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 Michael Ayers, chairperson of AACS, noted that the cracked key has now been revoked, and went on to say, 'Some people clearly think it's a First Amendment issue.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.'"

Comments

Cue oft-used Leia quote...

[dada21]

...The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.

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 As long as you do not quote verbatim the actual code used to create this mechanism, you're not violating copyright.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.

Re:Cue oft-used Leia quote...

[ackthpt]

...The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.

Yes. Just before the Death Star blew her home world to smithereens.

But let's hope that's not the case here, eh?

Re:Cue oft-used Leia quote...

[dada21]

But, to be honest, we all know that a truly free society isn't free at all. You have to have some rules for life to continue. This may be one of them.

I disagree. A free society is one where all citizens are equally free from legal force that gives power to some and takes power away from others, without their express consent (ie, a contract). In a free society, you and I can contract to limit each other -- but the State can not unless we individually tell them that they can. Also, a free society is one where an individual can make any decision they want, as long as they do not directly harm the physical property or body of another individual. Speech can not do physical harm, so speech can not be criminal, no matter how repulsive it is. The effect of the speech could be a physical reaction, but if that physical reaction is performed by a person other than the speech giver, the speech giver has not caused harm.

People will visit their library more. They'll go walk at the park with friends more. So while I think it's good to fight for our rights, the result wouldn't be that bad. "Burn the land, boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me..." We'll find plenty other things to occupy ourselves with. Who cares about AACS and movies and stuff when you can find something else just as, if not more entertaining, for half the price?

Entertainment has more to do with time preference decisions than just saving "money" doing something that might seem entertaining. Someone who is very busy and who has a high hourly-value to the market may want a quick relief of "getting away from reality" and may be more than happy to pay $150 per person to see an Opera. Someone who is not so busy, and may not command a high hourly-value to the market may be more entertained reading a book, which could take hours or days or weeks. It all boils down to how you (and the market) value yourself.

Personally, I see nothing wrong with paying $20+ to buy a movie -- if I can use it the way I want to. I prefer to live in a tiny home so that I do not have to pay for extra unused space. This means I have no room for the clutter of physical movies (DVDs, VHS, etc). Instead, I have a great Media Center PC (yes, Microsoft), and I have 1TB of movies and TV shows available to watch based on my mood. This is considered illegal, even though I have paid for all the movies and shows I watched. I also used my own time/labor to put those movies/TV shows on that PC. I've harmed no one physically, so the law is unjust and ridiculous. Provide me with a process to reimburse the authors/distributors/producers of a given content, and also allow me to put that content into a system that works with my life, and I will pay AND continue to be a customer. I don't believe in NOT reimbursing those actively involved in the creation of content. I have no desire to pay for the lawyers, DRM researchers, or those who lobby the State to use force against me to uphold their monopoly.

Re:Cue oft-used Leia quote...

[OrangeTide]

The source code to Windows Vista is "just a number" too. Alan Turing described all this decades ago. Although I think we can all agree that it is protected by copyright.

I don't think you can copyright 14 bytes. But the issue is not copyright, it is the violation of DMCA by providing a tool necessary to break any sort of copyright protection measures.

you can't post plans to view scrambled cable TV anymore (in the US), you can't post utilities designed to decode CSS so you can watch your DVDs on your computer. etc.

What's dumb is these companies going after average joes rather than people who are pressing boatloads of DVDs and importing them to the US. Or people who are hosting huge pay torrent sites to download movies. Or couriers posting the latest films on Usenet to be distributed to sites all over the world.

so will I be in trouble? My DNS resolves any string you give it, so if someone goes to http://09f911029d74e35bd84156c56356.rm-f.net/ they will get a page. (although not [currently] related to those keys)

Re:Cue oft-used Leia quote...

[inviolet]

Dude it's a number. Granted a large number, but still just a number.

+1 Funny, -1 Dishonest.

To wit: Can I publicly post your credit card number, expiration date, and CVN? They're just numbers... and how can ordinary numbers have implications for property and finances?

In fact, I have a list here of 10,000 valid bank-account and PIN numbers. My right to distribute them is a First Amendment Issue, damnit!

09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0

[AKAImBatman]

RC4; Base64 Encoding; Key = "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0"

mI0mUyOUE8S24UAsIVqR12Z8_P1WveIRFqpBO4FEeH_TPGuc0t Ds1V97iWQx
QDhXbGpiERffrXz6lvQpcOFlDY_AXJWGw7f9saosuSBDj7c4ex ySmgi8Bded
l4APCHQIzYXETWu"xkhR4MNnw7zI_mBf5YJOLJ3DKD6wSQ6PvG AsLVTLLTc0
ZAPkCzunB7xarymAJEOOu0fe"tdhy"rZZY5XOSiipi6vf_84xJ Yg11Y576o"
rPfhQQNneUX"JGXWhN3bgRIZwIOoIUu8c282MQ5_Grb6ALolIj Ue7R919DRx
j7cWlf2G2V467N4EjnJbR"9j_4oDCytfpkQBFX0jGOCsjRYcLl wzs_UvVSRh
HH7DzXzB2tPz7i"L1Unvljgh05d1qoFs2N38qWugtaUMGM9RXh nyCcADUH6G
yUXVAbsO9ZcD33UKD80sulFF0FiSxIr4NOiRv4EZBoIU3eY1Ff GSm7HfCs_i
yi4NfhRLz3ai50dbx0CWCJwlvti_gsXgQLJrE70ihDROzdUyjy BTwMZnuZYL
9AM2M99"s2d"hQxtoj7yTTki2M4dK3Y8_wvSyM8fp5fyyDpJWI Wn1KXh6_Rx
z3W8iYIMIObDRG1H914rayBqj3EPhUDsz2NfVhjYBIxHBPgeW2 q3ZzeFJD5M
saZXht6YNavXOyFLh24D84kXC4weBrJsI598yUpFhg41NB694Q nlxHfxzWhl
vZaHrMlSDxODtGlaU5rfJkODjrCr99Rr6hgQaegXnHE6Oe6iKj P8of4TEJU0
DwDtOw3"khTuVWYDStjRd4w2eOt2wvl24XvC3iDQBIA40uJQhk Fg3voVVPEp
29XXEh_9hplaGD1YBw6pW2yiuyW8ifdaS4Mm7IGdH"6JMgSFgn ceesWk6v0r
k8"H70be7kCOdyDSLX9jLkz"4MF_LD"yaYdWopVnoryVQ9YD5G oYSEXQH_Bo
RqZmxLv2loAoM5WFs2""qGG4yATAMz9zhyuc4wMPZZLiZJhTt_ qmXGJlSjF"
pNNm045ma6vnqBdwtEE00zdjJBhBjz5VMoqPS6EZvQbwbEyiUw wPLEWhn1kz
KJdzO7ATz47fYRWQZNWjy7Uda1P8RPnhSd2FbrL"aOegRzUX_s A1_faWxcxe
Azf

To the AACS: Get real.

[KingSkippus]

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:

But [Michael Ayers, chair of the AACS business group] accepted that DVDs that had had their copy protection removed were 'now in the clear' and could be copied.

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:

He said tracking down everyone who had published the keys was a 'resource intensive exercise'. A search on Google shows almost 700,000 pages have published the key. Mr. Ayers said that while he could not reveal the specific steps the group would be taking, it would be using both 'legal and technical' steps to prevent the circumvention of copy protection.

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.

I wonder

[Rycross]

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.

Good reporting

[malsdavis]

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.

Re:Good reporting

[Anonymous Coward]

That, of course, is why the BBC is specially supported by a levy on British subjects, but NOT by a government tax.

We each pay around $250 a year so that the world can have an unbiased mass communications system which is not driven by audience ratings and can produce quality. And, in the case of radio, in all the world's languages.

It would be nice if some of the anti-licence-fee Americans on /. realised that.

this is the hallmark of the world we live in:

[circletimessquare]

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

Internet whack a mole is a game that

[zappepcs]

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.

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 ... 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.

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.

I'm not sure bloggers are the real audience

[Geof]

What he fails to appreciate is that he will be on the losing end of every single one of those rounds. Even as he tries to downplay the key by saying it has been revoked, AACS has already lost the second round (as hackers have created a hack that CAN'T be revoked).

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.

Re:Michael, you're dumb even by MAFIAA standards

[LordKronos]

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.

The 'unrevocable hack'

[Kadin2048]

(as hackers have created a hack that CAN'T be revoked)

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 ... so the hackers will need to go back and sniff/debug an updated software player to figure out the new Processing Key.

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 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.

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.)