Apple appears to have added the Cinavia watermarking copy protection to movies on iTunes. According to DVD-Ranger, the developer of Cinavia removal CinEx HD, the iTunes version of the movie Mockingjay was found to be protected by Cinavia. The movie is released by Lionsgate which is known to also have recently adapted Cinavia for Blu-ray movies.
"In the process of developing SoundTouch 2 we got a movie from our testers that has Cinavia on it. After we reviewed this movie we found out that it has Cinavia but it is also a video from iTunes shop", DVD-Ranger writes in an email to us. "We asked one of our supporters to buy this movie again from iTunes store. After the copy protection was removed from the iTunes movie we checked it with our analyze software and made some tests. And yes, it has Cinavia. So we can conclude that the US Version of Mockingjay on iTunes also contains Cinavia."
Previously the consumer versions of Cinavia were only found on DVD and Blu-ray discs, but it appears the audio watermarking based protection is now also movie downloads.
DVD-Ranger writes that his SoundTouch 2 software and database based removal software CinEx HD can remove Cinavia from iTunes downloads and adds, "this is an interesting issue because iTunes is a closed system with an own protection and rights management system. And now they start adding Cinavia infected movies. So what does this mean right now? Will the iTunes software get an own Cinavia detector soon? Will this become part of iOS, too? These are some quite interesting questions."
Cinavia is a copy protection based on an audio watermark that is embedded in the soundtrack of movies. The protection is mandatory on Blu-ray players manufactured after 2012 and e.g. also trigger when users try to playback a movie backup on a Playstation 3 or Xbox One.
Although it took some time, developers have found several ways of removing/distorting the Cinavia signal in such a way that the protection is no longer triggered. More information can be found in our article on Cinavia.
