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Sony software updates breaks movie theater projectors

bsky.app

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Re: Sony software updates breaks movie theater projectors

#81
post #66
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you believe that the operator of a deliberately insecure system should be liable Only if said operator signed a contract. No contract=no liability. Here in the US, the Supreme Court has made it clear that law enforcement agencies are not required to provide protection to the citizens cf https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/justices-rule-po... If even the police isn't liable, why should I be liable or have…

Do you also think it's fine to shit in other people's wells or for companies to dump their toxic waste in the middle of other companies parking lots as long as you/they haven't signed a contract explicitly agreeing not to?

> Do you also think it's fine to shit in other people's wells or for companies to dump their toxic waste in the middle of other companies parking lots as long as you/they haven't signed a contract explicitly agreeing not to?

You are using loaded words to 1) imply I would support some questionable actions where you assume intent and 2) refer to negative externalities, but I'll suppose you are not trolling interact in good faith with you.

Both the actions you define are ignoring property rights: your well, your parking lot = I can't do that, unless you allow me (with a contract!)

My well, my parking lot = I can do that, and you don't get to say what I do with my property, unless we have signed a contract which creates liability.

Many people seem to have a strong desire to be able to force ME to update MY browser/operating system/bios/whatever else to be up to THEIR standards, because it has consequences on THEIR liability.

I care a bit about them, but I care way more about MY freedom: I do what I what with MY computers.

Note that intent matters: I have no desire to cause bad things to other people. I'd be very sad if my computer was used as "part of a botnet" like someone else said. I might even try to avoid that - but only as far as it puts my freedom first, and there's not even a requirement that I try (because I might have better things to do lol)

Should bad things like botnets happen, 1) it wasn't my intent, as preserving my freedom was my intent 2) the negative externality is sad, but it's not my liability: you should secure your property, or said differently "your problems aren't my problem"

This whole interaction feels very strange to me. By any chance, are you European? Europeans seem to have very different concepts of freedom and liability than we do.

Re: Sony software updates breaks movie theater projectors

#82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The studios set the requirements. A certificate that never expires would never fly with their need to control DRM as tightly as possible. If Sony was still in the business, they would offer a certificate renewal for a small fee like the other manufacturers have done. The root problem is that Sony exited the market and left a lot of cinema owners out to dry with the looming cost of $50,000+ per auditorium for replacem…

IMHO a certificate that expires at the same time as the copyright on a film, and DRM that then "fails open", makes the most sense.

Not for the studios. There’s nothing more they would love than to get a continuous and non-ending stream of money for content they themselves have forgotten about owning.

Re: Sony software updates breaks movie theater projectors

#83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The studios set the requirements. A certificate that never expires would never fly with their need to control DRM as tightly as possible. If Sony was still in the business, they would offer a certificate renewal for a small fee like the other manufacturers have done. The root problem is that Sony exited the market and left a lot of cinema owners out to dry with the looming cost of $50,000+ per auditorium for replacem…

IMHO a certificate that expires at the same time as the copyright on a film, and DRM that then "fails open", makes the most sense.

Okay, then I set the date on my computer to year the 2124. Now the DRM is unlocked!

You can't build a "time lock" with just encryption primitives. Even if you could build a time lock with just encryption primitives, we don't know when the copyright will expire until the original author has died, since copyright term is life + 70 years.

Someone would have to run a server that specifically chooses to start serving the keys on that date, which is an absurd notion given how absurdly long copyright lasts these days.

If the federal government were interested in passing a law that required this, I'm sure the Library of Congress could run such a server, but no such law exists.

Re: Sony software updates breaks movie theater projectors

#84
Lots more info here on the Y2K24 bug -

http://www.film-tech.com/vbb/forum/main-forum

Expired cert. Some players refuse, some ignore it.

Affected - Sony (XCT-M10) / GDC SR-1000 - "15-08-2011 18:10:59 UTC 31-12-2023 00:00:00 UTC (expired)"

There was a known Y2K24 bug that needed software updates to fix around certs, unsure how/if related -

http://www.film-tech.com/vbb/forum/main-forum/26517-dolby-do...

Re: Sony software updates breaks movie theater projectors

#85
post #81
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you also think it's fine to shit in other people's wells or for companies to dump their toxic waste in the middle of other companies parking lots as long as you/they haven't signed a contract explicitly agreeing not to?

> Do you also think it's fine to shit in other people's wells or for companies to dump their toxic waste in the middle of other companies parking lots as long as you/they haven't signed a contract explicitly agreeing not to? You are using loaded words to 1) imply I would support some questionable actions where you assume intent and 2) refer to negative externalities, but I'll suppose you are not trolling interact in…

>but it's not my liability: you should secure your property, or said differently "your problems aren't my problem"

But we're talking about you deliberately not securing or even actively reducing the security of your property in a manner that could reasonably be predicted to lead to harm to other's property, and that harm occuring, through no fault of the harmed party. You're not supposed to store loaded guns unsecured on your front porch (not around here anyways).

>By any chance, are you European? Europeans seem to have very different concepts of freedom and liability than we do.

No, I'm from the US.

>You are using loaded words to 1) imply I would support some questionable actions where you assume intent and 2) refer to negative externalities, but I'll suppose you are not trolling interact in good faith with you.

I'm asking whether you would, not suggesting that you do. But yes, the acts in question were significantly more questionable than those in my previous comment, since your answer to that was more extreme than I expected. So how about the middle ground: Do you believe that the EPA should impose restrictions on companies' or citizens' right to dump whatever toxic waste they want into rivers? If you think the physical commons should be protected from predictable harm by negligence or reckless disregard, why not the digital?

Re: Sony software updates breaks movie theater projectors

#87
post #74
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, is that better? Leaving all the devices set to EOL and get bricked or whatever feels pretty wasteful.

Having a short term cert seems wasteful too. How frequently does Sony change its identity. They should have a 999 year cert expiration and then check a revocation list in the off chance they Sony gets its private keys rooted.

I don't disagree! I don't feel like the exact technical justification really makes a difference here; there were working projectors, and now there aren't, and it's hard to see how that's not directly due to Sony designing things in a way that required them to continue operating that part of the business in order for that not to happen.

Re: Sony software updates breaks movie theater projectors

#88
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, is that better? Leaving all the devices set to EOL and get bricked or whatever feels pretty wasteful.

The studios set the requirements. A certificate that never expires would never fly with their need to control DRM as tightly as possible. If Sony was still in the business, they would offer a certificate renewal for a small fee like the other manufacturers have done. The root problem is that Sony exited the market and left a lot of cinema owners out to dry with the looming cost of $50,000+ per auditorium for replacem…

> The root problem is that Sony exited the market and left a lot of cinema owners out to dry with the looming cost of $50,000+ per auditorium for replacement projectors.

That's the point I was trying to make; if someone accidentally pushed a broken update, that sucks, but its not the first or the last time it will happen, and at least there's a clear path to it getting fixed and someone being paid to do it. The cert being expired and the only company who would have been in charge of fixing that not really caring anymore sounds to me worse from pretty much any possible point of view, and selling a product that will stop working if you decide to stop servicing it seems pretty terrible.

Re: Sony software updates breaks movie theater projectors

#89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are certificates usually/often issued to expire at the end of a given calendar year? On the one hand, that would explain this happening on Dec 31. But it's slightly weird because it's not yet the new year in UTC. This was posted several hours before that happening, and we've still got over 2 hours to go... (And the cinema is in New York, with almost 8 hours to go in local time, so it's not a local timezone issue eith…

This is Sony, and it is the new year in Japan.

(fyi)Japan Standard Time(JST) is UTC+9, single zone and no DST. Not sure of absolute time but Tweet is showing "Jan 1, 2024 at 2:19" timestamp on my JST phone.

Re: Sony software updates breaks movie theater projectors

#90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMHO a certificate that expires at the same time as the copyright on a film, and DRM that then "fails open", makes the most sense.

Okay, then I set the date on my computer to year the 2124. Now the DRM is unlocked! You can't build a "time lock" with just encryption primitives. Even if you could build a time lock with just encryption primitives, we don't know when the copyright will expire until the original author has died, since copyright term is life + 70 years. Someone would have to run a server that specifically chooses to start serving the…

Not at all absurd.

Maybe not through crypto but otherwise perfectly achievable. No reason to achieve this within a file. If you really want to, some fancy solution involving blockchains and smart contracts is probably possible but there is no need.

Require by law all who desire copyright protection to register the work with a governmental agency and place a copy of the work in escrow at an archive as a condition. The archive knows when the copyright expires and starts serving the work to the public from that point forward. This is what to do if a state cares about public domain.

The status quo of corporations abandoning works to bit rot, actual rot, misplacement or fires for decades is strictly worse.

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