Ugh. More DVD delays.
December 3, 1999
Tech Center
Hacker's Stunt Delays Launch
Of DVD Audio, Stoking Fears
By PETER LANDERS
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
TOKYO -- The exploits of a Norwegian hacker against a prominent Japanese
electronics company have highlighted a major fear of record companies: New
digital technology could make it easier than ever to distribute pirated music
over the Internet.
Copy-protection concerns forced Japan's biggest consumer-electronics
company this week to delay by up to six months what it touts as a
state-of-the-art stereo system. Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., which
makes Panasonic products, had planned to start selling its DVD Audio system
in mid-December. A Matsushita subsidiary, JVC, also postponed its DVD
Audio launch from December until May or June 2000.
Matsushita has promoted DVD Audio as a better-sounding successor to the
conventional compact-disk player. The new audio players are based on the
same digital technology as digital videodisk players, which have boomed in
popularity recently as a way of playing back videos at home because DVDs
boast picture quality that is superior to that of standard videocassette
recorders.
Method Posted on Web
In early October, according to Matsushita officials, a Norwegian hacker
posted on the Internet a way to break the copy protection of digital
videodisks. The hacker's method required playing the DVD on the DVD drive
found in some personal computers. Normally the computer software that reads
DVDs would prevent the disk's data from being copied.
But a defect in a version of the disk-reading software published by a U.S.
company enabled the hacker to download the DVD data to his hard drive, the
officials said. They declined to identify the hacker.
Matsushita spokesman Yoshihiro Kitadeya said it wouldn't be commercially
viable for someone using the hacker's method to make illegal copies of DVDs
and sell them, although it would be theoretically possible.
However, Mr. Kitadeya said, since music requires much less data than video,
it would be easier to transfer individual songs from a DVD Audio disk into a
computer file and distribute them cheaply over the Internet. Unlike analog
media such as cassette tapes, digital data can be copied countless times
without degradation.
Developing Plan
Mr. Kitadeya said that possibility alarmed major music companies, and they
asked Matsushita to delay the sale of the DVD Audio system until a new
copy-protection scheme can be developed. A consortium of four companies --
Matsushita, Toshiba Corp., International Business Machines Corp. and
Intel Corp. -- develops copy protection for DVDs.
"If the original music can be copied all over the place, it loses its value," said
Tsuyoshi Nomiyama, a spokesman for Nippon Columbia Co., which plans to
sell DVD Audio recordings.
Mr. Nomiyama said Nippon Columbia will have to throw out nearly 10,000
DVD Audio disks that it had produced to coincide with the December launch
date and retool its manufacturing process for the new copy-protection scheme.
He declined to say how much these steps will cost Nippon Columbia.
Write to Peter Landers at peter.landers@wsj.com1 |
