New copy protection shows copyright notice when several minutes into the movie (updated)

There are reports of a new type of copy protection that shows a black screen with a copyright notice several minutes into the movie. The timing of the appearance of these messages is interesting, as also a new AACS revision emerged last month.

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However, there are no indications that the emergence of the AACS 2.1 revisions and the copyright messages are related. So far AACS 2.1 has only been found on the Ultra HD Blu-ray releases of Patriot and Fury, while the copyright messages appeared when watching Blu-ray rips of the movies 20th Century Women and I Can Only Imagine. It seems the messages only appear when an incorrect playlist is used.

On the Redfox forums, user world123 reports that the copyright notice appeared 24 minutes into the movie. He was using PowerDVD to watch a backup of I Can Only Image on his computer when the message appeared stating, “Copy detected (or a rip tool is running if you are trying to watch this movie on your PC).”

The other report is from MakeMKV user jbelkin800 who watched a backup of 20th Century Women and saw the following message after 7 minutes into the movie, “Dear customer, The disc you've inserted cannot be played due to copyright restrictions. Please visit http://www.lionsgateshop.com, a local retail, or online store of choice to purchase a genuine copy. If you try to play back an original disc on your computer and experience a copy detected message, please ensure that no ripping or copying tool is actively running while performing the playback.”

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On the question whether this is a new form of copy protection, Redfox developer Pete answers, “It is and it's fixed now.”

Also, AACS 2.1 didn't last long. While initially AACS 2.1 could not be ripped, it took Russian software company Arusoft about a month after which they released a version of its DeUHD software that could deal with it. AACS 2.1 not only made it harder to rip Ultra HD Blu-ray discs, it also added data to the rip about the player that was used to create the rip. DeUHD also removes this 'garbage', as Arusoft calls it.

Discuss this in our Ultra HD Blu-ray Forum.

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Update: Redfox contacted us that our article is incorrect, the copy protection has already been around for a couple of years. We misread the statement of the developer that it's a new protection. He did not say it's a new copy protection, he just confirmed it's a copy protection.

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