Macrovision copy protection coming to a download near you

Macrovision, makers of copy-protection technologies for video and consumer software, has announced that they have signed a deal with several Internet video delivery companies. The deal will bring the company's Analog Copy Protection (ACP) technology to video downloads from Netflix, BitTorrent, Movielink, and Instant Media.

Netflix, who rose to fame by offering a convenient movie rental service, will be adding ACP to its fledgling online streaming movie service. The service launched with 1,000 movies available, but Netflix hopes to dramatically increase that number by signing additional deals with movie studios. Movielink, a download service that has not been very popular with consumers, also hopes to increase their available library and perhaps become a more attractive acquisition target. BitTorrent (the company, not the protocol, although the former does use the latter), which launched their online store last month with an unfortunate number of glitches, also hopes to gain a larger library as a result of adding ACP technology.

How can an analog protection system apply to digital video downloads? ACP works by embedding a signal in the vertical blanking interval, the time period after the display has finished drawing the image and is preparing to draw the next frame. For old VHS tapes, this was stored directly on the tape, but when the technology was ported to DVDs, it was stored as an instruction for the DVD player itself to create the signal on the fly. The signal causes analog recording devices to display wildly fluctuating artifacts, and on digital recording devices it triggers a flag that turns off the ability to record. Some DVD recorders have the ability to ignore the Macrovision signal, but most do not.

Macrovision claims that the addition of its ACP technology to digital downloads will help both content providers and online distributors to gain confidence in this form of delivery, which will in turn lead to more movies and shows being made available online. "The key to making movies and television programs available online is first showing the content owners that you can distribute their content in a protected and consumer-friendly manner," said Fred Amoroso, president and CEO of Macrovision.

Will the ACP deal help the struggling online movie download industry? Simply gaining access to a wider library will definitely help increase consumer acceptance. However, consumers may be put off by the inability to back up movies to a DVD—while most existing services don't allow this, Movielink has at least toyed with the idea. On the other hand, the Macrovision ACP may end up being less intrusive and error-prone than the digital DRM schemes currently used by such services. At the moment, downloadable movie sales are weak at best. However, Macrovision has big hopes for the future, citing a December 2006 report by Parks Associates that predicted Internet video revenue will exceed $7 billion by 2010, with services for renting and downloading TV shows and movies accounting for nearly 40 percent of that total.