Slashdot Mirror
AACS Vows to Fight Bloggers
Jonas Wisser writes "The BBC is carrying the story that AACS has promised to take action against those who have posted the AACS crack online. Michael Ayers, chairperson of AACS, noted that the cracked key has now been revoked, and went on to say, 'Some people clearly think it's a First Amendment issue. There is no intent from us to interfere with people's right to discuss copy protection. We respect free speech.' The AACS website tells consumers how they can 'continue to enjoy content protected by AACS' by 'refreshing the encryption keys associated with their HD DVD and Blu-ray software players.'"
Actually, as I said yesterday, ignore these threats. Go out and blog. Understand that freedom of speech is NOT a government-granted freedom, it is an inherent one that all people of all citizenship must understand. The U.S. Constitution's (Bill of Rights) 1st Amendment does not say "You are free to speak," it says that Congress shall make NO LAW restricting the freedom of speech -- NO law. Discussing encryption mechanisms is free speech, and Congress shall not abridge that. As for patents and trademark and the rest, as long as you do not mimic the mechanism in your own hardware or software, you're fine, Constitutionally. As long as you do not quote verbatim the actual code used to create this mechanism, you're not violating copyright. The DMCA is unconstitional, and regardless of what Congress, the Supreme Court, the President, or any company says, it is non-binding in terms of the moral realization that Congress, and honestly no State organization, can prevent you from freely airing your opinions. You are free to talk, but no one has to listen.
From yesterday's post I made about "legal recommendations for bloggers," go out and blog. Say what you want to say. There are more of us than there are of them -- not only can they not afford to go after everyone, they can not afford to go after even a small percentage. Let some bloggers get caught, and all it will do is show other people that non-violent actions should not be criminalized or penalized.
AACS, your days are numbered. Your salaries will end. Your powers will be diminished. It won't be because of competition from another company (that you are likely in bed with, in terms of promoting the abuse of State power), it will be because millions upon millions of people will ignore you, and all you do, in trying to revoke our inherent (and in my opinion, God-given) right to speak freely amongst ourselves.
RC4; Base64 Encoding; Key = "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0"
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Azf
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
I don't care how hard you fight the damn cat, it's out of the bag, and it's not getting back in.
One part of the article I find funny is this:
Isn't that the point? I'm neither trying to justify nor rebuke file sharers, but think about it, man, and be practical for a change. Among those who download and share movies, who really cares about the nitty-gritty details of how keys are cracked, who all gets them, which ones get revoked, what players are and aren't affected, and so on? Most of them only care about one thing: Can I download the HD-DVD of [insert movie titles here]?
And as long as a key out there is cracked enough for the answer to that question to be "yes," the copy protection industry has lost. They can fight all they want to, but the thing is that unless they literally shut everyone down everywhere, they're doomed. As soon as one single solitary person is able to crack a key and unlock the encrypted data, all of their massive—and expensive—efforts will be in vain.
I also thought this was funny:
To Mr. Ayers, I would say this: Get real. For one thing, how many times has it been proven that your technical efforts are futile? How much more time and money are you going to waste developing something that consumers at best don't want and at worst outright resent? For another, what exactly do you plan to legally do to people who live in places where publishing the cracked keys is not illegal? As much as people like you would love to have the U.S.'s misguided laws apply to the whole world, it will never happen, and even if it did, people would still break such laws in civil disobedience.
If only they could figure out how to fight a winning battle for the hearts and minds of paying customers instead of this inevitable losing battle against people who are much, much smarter than they are, maybe everyone could be happier. This industry could sure learn a few things about the direction the music industry is headed, finally dropping DRM after realizing how useless it is.
"There is no intent from us to interfere with people's right to discuss copy protection. We respect free speech."
A comparison comes to mind here. Here's a hint, Mr. Ayers. It comes from a bull and it ain't a steak.
The hubris of thinking they can ban the mention of a number, and then turn around and say they "respect free speech", is breathtaking doublethink. Part of free speech is the right to discuss things you don't like. Part of it is the right to discuss them in as specific of terms as anyone wants. And part of it is being able to mention any number one wants to, from zero either direction to infinity. There's not a bit of respect for free speech here.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
I wonder if anyone has told these guys that the idea of an uncrackable DRM scheme is fundamentally flawed. Encryption is about A sending information that B can't read, but C can. In DRM, B and C are the same person.
It's good to see the pretty even-handed way the BBC have approached this whole issue. I fear most mainstream news agencies would probably side 100% with the AACS and their media buddies, not least due to commercial interests and parent company ownership reasons.
I guess its times like these when it is good that there still are some news organizations independent of the big media conglomerates.
I like how they are threatening people with the DMCA over the "09" key, while simultaneously pretending that it isn't a big deal. Maybe they should pick a consistent stance? Also, a better choice of words than "revoked" would be "stopped using", since the "09" key will work always work for any disks pressed before May, but it won't work for any disk made after then. Hm, I wonder how many titles that actually affects, maybe it isn't a big deal after all with such a tiny market :)
we can all 'continue to enjoy content protected by AACS' by 'refreshing the encryption keys associated with their HD DVD and Blu-ray software players.'
we can all 'continue to enjoy being ignorant slaves' by 'reaffirming our desire to be shackled.'
the audacity to think of people as so supplicant to corporate will is incredible
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
They most definitely won't be on the losing side in every round - they just won one, by revoking the key making it useless for future discs. There will be new rounds, and they will go back-and-forth in this fashion for quite some time.
And that Ars Technica article is widely misunderstood and misinterpreted. That hack is, indeed, irrevokable, but it is also completely impractical for anyone but the most dedicated hacker, and it doesn't give you all the data needed to decrypt a disc, but only the Volume ID.
They make a good point: this is not about people silencing free speech. Posting the crack online is about civil disobedience against the completely unfair DMCA. It's not about copyrighting a number. It's about keeping people from legally using copyrighted material you've legally purchased. This seems to be an important point missed by most people. It's not a First Amendment issue, it's an anti-consumer issue.
Did you ever notice that *nix doesn't even cover Linux?
the **AA will not win. They do not have the resources to win it, will not have the resources to win at this game, and in the end, trying to win at IWaM(TM) will only make them look more foolish than they do now.
... did I just say secure? ooops mea culpa. The reason that MS is working so hard to ensure that you can only use genuine MS OS products is simple, they are trying to not play IWaM, and even this attempt won't work. From what I can see, people who used illegal copies of MS products before ARE turning to Linux now. Even if that is not huge numbers yet, it is happening.
The part where he says over 700,000 pages on the Internet reference the code is fscking hilarious. I want to see AACS group try to sue 700,000 people. Before they even get started there would be 1.4 million more references to it on Google. That is how the IWaM game works and exactly why they can't win. The sheer volume of people working against their worn out DRM business model will overwhelm both their resources and those of the court systems around the world.
In the US it appears that the courts are still willing to waste time on this. Other countries, not so much. Sure, if they find commercial pirates distributing DVDs for profit they will shut those operations down, but there just are not enough law enforcement resources to stop this hack, or any other.
Playing IWaM = stupid and the more you play, the more money you lose. period.
Certainly, some will be harmed, and there will be small wins for the AACS group and **AAs of the world, but in the end all their money will be gone. The DMCA was ostensibly implemented to protect them from exactly this. Legislating DRM doesn't work, DRM doesn't work, and if your business model depends on DRM, it won't work either. It's time that Wall Street and VC groups started to act on this one principle. If their business model is DRM it's a bad investment.
Sure, you might argue that MS is an exception but I think that the sales performance of Vista is going to prove me right on this. MS has been trying to play Whack A Mole with malicious software and spam. Yeah, that has been working out well. Their new flagship DRM laden secure operating system
Back on topic, the lawyers for the AACS group must be staggeringly stupefied. Maybe if they make an example of Digg and Mr Rose they can send a message, and if they try, every new key will be poste in blog comments on every blogging system around the globe. They literally need to surrender and rethink what they are doing. DRM DOES NOT work.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
The real target of this action is likely a different audience, namely Hollywood. The AACS doesn't have to make their DRM undefeatable. They do need to convince their customers - and remember, that's not us - of the value of their work. And when their DRM is broken and seen to be broken, they need to convince those who want to believe that they at least have not lost faith in the cause.
So we may talk about winning and losing, and people like use may be the targets of lawsuits. But I think we may be giving ourselves airs when we assume that for the other side it's about us. If, on the other hand, we figure out who our real audience is then we have a better chance.
It only takes one dedicated hacker to rip the disc. Once it hits BitTorrent and IRC, it might as well be everywhere.
Silence is golden... and duct tape is silver.
Thats an odd definition of "winning the round"...that the key won't be useful on future discs? That's kind of like a boxer getting the crap beat out of them in round 1 and then claiming they won round 1 because they are going to come back fighting in round 2.
That is the part that ticks me off the most. The DVDs already could be copied without the key. Their "technology" is "playback protection", not "copy protection". The only honest sentence in the quote was earlier, where he said, "Some titles could now be played on more than one software player." Yes, THAT is what your evil scheme is trying to prevent. (Not that I will ever buy HD DVDs until I can actually play them whenever/wherever I want.)
As long as "playback protection" is working, you can't actually "buy" an HD DVD. You can only rent the privilege of playing it under conditions specified by the publisher. Whatever happened to laws against false advertising?
(as hackers have created a hack that CAN'T be revoked)
... so the hackers will need to go back and sniff/debug an updated software player to figure out the new Processing Key.
... so if you made a "bit-perfect" copy of a disc, the Volume ID wouldn't be there (because you can't read it and/or because you can't write it to the new disc) and you'd be missing one of the elements required to decrypt.
I spent a while trying to get my head around AACS last night, and the bottom line is that what comes out of the un-revocable hack that you mention isn't the same thing as what's being posted around the internet, and what the AACSLA has the whole revocation scheme for.
Oversimplification ahead, and I may have some of the details wrong or, but this is the gist of it: the content -- the movie itself -- is encrypted with title keys. These title keys are encrypted with a volume unique key (VUK). The VUK is composed of two parts, a media key and a Volume ID.
The Media Key is the thing that you get with the code that's being posted all over the Internet (the Processing Key). Processing Keys can be revoked, but only for new discs -- so the discs that are out in circulation as of the compromise of the Processing Key, are out. They're cracked. However, future discs will use a new Processing Key, and that one that's around on the internet won't work
The "un-revocable hack" you mentioned, doesn't have anything to do with the Media Key, it's all about the Volume ID. The purpose of the Volume ID is to prevent bit-for-bit copying. In a lot of ways it's very similar to parts of the CSS system used on DVDs right now; it's a key specific to each batch of pressed discs, written to the disc in a way that's difficult to read off manually (the drive isn't supposed to let the user see it at all), and impossible to write to a blank disc
So: while the Volume ID hack involving the XBox360 drive is a major step forwards (backwards if you're the AACS!), it's not a silver bullet, and it doesn't make future titles trivial to compromise. There's still going to be a cat-and-mouse game in the near future, where the AACS will try to revoke Processing Keys and try to discourage the publication of new ones as discs are released. (It's been pointed out by several people now, that the AACS' over-the-top reaction to publication of the processing key, may indicate that they've realized that their revocation procedures aren't nearly as fast or as flexible as the people who are going to be compromising them.)
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
And the 99% of owners who are not tech-savvy enough to handle flashing the firmware of their players will call up the manufacturer, outraged that their rather expensive piece of equipment doesn't work. Only a limited number of people owning these players are actually going to be willing/able to do those sort of updates. Continue fighting against the AACS, as their stated plan of retaliation will destroy their own business model.
Now, it may sound as something bad when they start revoking keys. Bah. My hacked key doesn't work anymore.
Kids, the mafiaa revoking keys is a good thing in the fight against DRM. Find more keys and publish them, so they revoke them! The more the better!
What happens when a key gets revoked? Some player stops working. Actually, a whole batch of players stop working. And thus, Joe Shmoe Average might get a clue. It might not matter to him that DRM exists ("Duh, I buy my movies anyway"). It might not matter to him that DRM restricts him ("Duh, I don't copy them anyway"). It might not matter to him that it takes away his ability to actually play that content on other media ("Duh, I only use it in that DVD player anyway, not the computer").
But it does matter to him when that new blockbuster doesn't work in his DVD player anymore.
It does matter to him when his DVD is "broken" and he has to get a new one or has to get his fixed. It is a hassle. He might not know how to update his player. He might have to get a friend to do it. He will get angry 'cause why the heck doesn't it "work" anymore the way it used to?
Maybe, just maybe, it's a wakeup call for Joe Average. And maybe he'll stop buying crap that suddenly stops working.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
"Some people clearly think it's a First Amendment issue. There is no intent from us to interfere with people's right to discuss copy protection."
Yeah, we can "discuss copy protection" as much as we want so long as the DMCA and the Sonny Bono Copyright Act still stand, hm?
It's funny how everybody agrees that speech should be free so long as that speech is completely impotent. It's the speech that empowers, empassions, that enables legitimate users to do with their purchased media what they will that suddenly gets declared "unprotected."
"We respect free speech."
This from the same industry that wants to ban cell phone usage from movie theaters not because they annoy the rest of the audience, but because they don't want to let people warn others just how bad a particular movie is?
...when you said "in the present business model".
The present - perhaps "previous"? - business model relied upon scarcity. If you held the negative to a photo, you held the only thing capable of producing a high-quality reproduction of that image. It was possible to make new negative from positive prints, but doing so resulted in a marked loss of quality, and the negative itself was irreplaceable.
Plus there was a certain investment of time, skill, and resources involved with producing a new print from the negative.
If I broke into your place of work and stole/destroyed your negative, that photo was gone forever.
But nowadays, the digital file can be copied without loss of quality ad infinitum. If I make a copy of your raw data file, you have not been materially harmed - you can still make copies - and all that has happened is you have lost exclusivity to that image.
And that image can be reproduced almost anywhere with minimal skill and investment in resources.
Effectively, the scarcity of the ability to duplicate images has been eliminated. There is next to zero cost involved with the duplication of images once they are in the memory card. As such, the image files themselves have next to no actual value.
What HASN'T changed is the necessity for a skilled photographer to take that image in the first place.
This implies - hell, it yells at the top of its lungs - that the business model of selling exclusive prints is now utterly broken, and pro photographers (and other media producers) need to find other business models. If the automobile obsoletes your buggy whip manufacturing business model, you need to adapt.
My suggestion is that you regard photography as a service. You are being contracted for your ability to take artistically skilled photos. You price your services based on the amount of time you have invested and your level of artistic skill, and you sell the customer the digital data files you produce for him.
I know photogs working to this model now, and they seem to be doing well. The days of the reprint gravy train are over, but people seem to be willing to pay for the quality of SERVICE they get.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
Every one of the words in your post can be used as a password. That doesn't justify prohibiting their publication.
The AACS key is a password that's, in effect, distributed to everyone who owns a HDDVD and is furthermore useless to you unless you possess an HDDVD. It's an open secret. In that respect it's different from a credit card, and your analogy is inapt.
And it's not illegal to post a string of digits that may or may not be a credit card, without more, and the same should apply in the case of the HDDVD key.
I don't need large brains to have a good time.
This has nothing to do with freedom of speech. The Internet's response to censorship is very much stronger than that... the Internet is built on protocols that are designed to avoid information loss and enable communication no matter what. It's got an abhorance of any kind of censorship... no matter how valuable and useful that censorship might be... baked into its genes, and that is one of the things that's made it so successful. Even if you tried to replace it, it can and will outcompete any closed environment that doesn't have that attribute.
So it's not a free speech issue, it's a "you can't win this race" issue. They're not so much *wrong* to try and fight, they're simply foolish and doomed.