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Sony software updates breaks movie theater projectors

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Re: Sony software updates breaks movie theater projectors

#111

Post by userbinator »

waiwai933 wrote: post #101
userbinator wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was (and probably still is) quite common to hire a cracker to remove the DRM from industrial equipment software to prevent any downtime it causes; of course that's not a life-support application, and the motive was that downtime for such machinery is often very costly. Of course with the recent Polish train debacle ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38788360 ) stories of DRM schemes where incomplete defeat cau…

Can you share/link to any stories of the first? I've never heard of it before and would be keen to read more on it.

It is not surprisingly difficult to find this stuff now, but there are some stories here: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/fpga/altera-software-dongle-te...

Re: Sony software updates breaks movie theater projectors

#112

Post by MandieD »

simcop2387 wrote: post #108
thomaslord wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any idea if these projectors could be made to work with other sources that don't require DRM? As much as this sucks for movie theaters, it could also be the deal of the century for a home theater build if you know the right people...

I don't think you'd want to pay the power bill for one, nor would you want to have a large enough screen to not have it burn your retinas. That said I believe some of them do allow that (no clue what models or availability) since you can rent out theaters to play games on your own computer or console, https://www.cinemark.com/private-events/gaming/

If you’re in Central Texas, one of my high school friends and her husband run The Beltonian in Belton (shocking), a beautiful single-screen theatre built in 1922, renovated to have about 140 modern seats with tables, featuring various classic movies, reasonably-priced pub grub, Central Texas wines and beers, and available for similar rental arrangements (gaming or movies).

If you’re not in Central Texas, you likely have a similar, beautifully-restored old theatre available for similar rental arrangements.

The Beltonian: https://thebeltoniantheatre.com/

Re: Sony software updates breaks movie theater projectors

#113

Post by userbinator »

stevehawk wrote: post #95
userbinator wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's all an incentive for "don't just churn software, plan well ahead". This also seems to be broadly incompatible with fixing certain security vulnerabilities - would everybody have to maintain TLS 1.1 or plaintext api endpoints for old clients? Or they would forced to produce an update that doesn't do anything other than e.g. upgrade the TLS version --- and has absolutely nothing else.

it also skyrockets the barrier to entry for software to a point that no one but the big companies could compete.

It raises the barrier enough to stop the lowest-common-denominator forced-obsolescence crap from becoming popular. If an individual can make software that lasts, big companies have no excuse.

Re: Sony software updates breaks movie theater projectors

#114

Post by mistermo »

crazygringo wrote: post #51
sprocket35 wrote: post #41

Digital cinema tech here. Sony hasn’t been releasing updates since they exited the business in 2020. This is likely an expired certificate related to the encryption on the movie files.

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…

The Dolby/Doremi servers certificate ended the Dec 31 too. Our maintenance subcontractor updated them few weeks ago. SO I guess it is common for the industry. Then it is an industry which often play 365d/year so, it's just another sunday/monday. (Add to this our weeks doesn't start Sunday/Monday, but Wednesday for France by example, and Friday for the US, day of the release of new movies)

Re: Sony software updates breaks movie theater projectors

#115

Post by hnlmorg »

saghm wrote: post #87
prepend wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I agree but you do need to bear in mind that this isn’t a uniquely Sony design. Sadly, this is the mindset of the movie industry as a whole.

That needs to change before any trickle down effect to projector hardware can happen. But there’s no incentive for studios to change the way they given their IP because they benefit from the status quo

Re: Sony software updates breaks movie theater projectors

#116

Post by Libcat99 »

saghm wrote: post #88
sprocket35 wrote: post #71

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…

> 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…

And yet, many of the products we buy are exactly that. Gaming consoles dependant on online stores, smart TVs with software that could become useless at any moment, hundreds of little iot devices that are dependent on the manufacturers cloud being online... The list goes on.

This kind of thing is all over the consumer world. In a way it's cathartic to see it hitting businesses too.

Re: Sony software updates breaks movie theater projectors

#117

Post by fostware »

sprocket35 wrote: post #41

Digital cinema tech here. Sony hasn’t been releasing updates since they exited the business in 2020. This is likely an expired certificate related to the encryption on the movie files.

I'm surprised they even allow a certificate greater than 13 months /s

Re: Sony software updates breaks movie theater projectors

#118

Post by jasonjayr »

coder543 wrote: post #83
userbinator wrote: post #78

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…

I imagine most systems needing a trusted clock do so with a positive GPS lock.

Spoofing that now gets you in trouble with the FCC as well as the DMCA.

Re: Sony software updates breaks movie theater projectors

#119

Post by marksomnian »

jasonjayr wrote: post #118
coder543 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I imagine most systems needing a trusted clock do so with a positive GPS lock. Spoofing that now gets you in trouble with the FCC as well as the DMCA.

No need to spoof the GPS signal, pop open the lid and replace the GPS chip with one that outputs an attacker-controlled time signal. I suppose it could encrypt this signal with some certificate burned into the silicon, but that could still (slowly and painfully) be reverse-engineered.

GP’s point stands, you can’t enforce a time lock with cryptography primitives. That’s the fundamental issue with DRM - you’re trying to restrict someone from getting your ciphertext, while at the same time allowing them to get to it if they meet certain (non-cryptographic) conditions, which standard cryptography just can’t do.

Re: Sony software updates breaks movie theater projectors

#120

Post by jbergens »

sschueller wrote: post #63

I wonder how much longer until we have a military or medical device that doesn't work killing people because a DRM certificate expired...

The two parts below means different things. Just thought about it.

> I wonder how much longer until we have a military device that doesn't work killing people...

And

> I wonder how much longer until we have a medical device that doesn't work, killing people...

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