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Innovation is the way to go

LarryPTL 17th Dec 2009

This article identified the missing piece of the equation needed to get Hollywood into the 21st century - instant gratification.

Hollywood will never completely eliminate piracy. But by staying one step ahead of the pirates, Hollywood can generate most of their sales revenue before the pirates can figure out a way make the movie playable on any computer.

Here is an example of how Hollywood can slow down piracy:

With processing power the way it is, it is now possible to embed a unique decryption and codec algorithm into a self-playing movie (similar to how self-extracting ZIP files work) and deliver it via the internet in real time. The decryption algorithm only works when a dongle with the unqiue ID is attached to the computer.

Buyers of movies first obtain a dongle that is plugged into a USB port, each with its own unique ID number. If a user has multiple computers they may buy multiple dongles with the same ID number, one for each computer, plus a spare or two in case one dongle fails.

Multiple dongles may exist on a computer without a problem. This way, if a friend brings a movie over to watch (stored on a pocket drive, for example), they can plug the pocket drive and the dongle into the guest computer and watch the movie, then unplug both when through and leave.

The dongle itself will have a non-volatile memory that records how long it has been since the database was last accessed, to permit movies to be watched for a limited length of time when internet access is not available. The non-volatile memory can only be authorized to do so by an encrypted algorithm stored in the Hollywood database, unique to each dongle ID and movie to be watched (using a public key encryption system, for example). The owner of the dongle must contact the Hollywood database ahead of time and arrange for the dongle to allow the selected movies to be watched without accessing the database, good only for a limited length of time.

If a dongle stops working, the user can obtain a new dongle with the same ID number. Ideally, the user should initially get extra dongles with the same ID and simply replace a bad dongle with one of the extras. If all the allowable dongles with the same ID become inoperable, the user an get a new set of dongles with a new ID number and then get free copies of all movies previously purchased for use on the new dongle ID. Hollywood would concurrently disable the ID of the now inoperable dongles.

What if a dongle is illegally mass-duplicated or the IO interpreter is modified to fool the movie into thinking the authorized dongle is attached? If a sufficient number of concurrent accesses for a movie with the same dongle ID from behind different firewalls/gateways occurs, the dongle ID is disallowed.

How self-playing movies verify they have really connected to the Hollywood database must change from movie to movie such pirates cannot create their own duplicate database and re-direct the movie to it instead. This way if the security process for one movie is cracked it will not work for any other movie.

Users are allowed to keep as many archived copies of the movie as they like. This way even the most obsessive backup freeks won't have to feel like they need to violate any copyright agreements to satisfy their desire for secure backups.