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AACS Cracked Again
EmTeedee sends us to a blog post for a summary of the latest results in cracking AACS, from the Doom9 forums (as the earlier cracks have been) — after the DVD Security Group said it had patched the previous flaws. From the DLTV blog: "This time the target was the Xbox 360 HD DVD add on. Geremia on Doom9 forums has started a thread on how he has obtained the Volume ID without AACS authentication. With the aid of others like Arnezami they have managed to patch the Xbox 360 HD DVD add on... It appears that XT5 has released [an] application that allows the Volume ID to be read without the need to rewrite the firmware. This would mean that anyone could simply plug in the HD DVD drive and obtain the Volume ID from any HD DVD without the hassle of flashing it."
When will these stuffed suits learn that the more they try to limit people, the more people will fight those limitations?
You say you want a revolution....
It seems that the /. crowd, and the tech industry in general, knew well before AACS was ever released that it would be a flop. We knew it would do nothing to prevent disks from being copied, we knew it would do nothing but hurt the consumer, and we knew it was an utter waste of money.
Yet the movie industry pushed forward, and look where it got them... exactly where we said it would, nowhere.
I can't wait until they realize that it's not worth it, and just stop concerning themselves with copy-protecting their media and instead focus on creating good movies.
Sometimes the best solution is to stop wasting time looking for an easy solution.
While I think everybody has been making good points so far, you have to remember that in the long term copy protection is actually winning. While these measures might be meant in name to stop piracy, their true value is in taking out fair use as collateral damage. The goal of DRM is not to stop piracy, but to make it difficult enough that Joe User will not be able to convert or make backups through a point and click interface. If this copy protection has done that, then it is making them money.... shame all it does is hurt the people who legitimately buy their products.
It's not the fault of the MPAA directly. It's the fundamental flaw of DRM.
Encryption works because parties A and B exchange data that is encrypted with a key that party C does not have. In the case of DRM, you have the encrypted data and you have the keys that you need to decrypt and view the data. You are in essence parties B and C. They hide the key from you in the players and software, but it's there if you know how to find it. That's why DRM can and will never work. It's security through obscurity.
I have this mental image of a guy in overalls hauling boxes and boxes of patched DVDs out to the truck, looking up at the news-monitor in the shipping yard, and just a single tear falling.
Hmm.. I'd think he'd smile tho. nice job security for a while.
After reading the first sentence I thought someone was making a good point, but the signature line negates it.
Keep cracking DRM schemes and all you'll get are more laws aimed at stopping you, more vigorous enforcement, and more DRM integrated into your hardware.
Stop buying DRM'd content in the first place and maybe you'll get somewhere.
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
There's no "secret sauce" involved in making a movie; it's just very, very expensive,
no it's not. having overpaid prima donna union actors, union workers and extravagent locations, props and lunches IS expensive. making a killer good movie IS NOT expensive.
go watch El Marachi. It's better than most everything made at Hollywierd and was less than the cost of a cheap car.
a crapload of great movies are made for dirt.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
This is some sweet hacking.
How ironic that we need to hack hardware that we ourselves own.
I think TV killed the movie industry. A traditional movie is a dinosaur compared to TV. The level of character and plot development in a single season of a one hour drama is so much greater than a single two hour movie can provide. If the Sopranos were a movie franchise, we'd be on maybe the third or fourth movie - roughly equivalent to 6 or 8 TV episodes. It seems like movies compensate for the lack of character and plot development by using gimmicks or bigger explosions.
I'm not a Troll, it's reverse psychology.
After reading the first sentence I thought someone was making a good point, but the signature line negates it.
My signature or the GP's?
Anyway, I think it's important to work on both fronts. First, I agree that the best bet is just to not purchase anything that's DRMed at all. But since that means basically bowing out of a large portion of our culture -- I mean, no late-model VCRs (macrovision) or tapes, no DVD players or discs, no TiVO -- I think you're going to have trouble getting enough people to follow you to make it significant. There's no point in throwing yourself in front of a tank if they're just going to run over you and nobody else is going to notice or care.
Continually breaking the DRM schemes costs the studios a lot of money. It ensures that DRM is never "fire and forget;" and it turns DRM from being a one-time cost into a continual cost center, a black hole that they need to keep pouring money into. If you can make the cost of maintaining an effective DRM system higher than the cost of the piracy that it allegedly prevents, then it will eventually go away -- either the companies will see the light, or they'll be run out of business by other companies who do, and who are more profitable as a result.
The major remaining problem is that the entertainment industry in particular has so much political influence that it's going to require a lot of vigilance and advocacy to keep them from trying to use the law to buoy themselves as they start to sink -- or barring that, pull everyone else down with them. We haven't had much luck in this in the past, hence we've seen the AHRA, the DMCA, and lately the Mickey Mouse Protection Act go through. But if we can keep the visibility of their actions high -- which is aided by putting pressure on them and forcing them to be more and more outlandish and openly anti-consumer -- while at the same time denying them revenue by boycotting DRMed products and sucking their revenue through a guerrilla campaign against the DRM systems themselves, they'll eventually be forced to quit.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
>The quality/budget ratio of independent films lends credence to this theory.
I'm not trying to be snide here, but I suspect you haven't seen very many independent films. Most of them *suck* *incredibly*, but the very best 0.1% are quite good indeed, competitive with the best stuff coming out of Hollywood. I think it's something like a Boltzmann distribution -- Hollywood has a very steep curve, so there's not a lot of difference between their very best movies and their worst. Bollywood's best are about as good, but their worst are much worse. Chinese films, at their best, are superb, but the worst ones I've seen have been nearly unwatcheable. Then you go to an independent film competition -- I'm not talking Sundance, I'm talking some local art scene competition -- and you begin thinking to yourself "I'd pay $30 to not have to watch the rest of this."
Money doesn't guarantee a movie will be good, but it does heavily indicate the movie won't be appallingly bad.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
Meanwhile, the fat cat manger receives the report on how much it cost, a single tear is about to fall, as he thinks he can only buy 3 new yachts this year instead of 5, but then he remembers that actually, he can just shift the blame onto someone else and so still get his $20 million bonus, then he remembers how he would get it anyway even if he didn't fuck up. Then he cuts all all the cleaning staff's pay to make up part of the loss and he gets an even bigger bonus and can buy 7 yachts.
Then all the shareholders get their dividend report, all start crying uncontrollably as they realise their investment is paying out worse than a Scotsman on comic relief night. However instead of doing something like kicking out the board, they bleat along to the tune, The Haaaaaackers did it, BAAAAAAAAAAD hackers. Cut to fat cat manager, takes a break from Scrooge McDucking it in his pool of money and he cuts pensions and healthcare for all shipping and logistics staff. Cut back to original guy, who has to spend all his overtime money on buying his kid new braces, .
Meanwhile, the government outlaws, fair use, free speech, free thought, freedom, etc.
Capitalism at it's finest.
What if Tetris was invented by Nazis?
Dear Mr HaveNoTaste,
There's many great movies without explosions. In fact most of the action packed movies with no dialogue except one line meat heads, sci-fi that's nothing but action with lasers, romance that's nothing more than repetition of Wedding Crasher, Meet the Fockers, and some crap with J Lo in it over and over again, all the CGI laden movies, with huge acting names in them.. tend to be really flat movies. They have no feeling, no passion, crap stories, crap dialogoue.
But ooh ooh.. look! Explosions! zomg. that's so cool.
Amazing movies were made on shoestring budgets. And not just cult classics. 12 Angry Men anyone? To Kill a Mocking Bird? These didn't exactly cost a fortune.Actors are overpaid, and Hollywood is too scared to try ideas that aren't sure things.
Sure we could have another 20 movies with Will Farrell or Ben Stiller in them, but I could really give a crap. Rodriguez and Tarintino could've made Grindhouse out of their pockets, and look how many actors and producers chipped in because they wanted to do something fun.
Movies need to get back to people who love to make them rather than these scientologiest nutbags who marry women doped up on too many prescribed pills while pregnant and not knowing who the daddy is.
Why spend millions on AACS when other DRM would work?
Two reasons: 1 - Because if it's an existing scheme, SOMEONE owns it and likely it isn't the people inventing the new standard, nor can they charge "new technology" prices on the encoding/decoding hardware. You can't really go to a mfg and tell them they have to buy the same chips they've been buying for 10 years and tell them they cost more now. No, these are new chips. See the new logo?
And 2 - Because you need to give the content creators a reason to prefer your technology, enough to get them to make the initial investment in it. "It's way harder to pirate this movie. It's HD-DVD! Encryption the likes of which has never been seen. So will you use it to stop those big scary pirates?"
Hell of a sales pitch to a dying, scared industry.
Eloquently stated, and clearly thoroughly researched.
USB/Firewire is a little different than DVD technology. With Firewire, you're paying to be part of a logo consortium. You guarantee that your product will work according to their standards and you pay them a bit of money. In exchange you get to put the "Firewire" logo on your stuff. Same goes for bluetooth, and for USB. But that's because no one company controls these. They're consortia and operate differently.
But how do you suppose they enforce that payment? It's very easy to see if someone's put your logo on their product. How do you know if they used your chips or someone else's? How do you sell them multi-million dollar encryption hardware if they could just go without it? You make it required to read the discs. You could produce a non-AACS compliant HD-DVD player. But it wouldn't play commercial movies.
The purpose is for Sony or Toshiba/NEC to control who can MAKE their standard's players, recorders, and authoring hardware. It's use as a copy-protection scheme is secondary.