for firmware patches and then make your purchase depending on what's available.

      • rpc-2 can be broken without firmware (Score:5, Informative)

        by David Jao ( 2759 ) <djao@dominia.org> on Saturday September 21, 2002 @06:10PM (#4304703) Homepage
        Even if you are using VideoLAN or Ogle for linux which ignore region control, your RPC-2 drive will shut you down unless its firmware is patched.

        NOT TRUE. I have rpc-2 DVD drives with original shipping firmware (two of them, in fact), and I can tell you from firsthand experience that while rpc-2 does make life more difficult, it is not by any means a roadblock to region-free playing

        VideoLAN and ogle both use libdvdcss for CSS authentication and decryption. What saves you in the case of rpc-2 drives is that libdvdcss implements not one, but three different CSS access mechanisms. Two of them (called "key" and "disc") use the drive for authentication and require the drive region and disc region to match. However, the third method (called "title") attacks the algorithm cryptographically, and in most cases works even if the regions don't match.

        In fact, the "title" method can even be used in the case where you have an encrypted .vob file on the hard disk and neither the dvd disc nor the dvd drive is available at hand.

        See the libdvdcss [videolan.org] documentation for more details.

        The inner workings of the cryptographic attack on css are actually quite interesting. As I recall, the attack relies on the fact that blank black mpeg video encodes in a very predictable fashion. Most movies which start with blank black video are thus vulnerable to a known-plaintext attack and the movie's CSS key can be guessed in this manner.

        • "VideoLAN and ogle both use libdvdcss for CSS authentication and decryption. What saves you in the case of rpc-2 drives is that libdvdcss implements not one, but three different CSS access mechanisms. Two of them (called "key" and "disc") use the drive for authentication and require the drive region and disc region to match. However, the third method (called "title") attacks the algorithm cryptographically, and in most cases works even if the regions don't match."

          Thank you, I did not know this!

  • When you can change the region code on your DVD-ROM with a simple firmware flash. I havn't run across a DVD-ROM drive that can't be flashed yet. Although this could be a nice tool for fansubbers. They could avoid some legal trouble by releasing only the translations and making the people buy the actual offical DVDs themselves.

  • "legal" dynamic edits (Score:5, Funny)

    by wfmcwalter ( 124904 ) on Saturday September 21, 2002 @02:02PM (#4303794) Homepage
    Perhaps (IANAL, naturally) this would enable one to perform edits to a movie legally, as no altered copy of the original work is ever instanciated.

    One could distribute the edits alone online, and someone else could play their DVD filtered through that editset.

    So everyone can remove the "dirty bits" of DVDs. For the right-wingers, that's kissing, nipples, evolution. For the test of us - Jar Jar.

    • Re:"legal" dynamic edits (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Cally ( 10873 ) on Saturday September 21, 2002 @02:27PM (#4303920) Homepage


      Perhaps (IANAL, naturally) this would enable one to perform edits to a movie legally, as no altered copy of the original work is ever instanciated.

      One could distribute the edits alone online, and someone else could play their DVD filtered through that editset.


      And how will you do that when the tool itself is illegal, hmmm? It's already in breach of the DMCA, and the MPAA have shown no reluctance to pursue DMCA-infractions outside the US as if they were domestic - as I know to my cost, being prosecuted in California for my deCSS mirror in the UK - and the forthcoming EUCD [stand.org.uk] legislation in the UK mandates DMCA-type provisions, without those pesky exceptions for reverse engineering, interop, et al.
      • I've always said that if life is discovered on Mars California courts will rush to claim jurisdiction there. Seriously though how does the state of California argue that your actions took place in their state?

        • > Seriously though how does the state of California
          > argue that your actions took place in their state?

          I have no idea (I'm a British citizen residing in the UK and the mirror's physically located here too.) I won't dignify their pathetic actions by bothering to pay any particular attention to the case. I'm a "John Doe" id'd only by the URL of my mirror. Perhaps the lawyers were too stupid to realise what ".co.uk" signified?

    • Perhaps spawn a new DIY MST3k sub-genre?
    • Even a third-rate lawyer could easily chew up anybody who tried to assert that "on-the-fly" mods are not copyright infringement. Output to the end consumer is just as controlled as copying. For example, it's illegal to use copyrighted music in a live stage play without permission, even if you never record the final output.

  • not long at all. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Em Emalb ( 452530 ) <ememalb.gmail@com> on Saturday September 21, 2002 @02:04PM (#4303803) Homepage Journal
    "Wonder how long before this is contraband code like DeCSS."

    Based on the way things are going, I'd say not long at all. It seems once something hits /., the big guys pick up on it and [Emeril voice]BAM![/Emeril voice] Down it goes, in a fiery ball of death.

    Folks, the powers that be won't sit idly by while new means of circumventing their devices gets published. the only way to defeat them is to beat them at their own game. Politics, politics, politics.

  • dead link (Score:5, Informative)

    by io333 ( 574963 ) on Saturday September 21, 2002 @02:05PM (#4303808)
    well since that link is /.

    here [216.239.53.100] are [216.239.53.100] some [216.239.53.100] cached links [216.239.53.100]

  • Nice hack. (Score:3, Informative)

    by Soko ( 17987 ) on Saturday September 21, 2002 @02:10PM (#4303838) Homepage
    Google Cache here. [google.ca] Poor little server.

    Anyway, seeing as this little guy can effectively extract all data coming from a copy protected device, I guess Palladium type systems are already in-effective. Contraband code? So what - it's already out there.

    I would guess that this is a method for creating what is effectively a wrapper for the DVD driver, perhaps more correctly a shim. This means that it appears to be a DVD drive to the OS, and a DVD player program to the drive. This method can be employed to any hardware device - even embedded DRM methods. It may take a while, but it can be done. If hardware needs software to run, that hardware can be emulated with software, period.

    The proponents of DRM might eventually come to realise this - if it's an idea, it's hard to keep it in a can. Good ideas are impossible to keep under wraps. To them I say:

    The Genie is out of the bottle boys, but it grants wishes to anyone, not just you. Deal with it.

    Soko

    • Not so fast. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Dan Crash ( 22904 ) on Saturday September 21, 2002 @02:48PM (#4303982) Journal
      I think you're missing something here.

      In the future, a Palladium-enabled DRM aware OS could stop you from installing this driver. Or even researching enough to write a similar one. With a DRM OS, Microsoft could specify that only cryptographically signed drivers from approved developers will be allowed on your system. The DRM future is one where you don't control your box. Everything you want to do will have to be approved and accepted. This is not your father's copy protection, and you treat it lightly at your peril.

      • Well put, which is why I will never use Windows XP, or any other Microsoft OS, on any system I develop. I can only hope that the hardware manufacturers aren't intimidated into making their hardware compatible only with DRM-aware OSes.
      • Which basically means that your home computer is about as programmable as your toaster oven. It may have software in it supplied from the manufacturer, but you sure as heck won't be able to write your own software for it.

        I suppose if people want to turn the word "computer" into meaning something along the lines of "useful household appliance for watching movies , listening to music, and web surfing" rather than a "programmable computing machine", there's not a heck of a lot that can be done about that...

        A machine that we can't control is not, by any definition of the word we use today, a programmable computing device. I see no reason that something like DRM will change that.

        A fundamental premise of computing is the abillity to move *any* bitstream. Violate that, and you throw away over half a century of research in the field of computer science.

    • I would guess that this is a method for creating what is effectively a wrapper for the DVD driver, perhaps more correctly a shim. This means that it appears to be a DVD drive to the OS, and a DVD player program to the drive. This method can be employed to any hardware device - even embedded DRM methods.

      Now that you've put it that way, it's not even really a new idea (except for applying it to a DVD-ROM drive). Total Recorder [highcriteria.com] has done basically the same thing with soundcards for a long time. It lets you save the audio from crippleware such as RealPlayer and Windows Media Player.

  • I think the more pertainent question is how long it'll take Microsoft to shanghai this code (embrace, extend, whatever) for their signed DRM drivers. If it can filter DVD content before it gets sent to applications, it could potentially be used to block copyrighted data from being recorded, or displayed by non-endorsed, non-liscensed software. This sounds alot like the driver tricks considered for sound cards, that would refuse to send unencrypted sound to the computer.

  • But what about RPC2? (Score:3, Informative)

    by gleffler ( 540281 ) on Saturday September 21, 2002 @02:17PM (#4303874) Journal
    Since the link is /.ed, I can't tell if it addresses this or not, but if it just strips out the region coding from the playback, how does it deal with RPC2 disks (that query the drive for what region it's currently running under, and if it gives the wrong answer, bye bye movie)? If it can't handle RPC2 DVDs (most new ones are like this - if you try to play an RPC2 disc on a player that has been modified and it tells the disc the wrong region, you see the annoying map screen), it's not much use to be honest.

  • Jar-Jar? (Score:5, Funny)

    by codexus ( 538087 ) on Saturday September 21, 2002 @02:18PM (#4303883)
    So that means that we'll finally get the Episode I without Jar-Jar Binks?

  • filter that will remove region codes (Score:5, Funny)

    by Alsee ( 515537 ) on Saturday September 21, 2002 @02:19PM (#4303886) Homepage
    Damn terrorists.

    -

  • Hahah. (Score:2, Funny)

    by Xacid ( 560407 )
    "Wonder how long before this is contraband code like DeCSS." Until it gets onto the front page of slashdot...oh wait..
  • Wonder how long before this is contraband code like DeCSS.

    Non-region coded dvdplayers are almost defacto now, im not so sure this will cause a stir. It seems to me the big media providers have more or less given up on the whole region thing.

  • Yes, it's Free (Score:5, Informative)

    by ptbrown ( 79745 ) on Saturday September 21, 2002 @02:28PM (#4303922)

    The source code [mac.com] is licensed under the GPL, which isn't mentioned anywhere on the page.

    Also from the README...

    All DVDSynth components should build with VC++ 6.0. Most components also build with MinGW, except for dvdproxy.mpd, dvdproxy.sys, and MirrorDrive95.kll (and those only because I haven't ported them yet). Be careful about this last, because if you build MirrorDrive95.dll without MirrorDrive95.kll and try to run the result, you will probably get a nasty crash. The MinGW Makefile is kinda broken; in particular it doesn't know anything about the header files. You will also need NASM (a free assembler) to build the one ASM file that's currently in the distribution. You should not need the Windows DDK or any Windows header files beyond what come with VC++ and MinGW.

    Which is kinda nice for those of us who don't have $600+ to blow on visual studio. (Or are a student at a uni with the $5 per license deal.)

    (sorry, I didn't bother to grab any other files)

  • Wonder how long before this is contraband code like DeCSS
    so long as they can get it written in only a few lines of perl and printed on shirts we can all buy

  • Perfect Example of Need for Palladium (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Sean Clifford ( 322444 ) on Saturday September 21, 2002 @02:50PM (#4303991) Journal
    <sarcasm>

    You see, Senator? This is a perfect example of why we need Trustworthy Computing(TM) protection like Palladium(TM). Protection at the hardware level is absolutely essential to stop the rampant piracy of intellectual property that threatens to destroy the entertainment industry.

    Imagine, if you will, the billions of dollars in lost revenue, the thousands of lost jobs, the dozens of dollars of lost tax revenue (for those of us who don't shelter our money overseas) if this behavior is allowed.

    This is more damning that the threat of VCRs and audio tapes that nearly destroyed our industry in the 1980's. Then consumers could watch television whenever they wanted and fast-forward over commercials. They could watch these shows again and again without new revenue being generated with each play. They could make mix tapes of their favorite music to listen whenever they wanted as often as they wanted, without paying more money, and without being forced to listen to the new music and messages we're selling.

    See how much money we lost in the 1980's a direct result of the evil Socialist conspiracy? This is why we need perpetual copyright and why we must control every aspect of the consumer experience. We must be rid of choice; it threatens our very existence. And yours. Imagine what would happen if voters had real free choice of who they wanted in office.

    </sarcasm>

    • Imagine what would happen if voters had real free choice of who they wanted in office.

      You don't have a Sen right because there are *other interested parties* like your next door neighbor.

      You *do* live in a country that at least has indirection elections that are fairly free from corruption.
      • You *do* live in a country that at least has indirection elections that are fairly free from corruption.

        Really? How about the Florida elections of 2000 and 2002? Those sure the hell weren't free of corruption. Bush was "elected" due to rampant voter fraud. And now his brother will be re-elected in Florida - again due to vote fraud.

        • There also was all sorts of problems with the election that the media dug up, but there were on both sides, and not that severe. The Bush elections aren't anything like killing off political opponents or simply openly buying votes, or throwing out the results of an election because they went against you.
          • There also was all sorts of problems with the election that the media dug up, but there were on both sides, and not that severe.

            Not to mention that the independent reviews concluded that Bush actually did win the plurality of the votes.

            • Not to mention that the independent reviews concluded that Bush actually did win the plurality of the votes.

              But with a margin that was so small that the result would have changed if Palm Beach voters had voted the way they intended to vote.

              Even a million recounts could not fix the Palm Beach problem, because people did actually vote for Buchanan, and no recount can show that the really intended to vote for Gore.

              • So what?! You ever seen a California ballot? They are much more complicated then what was used in Palm Beach, I'm a pretty bright guy and I prepare my ballot in advance using the sample ballot because of the compexity. We have no idea who would have won the election if the American electorate were intellegent votors who paid attention. It would have been a different election most likely with neither Gore or Bush as candidates.
              • But with a margin that was so small that the result would have changed if Palm Beach voters had voted the way they intended to vote.

                Your intent to vote is indicated by what you marked. If the voters of Pea Brain County are so mentally deficient that they can't figure out the difference between "Buchanan" and "Gore" on their ballots (designed by a Democrat, design signed off on by more Democrats), then they really have no business voting. (Given that these are the same people who can somehow keep track of 50 bingo cards at a time, though, I'm somewhat suspicious of their claims of confusion WRT a single ballot.)

                What I found more disturbing about the 2000 election was Gore's attempt to throw out the military vote [newsmax.com]. There was indeed an attempt to steal the 2000 election...what the left-wing media (ABC/CBS/NBC/CNN/etc.) refuses to acknowledge is that it was Gore who tried to steal the election. Thankfully, he failed in his attempt.

            • No, Gore won the election.

              Independent reviews show [bushnews.com] that Al Gore should be sitting in the White House right now. Instead of mandating a state-wide recount, the Supreme Court ended recount and handed the election to George Bush. He was selected, not elected President. Ironically, the Supreme Court action was unconstitutional. In a disputed tied election, such a decision goes to the House of Representatives - not the Supreme Court.

              • Instead of mandating a state-wide recount, the Supreme Court ended recount


                Yes, in accordance with Florida law, which the Florida Supreme Court ignored. SCOTUS did not "hand the election" to Bush, they simply prevented SCOFLA from rewriting Florida election law after the fact.
                Under the law as it existed at the time of the election, Bush won.

              • This along with every other election in US history went to the house of representatives. The house votes whether to accept or overturn the judgement of the electors and they may do so on a state by state basis. If they had disagreed with the Florida ruling they had many options.

                They voted in 2000 to accept the electors from all 50 states.

        • Bush was "elected" due to rampant voter fraud.

          Balony there was less vote fraud in 2000 then in 1996 then in 1992.... Florida is a pretty clean state in terms of fraud and given the microscopic level of detail there is very little evidence of fraud. If there was known rampant votor fraud who has been indicted for it?

          • Balony there was less vote fraud in 2000 then in 1996 then in 1992.... Florida is a pretty clean state in terms of fraud and given the microscopic level of detail there is very little evidence of fraud. If there was known rampant votor fraud who has been indicted for it?

            Why certainly, and of course we can blissfully ignore Katherine Harris (the hideous clown-woman) hiring CHOICEPOINT to illegally disqualify 8000 legitimate voters (even going so far as to claim people were felons arrested in 2007)with a 95% error rate (which is in itself shameless fraud which CHOICEPOINT should be prosecuted and shut down for).

            And if we blissfully ignore that the "spoiled ballots" were double-punched by a IBM card puncher (remember the LONG DELAYS on the "machine recount") to punch a certain amount of each independant candidate on valid GORE ballots while optical scan ballots very rarely were spoiled.

            http://www.geocities.com/redflagsinflorida/irreg ul arities.htm

            Should I also remind people of the double absentee ballots sent overseas and James Baker claiming the absentee Israel voters would tilt the election to Gore so Baker claimed we should intially reject the overseas votes until the ballot fix was in.

            http://www.salon.com/politics/feature/2000/11/09/d uplicate/
            Florida sent duplicate ballots overseas
            Defense Department employee alleges that some co-workers on an air base in
            England voted twice.
            - - - - - - - - - - - -
            By Carina Chocano

            Nov. 9, 2000 | At least five Florida residents serving at a U.S. Air Force base in England received two absentee ballots for this year's hotly contested presidential race, a civilian Department of Defense employee told Salon. Elaine Gatley, 48, a civil service executive secretary stationed at RAF Mildenhall in southeastern England, said Thursday that she and four fellow Floridians who work in her office received two ballots in the mail from the state of Florida.

            "At first I thought it was just a fluke," Gatley said. "But when I went to work the next day, I talked to my friends and they said, 'Yeah, I received two also.'"

            Gatley, a registered Democrat, completed and returned only one of the ballots she received. But she said that at least three of her fellow Floridians, all of whom are registered Republican, told her that they filled out and returned the second ballots as well.

            "These people thought there was something wrong with the original ballot," said Gatley, who is married to an Air Force serviceman. "They just sent the second ballot in, thinking maybe something was wrong."

            The duplicate ballots were mailed from election offices in at least three Florida counties -- Santa Rosa, Osceola and Hillsborough -- according to Gatley. The multiple ballots were sent to registered Democrats, as well as Republicans, she said.

            "But the majority of overseas military people are Republicans," added Gatley. "It's usually the spouses, you know, the civilians, who are Democrats."

            One of Gatley's Republican co-workers at the Air Force base confirmed to Salon that she had received two ballots from Florida. She requested that her name not be used.

            According to Gatley, the majority of the base's staff comes from Florida. Gatley was formerly employed at Eglin Air Force Base near Navarre, Fla.

            No one from other states with whom she spoke at Milden received more than one absentee ballot, said Gatley.

            According to a Florida Elections Board official, it's common for counties to send out sample ballots before mailing the official absentee ballot. The sample should be clearly labeled, said the official, who requested anonymity.

            The official also said that if someone sends in two ballots, election officials simply void one of them, not both.

            But told of this comment, Gatley said she could discern no difference between the two ballots she received, nor could her co-workers. She said neither ballot was clearly marked as a sample.

            Absentee ballots are still being counted in the controversial Florida race. Officials say the final absentee tally might not be completed for another eight or nine days. With George W. Bush clinging to a razor-thin lead in the Florida recount, the absentee-ballot tabulation has taken on critical importance.

            http://www.salon.com/politics/feature/2000/11/13 /d uval/index.html

            Nov. 13, 2000 | While the nation focuses on several southeast Florida counties where election officials are struggling to come up with an accurate vote count from last Tuesday's presidential election, another brush fire is burning upstate in solidly Republican Duval County. There, an extraordinary number of discarded ballots are also at issue, and Democrats are crying foul.

            Of the 292,000 votes cast in Duval County, nearly 9 percent, or 27,000, were nullified. "Overvoting," punching holes for more than one candidate, caused 22,000 votes to be tossed, while 5,000 were voided because voters didn't choose anyone, known as "undervoting." Machines tabulating the vote automatically spit those out.

            Over the weekend, several prominent Republicans, such as GOP chairman Jim Nicholson and Rep. Tillie Fowler, R-Fla., pointed to the 22,000 nullified votes in Duval County as proof that the practice is common. They suggested that even though Bush would have benefited if there had been a hand recount in the county, which he won 152,000-107,000, they were not complaining about the process. "These things happen in elections," stressed Nicholson on CNN.

            Truth is, Democrats are the ones outraged about Duval. They're angry because close to half the voided ballots -- nearly 12,000 votes -- came from just four of Duval County's 14 city districts. The four districts cover predominantly African-American areas of Jacksonville, where Vice President Al Gore won handily.

            Duval County did not use the controversial "butterfly ballot," yet the number of voters apparently confused skyrocketed this year. In 1992, a combined 6,000 over- and undervotes were discarded in Duval County, and 7,500 were thrown out during the '96 presidential election, according to local officials. This year's jump to 27,000 represented 8.9 percent of all votes cast in the county, compared with 2 and 3 percent in the previous presidential tallies in Duval. Nationally, the percentage of presidential ballots discarded for under- and overvoting runs between 1.0 and 1.8 percent, according to Curtis Gans, director of the Committee for Study of the American Electorate.

            What's so unusual, according to election experts such as Bob Naegele, who certifies voting machines for the Federal Election Commission, is that the normal rate of overvoting when punch-card ballots are used is roughly 0.1 percent. In Duval County last Tuesday, the rate ballooned to 7.5 percent. Even in Palm Beach County, where some residents say confusion reigned on Election Day and 29,000 ballots were dismissed, the overvote rate climbed to only 4.1 percent.

            http://www.yorkdispatch.com/elec2000/001128b.htm l

            Though the ballot applications already had been rejected and placed in a warehouse, Goard's staff members fetched the Republican postcards out of storage and placed them in a separate box for the GOP representatives. More than 4,500 ballot applications were corrected and ballots were sent to those Republican voters. It is unclear how many of those absentee ballots were returned as votes.

            Some Democratic ballot applications also apparently arrived without some of the required information, but they were thrown out and Democrats were not provided the same opportunity to make them comply, Democratic attorneys say.
    • This is more damning that the threat of VCRs and audio tapes that nearly destroyed our industry in the 1980's. Then consumers could watch television whenever they wanted and fast-forward over commercials. They could watch these shows again and again without new revenue being generated with each play.

      I think this comparison (very common though it is) misses two points which distinguish copying in the '80s from the copying of today:

      1. With tapes and VCRs, you need a physical medium to copy the music/video, hence cost for copying (not to mention the tape-tax). Nowadays you can copy content on the 'Net for free (or at maximum for what the ISP charges you).
      2. There is no loss of quality when copying digital content. In the '80s you could copy infinitely, but the quality was very soon too poor to be the least bit satisfactory (at least with common consumer devices).

      As much as I hate DRM schemes, I think this comparison is very unfair. Does anybody have any better comparisions to suggest?
  • Somebody should condense it into about 30 lines of perl code and print it on t-shirts...

  • Is Slashdot scooped by EVERYONE?!?! (Score:5, Informative)

    by philovivero ( 321158 ) on Saturday September 21, 2002 @03:32PM (#4304149) Homepage Journal
    I read this story on Friday morning. NTK Now covered it. The submission seems almost a word-for-word copy/paste of NTK Now's coverage. Hell, why not? I'll copy/paste NTK Now's coverage:
    TRACKING: sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering

    DVDSYNC is a low-level Windows filter that can sit between a DVD player and your DVD player software, and mess with data streams and controller commands on the fly. There's not much there yet but what there is demonstrates the great promise of the design. Already You can create your own subtitles (there are already some improved English subs for Gauche the Cellist, and a couple of other anime tracks). In the future, we imagine, you'll be able to perfectly sync-up extra audio tracks or even skin your own DVD menus. There's also, ahem, a filter to take out any DVD zoning information before it gets to the DVD playing software. In other words, a really useful utility for DVD watchers - and anyone who likes improving on the creativity of others - which will have the military- industrial-entertainment complex spitting blood. This is what TCPA, EUCD, DMCA and any anagrams thereof were cynically designed to smack down. Get it while you can. http://www.roundelay.net/dvdsynth/prerelease.html - despoiling our DVDs with homemade content? Who could want such a thing? http://www.yil.com/columns/column.asp?columnist=eb ert&date=020201&page=01 - Ah. And wasn't killing Siskel enough of a warning?

    Now, don't you feel better?
  • An excellent start, to be sure, but her are a few more features I'd like to see: -Automatic coherent plot insertion. To finally add a compelling story line to those lame new Star Wars movies. -Friends cast declothinator with male/female preference settings. -De-Teshinator. To overwrite awful soundtracks. -Anti-Green mode, to remove annoying bit characters like Tom Green or (as mentioned) Jar Jar Binks. -Anti-Bruckheimer mode, to remove intense close up and schaltzy slow mo scenes backed with Aerosmith songs. So many possibilities....
  • According to my universities handbook, "Guidelines for DVDs on campus are that any media which contains inappropriate language, nudity, gratuitous violence, etc. may not be viewed or possessed (including video tapes) in the residence halls or on campus.." Will this driver filter out all on wanted bad language. There are movies that I like to watch, Star Wars for example, but am unable to because it contains one or two swear words.

    If this driver can do that, I wonder if we would be able to watch upto certain rated movies.

    This would also be nice for families. If a parent doesn't want a child to view/hear certain parts of the DVD, this sounds like it will be able to bleep that part out. Sounds like this program may take off nicely.
  • Use this to provide an alternate sound track for Wizard of Oz: Pink Floyd's Darkside of the Moon. trippin'...
  • thats why IBM is spending billions on Linux. To finally marry Tux with a "boxen" that has the cycles to watch a DVD on Linux. (I don't own a DVD for my computer -- but was plenty pink in the face upon blindly bragging to a Linux/Win fence sitter than Linux was finally "there" enough for him to get his lips off Bill's backside and play his shiny new DVD's on his trusty new AMD 1800+. Well -- I ate some crow (and bought some rounds) over that one. He is back to being convinced that Linux is still only good for routing packets and mail.
  • So does this mean it could buffer a few minutes ahead on the hard drive, and go download short sections of movies off the internet (assuming they were available) when there's a read error (such as when my roommate borrowed my DVDs without asking and scratched some...), all transparent to the player app?

    (You could be required to submit a hash of the 10 minutes before (or after) the minute you want to download in order to prove that you actually have the DVD version of the movie, or an indistinguishable copy).

    I'm sure glad that micrsoft, hollywood, and washington are working so hard to protect me from evil software like this....

  • Everyone missed the best feature of this (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Aexia ( 517457 ) on Saturday September 21, 2002 @06:10PM (#4304700)
    People here keep going "Well, you can flash the ROM and sidestep region-coding that way."

    That's just one of the things it can do.

    Unrestrict DVD: This filter removes various usage restrictions from a DVD, including region lockout, APS (Macrovision), and disabled fast-forwarding, menu call, angle change, and so forth.

    The ability to remove those stupid control lockouts is what's really great. That it gets rid of region-lockouts is simply a bonus.
  • while you still can. If it's downloaded everywhere and thousands upon thousands of us have the code, even if it goes the way of DeCSS it couldn't be stopped. Print the source code on T-Shirts, mousepads and mugs. Distribute the binaries via email and AIM and Kazza. They won't stop this one

  • As I'm sure other have pointed out, this tool isn't necessary to play/replace subtitles.

    For Windows there is already the DirectVobSub codec/program which overlays, in real time, subtitles on any kind of video stream. If the stream has embedded subtitles, DirectVobSub will provide those as an option; if a file exists alongside the stream file named .language.ssi or .language.sub (eg., Signs.English.sub), it let you use that. It's most easily available through the Nimo Codec Pack [btinternet.com].

  • The simplest way is to buy an ASUS DVD drive: just remove the "test" jumper and it is region free. See drawing [club-internet.fr]
  • YES!!!!

    Now I can build patches for movies to put them thrugh a Mystery Science Theater 3000 treatement.

    MWHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

    This is fantastic.

    MST3K fan sites will have a whole new outlet.

    I can now taunt and mock all the movies I hate.

    The next epic geek challenge: A Joel and the bots level treatement of Titanic.

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