Cinavia
The audio watermarking of media relating to Advanced Access Content System (AACS) digital rights management (DRM) that law requires all Blu-ray players to have implemented on them.
Practical Use Example: If you download pirated movies and attempt to play them back on a Blu-ray player or through a Sony Playstation 3, playback will either be blocked, restricted, or fail at some point during play.
Movies protected by Cinavia technology carry sound codes that people won't notice, but DRM compliant devices, such as the Sony Playstation 3 (PS3), detect. The Cinavia signal is present in theatrical release and is effective even when the motion picture video is captured using an ordinary video camera. This is an industry attempt to "plug the analog hole."
The significant shortcoming of this type of system is that any decoder that is not intentionally made to detect the Cinavia signal is fully capable of playback of a pirated video media.
The dangerous legal ramification of any type of watermarking is that the free market is forced by law to intentionally cripple the product they manufacture, in that inclusion of DRM hardware such as Cinavia detection or Macrovision detection becomes mandatory. It would be like the government forcing automobile manufacturers to install a special device in every car, truck, and SUV, that causes the engine to shut down when a police officer or government official points a special radio device at it. That is Orwell's bleak police state future. In a free market, manufacturer's should not be forced to include "government control devices" in any products being manufactured.
Cinavia was conceived in the late 1990's but was not used practically until almost a decade later. As of 2012 the watermarking DRM anti-technology has only been introduced into Blu-ray players including the PS3. There are some Blu-ray players manufactured prior to the AACS mandate that do not include Cinavia. Currently, all known Blu-ray manufacturers domestically or that import into the United States include Cinavia DRM. Cinavia has been adopted as a required component of the AACS content protection system. Blu-ray players with Cinavia detectors began entering the consumer market in late 2009.
Sources, References, and Further Information
Related Topics
- Macrovision Video Copyright Protection
- High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP)
- Digital Rights Management (DRM)
