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AACS still trying to manage managed-copy - April 24, 2008

Several reports have surfaced this week (here, here and here), all traceable to an Ur report in Consumer Electronics Daily on Tuesday (really expensive subscription required), suggesting that managed-copy "may not" be part of the final AACS license when its released this summer. Not so, an AACS spokesman tells Media Wonk.

Managed-copy--the ability to transfer the contents of a Blu-ray Disc to a hard drive under carefully controlled circumstances--has from the beginning been part of the plan for AACS, the copy-protection system used on Blu-ray as well as HD DVD (moment of silence). Also from the beginning, however, there have been disputes among the electronics makers, content owners and IT companies over exactly how, when and where managed-copy should be implemented.

The plan is to make copying the default setting for all titles released on Blu-ray. Buy a Blu-ray disc, you get to transfer it to a hard drive (although studios will be permitted to charge you for the copy, such as by requiring online authorization). Everyone (or nearly everyone) now acknowledges, however, that there will be cases where the company releasing a title on Blu-ray does not have the necessary rights and clearances to authorize a third party to make a copy. So some sort of procedure for dealing with those exceptions has to be established.

For much of the past year, the parties have been arguing over exactly how to define those cases to the satisfaction of the lawyers. Does "not having the rights" literally mean not legally having the rights, or can it mean you just don't want to have to tell George Lucas he has to allow copying of Star Wars on Blu-ray? That sort of thing.

According to the AACS spokesman, they're still debating those issues, which is why there's no final license. But there's no thought at this point of not including managed-copy when it's done.

"[Managed copy] is still very much a part of the Final documents," the spokesman wrote in an email. "Nothing has changed in that regard. It’s just taking time."

No kidding.
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