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 Michael Ayers, chairperson of AACS, noted that the cracked key has now been revoked, and went on to say, 'Some people clearly think it's a First Amendment issue.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