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The analog hole is a fundamental and inevitable vulnerability in copy prevention schemes for noninteractive works in digital formats which can be exploited by large-scale copyright infringers to duplicate copy-protected works that are ultimately reproduced using analog means. Once digital information is converted to a human-perceptible (analog) form - as it must be, given the analog nature of our human senses - it is a relatively simple matter to digitally recapture that analog reproduction in an unrestricted form, thereby circumventing the restrictions placed on copyrighted digitally-distributed work. Content publishers who use digital rights management (DRM) as a means of imposing restrictions on how a work can be used perceive this fact as a "hole" in the control that DRM otherwise affords them. For other uses of the word Vulnerability, please refer to vulnerability (computer science). ...
Copy prevention, also known as copy protection, is any technical measure designed to prevent duplication of information. ...
For other uses, see Digital (disambiguation). ...
The Cathach of St. ...
An analog or analogue signal is any time continuous signal where some time varying feature of the signal is a representation of some other time varying quantity. ...
Not to be confused with copywriting. ...
Digital rights management (DRM) is an umbrella term that refers to access control technologies used by publishers and copyright holders to limit usage of digital media or devices. ...
The term "analog hole" was first popularized by the Motion Picture Association of America and some of its members during speeches and legislative advocacy in 2002; this term later fell into disrepute within the industry after it was abbreviated to "a. hole" (which was misconstrued as an allusion to the vulgar "asshole"), thus being replaced by analog reconversion problem, analog reconversion issue and similar terms. MPAA redirects here. ...
To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ...
Overview
Although the technology for creating digital recordings from analog sources has existed for some time, it was not necessarily viewed as a "hole" until the widespread deployment of DRM in the late 1990s. It should be pointed out that this kind of duplication is not a direct digital copy, and therefore has flaws, the magnitude of which depends on the nature of the reproduction methods used. This kind of reproduction is, in many ways, similar to the initial digitization of any analog medium or performance, with all the pitfalls and benefits of such digitization. For example, bootleg films may have poor audio, or highly washed-out video. At a minimum, copy protection can be circumvented for types of material whose value is aesthetic, and does not depend on its exact digital duplication. In general, performing a digital-to-analog conversion followed by an analog-to-digital conversion results in the addition of noise in an information-theoretic sense relative to the original digital signal. This noise can be measured and quantified. Naturally, the use of high quality conversion equipment reduces the amount of noise added, to the point where such noise is essentially imperceptible to the human senses. For instance, playing a video in a DVD player and using a DVD recorder to record the output can create a high quality copy of the video. For other uses, see Bootleg. ...
“Sound recorder†redirects here. ...
Copy prevention, also known as copy protection, is any technical measure designed to prevent duplication of information. ...
Aesthetics is commonly perceived as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste. ...
Not to be confused with information technology, information science, or informatics. ...
Regardless of any digital or software copy control mechanisms, if music can be played on speakers, it can also be recorded, at the very least, with a microphone. And just as text can be printed or displayed, it can also be scanned and recognized, at the very least, with a camera and a screen. Because of the way modern computers load programs from random access media such as CDs and DVDs, software cannot usually be copied in this manner. However, software supplied on audio cassettes (a popular format on 1980s home computers) is not random access, and can often be copied by simply recording the cassette's analogue audio signal on another cassette, without the need for a computer or any digital equipment. In the 1980s, many European radio stations experimented with free software distribution using this method, which sounded to human listeners as several minutes of apparently random beeps. Listeners recorded the beeping part of the radio programme to cassette, and then played it back in their computers' cassette drives to load software. Software redirects here. ...
For other uses, see Music (disambiguation). ...
For the Marty Friedman album, see Loudspeaker (album) An inexpensive low fidelity 3. ...
Methods and media for sound recording are varied and have undergone significant changes between the first time sound was actually recorded for later playback until now. ...
In computer and machine-based telecommunications terminology, a character is a unit of information that roughly corresponds to a grapheme or a grapheme-like unit or symbol, such as in an alphabet or syllabary in the written form of a natural language. ...
A computer printer, or more commonly a printer, produces a hard copy (permanent human-readable text and/or graphics) of documents stored in electronic form, usually on physical print media such as paper or transparencies. ...
The terms scan and scanning have several meanings: Wiktionary has related dictionary definitions, such as: scan The term scan has the following meanings: To examine sequentially, part by part. ...
Optical character recognition, usually abbreviated to OCR, is a type of computer software designed to translate images of handwritten or typewritten text (usually captured by a scanner) into machine-editable text, or to translate pictures of characters into a standard encoding scheme representing them (e. ...
In 2002 and 2003, the U.S. motion picture industry publicly discussed the possibility of legislation to "close the analog hole" — most likely through regulation of digital recording devices, limiting their ability to record analog video signals that appear to be commercial audiovisual works. These proposals are discussed in the Content Protection Status Report, Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act, and Analog Reconversion Discussion Group. Inventors of digital watermark technologies were particularly interested in this possibility because of the prospect that recording devices could be required to screen inputs for the presence of a particular watermark (and hence, presumably, their manufacturers would need to pay a patent royalty to the watermark's inventor). The Content Protection Status Report is the title of a series of three documents submitted to the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary during 2002 by the Motion Picture Association of America. ...
The Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act (CBDTPA), known in early drafts as the Security Systems and Standards Certification Act (SSSCA), and sometimes derisively called the Consume But Dont Try Programming Anything bill, is a proposed US law which would prohibit any kind of technology which can be...
Digital watermarking is a technique which allows to add hidden copyright or other verification messages to digital audio, video, or image signals and documents. ...
For other uses, see Patent (disambiguation). ...
The motion picture industry has also pursued several private-sector approaches to eliminating the analog hole; these might be implemented without additional legislation.
- Analog signals can be degraded in ways that interfere with or confuse some recording devices. For example, Macrovision attempts to defeat recording by VCRs by outputting a deliberately distorted signal, crippling the automatic gain control for video, causing the brightness to fluctuate wildly. While this is only supposed to happen to copies, it may, as an inadvertent side-effect, happen when viewing the original video as well. Some vendors claim to have developed equivalent techniques for preventing recording by video capture cards in personal computers. Devices exist, however, to counteract this measure.
- Manufacturers of recording devices can be required to screen analog inputs for watermarks (or Macrovision or CGMS-A) and limit recording as a condition of private contracts. For example, a manufacturer who licenses patents or trade secrets associated with a particular DRM scheme might also be obliged as a purely contractual matter to add recording limitations to digital recording products.
- Manufacturers of certain playback devices such as set-top boxes can be required, as a condition of private contracts, to allow publishers or broadcasters to disable analog outputs entirely, or to degrade the analog output quality, when particular programming is displayed. This capability is one example of Selectable Output Control. A broadcaster could then prevent all recording of a broadcast program by indicating that compliant receiving devices should refuse to output it through analog outputs at all.
In theory, it is possible to bypass all these measures by constructing a player that creates a copy of every frame and sound it plays. Although this is not within the capability of most people, many bootleggers simply film videos with a video camera or use recording and playing devices that are not designed to use the protection measures. Macrovision is a company that creates electronic copy prevention schemes, established in 1983. ...
The video cassette recorder (or VCR, less popularly video tape recorder) is a type of video tape recorder that uses removable cassettes containing magnetic tape to record audio and video from a television broadcast so it can be played back later. ...
In information theory, a signal is the sequence of states of a communications channel that encodes a message. ...
Automatic gain control (AGC) is an electronic system found in many types of devices. ...
For other uses, see Video (disambiguation). ...
Brightness is an attribute of visual perception in which a source appears to emit a given amount of light. ...
CGMS-A (Copy Generation Management System Analogue) is a copy protection mechanism for analog television signals. ...
A contract is a legally binding exchange of promises or agreement between parties that the law will enforce. ...
A trade secret is a formula, practice, process, design, instrument, pattern, or compilation of information which is not generally known or reasonably ascertainable, by which a business can obtain an economic advantage over competitors or customers. ...
A set-top box (STB) or set-top unit (STU) is a device that connects to a television and an external source of signal, turning the signal into content which is then displayed on the television screen. ...
But by far, one of the most effective ways for a publisher to defeat analog reconversion is to make the work interactive. Analog reconversion methods can copy only signals, not the rules used to generate those signals. If the rules are such that the sequence of user input has a strong effect on the output, especially in the case of a video game, analog reconversion becomes much less useful. Computer and video games redirects here. ...
Engineering vs. business and political views | | The neutrality of this article is disputed.
Please see the discussion on the talk page.(December 2007)
Please do not remove this message until the dispute is resolved. | | | The neutrality or factuality of this article or section may be compromised by weasel words, which can allow the implication of unsourced information.
You can help Wikipedia by removing weasel worded statements. | The notion of "plugging the analog hole" may be based on fundamental misconceptions of the meaning of analog and digital. There is a history of business and political desires combined with core misunderstandings of technology leading to legislation and industry practices that are counterproductive or fundamentally flawed on an engineering theory level. Image File history File links Emblem-important. ...
One example was an early law passed by the European Parliament to support DRM in response to widespread buzz about unauthorized digital music downloads being held in computer memory caches. Apparently reasoning by analogy to "caches of arms", the use of computer memory caches was outlawed. The legislators, hearing a very general piece of computer jargon (caching) associated with infringement, banned it, not realizing it was a basic digital storage technique found in most modern equipment. A BBC article describing the controversy, itself demonstrates the difficulty of explaining to legislators and the general public the aspect that every computer and most digital devices of any kind would have to be destroyed were the law to be evenly enforced. [1] Far from a specialized illegality, caching is a universally used computer memory technique, leading to comparisons of this law to the classic "urban myth" [2] of the Indiana Pi Bill. For other uses, see cache (disambiguation). ...
The Indiana Pi Bill is the popular name for Indiana House of Representatives bill #246 of 1897, which is one of the most famous historical attempts to (erroneously) define scientific truth by legislative fiat. ...
A body of opinion in the engineering community puts the buzz about the "analog hole" in the same category: an impossible strategy based on fundamental misunderstandings by people who are not engineers that will not solve the stated problem but cause expense and confusion. Both "analog to digital" and "digital to analog" conversion are such basic technologies, with so many possible implementations, that the idea of being able to block conversion by these means is unrealistic. Engineers are aware of mathematical and physical principles that often begin with "It is not possible to..." which sometimes come in direct conflict with business and political goals. One does not have to be an engineer to understand that it is simply not possible to simultaneously display and conceal a signal. In particular, an audio signal must be converted to analog before it reaches the speaker.
In addition to this general principle, theory says that digital watermarking and other restrictions on the "analog hole" can be simply defeated by a variety of well-known techniques, such as dithering. For other uses, see Dither (disambiguation). ...
Copyright law vs. particular techniques Copyright law has been defined in terms of general definitions of infringement in any concrete medium. This classically focused such law on whether there is infringement, rather than focus on particular engineering techniques. Detecting infringement within the social and legal system avoids a legacy of outlawing generic, universal, popular, widespread, useful, and possibly uncontrollable engineering techniques in response to specific misuses.
Consumer vs. professional equipment In every copy restricted medium, there are two grades of equipment, consumer, which may include copy restriction, and professional, which by necessity, allows access in a way that is above copy restriction. In most countries, the sale of professional equipment is not regulated per se, although price alone prevents most users from getting access to it. The price may not put off piracy organisations that still regard it as a good return on investment, especially as the cost of such equipment continues to drop and as direct digital piracy becomes more difficult.
See also Digital rights management (DRM) is an umbrella term that refers to access control technologies used by publishers and copyright holders to limit usage of digital media or devices. ...
This article needs cleanup. ...
A secure cryptoprocessor is a dedicated computer for carrying out cryptographic operations, embedded in a packaging with multiple physical security measures, which give it a degree of tamper resistance. ...
The Fritz-chip is a nickname for the hardware component of a software-execution monitoring system. ...
Logo of Trusted Computing Group, an initiative to implement Trusted Computing Trusted Computing (commonly abbreviated TC) is a technology developed and promoted by the Trusted Computing Group (TCG). ...
The United States The Digital Transition Content Security Act (DTCSA, H.R. 4569) is a bill introduced by House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner Jr. ...
External links Digital rights management (DRM) is an umbrella term that refers to access control technologies used by publishers and copyright holders to limit usage of digital media or devices. ...
A podcast is a series of digital-media files which are distributed over the Internet using syndication feeds for playback on portable media players and computers. ...
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