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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 Michael Ayers, chairperson of AACS, noted that the cracked key has now been revoked, and went on to say, 'Some people clearly think it's a First Amendment issue.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.'"
the quesion i have is this.. say you post the key on your site.. you get a take down notice.. what does that notice say? does it say to take down the key or to take down "insert key here" - what if you post it and play dumb that you don't know it is the key.. they would have to tell you what it is they wnat taken down.. and in the document would need to be "insert key here" at that point cause it is a leagl document if they take you to court the key is in the document and is now public record.
then you take it down and repost it with a refrence to the public record document.
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
Forget stealing.
I just want a working Video jukebox solution. The major players like Sony don't seem very interested in providing one and the industry will sue anyone else that tries.
The whole point of capitalism is that the garage shops get to fill niches that the megacorps don't want to bother with.
The sad fact remains that I will easily be able to pull BR/HD-DVD's into my Myth setup before there's a proper BR/HD-DVD jukebox from Sony.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Slashdotters, please dont get worked up.He knows it is a stupid thing to say to a tech savvy audience. He was talking to the chumps who paid big bucks to have their movies "protected by" the DRM. Some weasel clause in the contract would say something like, "while we dont guarantee that this mechanism will never be broken, all we promise to do is to take vigorous action". He will eventually argue that issuing such ridiculous statements constitutes vigorous action. That is all.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
It is not about this particular key. They are threatening so that the next time people think twice about spreading information about hacks. The real purpose is prevention not prosecution of what has already happened for the sake of prosecution. Now, whether it is going to work is a different story, but there is a logic to what they are doing.
Quite right, and moreover, since it is a "lost trade secret", I would argue it has now become "common knowledge." I don't see how any law (DMCA, copyright, etc.) can be used to suppress common knowledge. For instance, Star Wars may be still protected by copyright, but no one can prevent people from quoting it to their heart's content. So many of the quotes have become a part of our culture, our communal consciousness, that they are very much ours, and no amount of government or corporate power can take them from us.
As others have noted in this discussion, this isn't merely about freedom of speech, it is a spontaneous and massive civil disobedience, basically highlighting how the citizens affected by these DMCA do not respect the law, do not want the law, and increasingly do not tolerate the law.
The problem with barring publication of an encryption key, without more, is that it really is impossible--and I don't mean in a "the internet will route around censorship" fashion.
One of the following series of hex values, according to the AACS, cannot be published by anyone besides them:
09-F9-11-02-9D-74-E3-5B-D8-41-56-C5-63-56-88-BF
09-F9-11-02-9D-74-E3-5B-D8-41-56-C5-63-56-88-C0
09-F9-11-02-9D-74-E3-5B-D8-41-56-C5-63-56-88-C1
Trying to bar one of them from publication will necessarily reveal what it is. As Wikipedia is discovering, you have to be able to describe what you're not allowed to publish in sufficient detail in order to effectively prevent its publication.
With other forms of intellectual property, the problem is avoided in various ways: in order to obtain a patent, the description itself becomes public domain. In copyright, the description is bounded by the creative content of that which you create. Trademarks are delimited by "confusion in the marketplace," and trade secrets are delimited by that which is actually kept secret.
The DMCA purports to create a fifth type of intellectual property, not limited in time, that would bar distribution of information (rather than just physical devices), but has no boundaries on the AACS's theory of what constitutes a "part" of an circumvention device. The boundary becomes "whatever the AACS moves to protect as a part of a circumvention device." But in order to enforce that right, we all have to know what we're not allowed to distribute.
So maybe the AACS, in order to avoid the paradox, can seek to protect a *range* of values. The scenario just gets even more absurd.
No. The answer is really that the key, without more, cannot be afforded protection as "part" of a circumvention device. It has to be a accompanied by something more, at the very least a description of how it can be used to circumvent. Otherwise it's just a string of text.
And that's where the DMCA falls apart, as people with an interest in circumventing can always break apart the information to such a degree to avoid any one part being classified as a "part."
It's a tough problem, and it should be brought to a court to evaluate. The court in Remierdes had an easy time, because the circumvention device was whole. Fair use will have to be read into the DMCA at some point when it comes to these alleged partial circumvention devices.
I don't need large brains to have a good time.
Here's Michael Ripley from back before AACS was finished.
"Backers of the protection method are betting that AACS technology will finally thwart unauthorized copying of DVDs while allowing consumers to distribute movies legitimately over networks within their homes, play them on a variety of devices (standard televisions, portable movie players, and laptop computers), and store them on home media servers. "We wouldn't be investing our time otherwise," says Michael Ripley, the chairman of the AACS alliance's technical working group."
Well, Michael(s): any high school student could've told you this would never work. The reason is the same as always: you have to provide the machine with everything it needs to play back the disc. It's difficult (college students would say "impossible") to provide those things to the machine without providing those things to the machine. Cf. Cory's age-old piece;
http://craphound.com/hpdrm.txt
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
But it's not a prime - that's obvious, since the last digit of the decimal expansion is 0.
Oops - have I just infringed someone's valuable intellectual property?
What if I said it's also divisible by 19?
Or that the next-to-last digit is 4?
Could a lawyer please advise how many clues I can provide before I might get sued?
Me: You probably need to refresh the AACS encryption keys.
Mom: *blinks*
Me: Your encryption keys need to be refreshed in order for you to play protected content.
Mom: I don't have encryption keys or protected content, whatever those are, I just have this movie that won't play.
Me: Right... in order for your movie to play you need to refresh the encryption keys that unlock the protected content on the disc.
Mom: I never had to do that before.
Me: No, no you didn't.
Mom: So how do I do that?
Me: I'm not really sure... I heard the assholes that made this all so hard in the first place have instructions on how to fix this mess on their website. I don't know if that applies to your model of HD DVD player though.
Mom: So if it doesn't, then what?
Me: Then you'll have to get the owners manual for your HD DVD player out and look through it.
Mom: Why does this have to be so difficult? I just want to watch my movie...
Or something like that. Then she'd start crying because she's easily frustrated by technology when it doesn't work. My parents have called me from half-way across the country because they didn't know what button to press on the remote to get sound out of the TV. There's no way they'll be able to "refresh their AACS encryption keys" if it's not automatically done for them. It's not like there's a "Refresh AACS encryption keys" button on the remote that I can tell them to press...
DRM = media content + frustrating, crippling, broken security
I hope they don't "take action" against the digital painting I did, which is featured on the front page of my website and incorporates the key. I also hope they don't "take action" against the HDDVD song I wrote here: http://www.myspace.com/stevepordon (I made an arp synth line by converting to binary and using C1 for zeros and C2 for ones). Both of these things are, naturally, original works of art and are clearly protected by the first amendment, DMCA or not.
Fuck you, AACS, and fuck you, MPAA.
Ironically, I wouldn't be so eager to kick the MPAA in the balls if they hadn't claimed under perjury that I was hosting DeCSS about a year after I voluntarily removed it from my site. Oops!
Here's a timeline:
:)
The hex code is a key. The key has certain protections under U.S. law. They have revoked the key. It is no longer a key. It no longer has certain protections under U.S. law. It is just a number that used to be a key. You publish the former key on your website. Nothing happens.
There, wasn't that fun?
Welcome to the new world then, where the AACS can sue ANY IPv6 address and claim that it just so happens to be their "secret number" and you must Cease & Desist immediately. Of course they won't have to proof that or anything, you just have take their word for it.