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 Michael Ayers, chairperson of AACS, noted that the cracked key has now been revoked, and went on to say, 'Some people clearly think it's a First Amendment issue.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 As long as you do not quote verbatim the actual code used to create this mechanism, you're not violating copyright.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.
Well, he certainly has that part right. 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).
Always a step behind, buddy. But feel free to keep wasting your money and pissing people off.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
RC4; Base64 Encoding; Key = "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0"
t Ds1V97iWQxx ySmgi8BdedG AsLVTLLTc0J Yg11Y576o"j Ue7R919DRxl wzs_UvVSRhh nyCcADUH6Gf GSm7HfCs_iy BTwMZnuZYLI Wn1KXh6_Rx2 q3ZzeFJD5MQ nlxHfxzWhlj P8of4TEJU0k Fg3voVVPEpn ceesWk6v0rG oYSEXQH_Bo_ qmXGJlSjF"w wPLEWhn1kzs A1_faWxcxe
mI0mUyOUE8S24UAsIVqR12Z8_P1WveIRFqpBO4FEeH_TPGuc0
QDhXbGpiERffrXz6lvQpcOFlDY_AXJWGw7f9saosuSBDj7c4e
l4APCHQIzYXETWu"xkhR4MNnw7zI_mBf5YJOLJ3DKD6wSQ6Pv
ZAPkCzunB7xarymAJEOOu0fe"tdhy"rZZY5XOSiipi6vf_84x
rPfhQQNneUX"JGXWhN3bgRIZwIOoIUu8c282MQ5_Grb6ALolI
j7cWlf2G2V467N4EjnJbR"9j_4oDCytfpkQBFX0jGOCsjRYcL
HH7DzXzB2tPz7i"L1Unvljgh05d1qoFs2N38qWugtaUMGM9RX
yUXVAbsO9ZcD33UKD80sulFF0FiSxIr4NOiRv4EZBoIU3eY1F
yi4NfhRLz3ai50dbx0CWCJwlvti_gsXgQLJrE70ihDROzdUyj
9AM2M99"s2d"hQxtoj7yTTki2M4dK3Y8_wvSyM8fp5fyyDpJW
z3W8iYIMIObDRG1H914rayBqj3EPhUDsz2NfVhjYBIxHBPgeW
saZXht6YNavXOyFLh24D84kXC4weBrJsI598yUpFhg41NB694
vZaHrMlSDxODtGlaU5rfJkODjrCr99Rr6hgQaegXnHE6Oe6iK
DwDtOw3"khTuVWYDStjRd4w2eOt2wvl24XvC3iDQBIA40uJQh
29XXEh_9hplaGD1YBw6pW2yiuyW8ifdaS4Mm7IGdH"6JMgSFg
k8"H70be7kCOdyDSLX9jLkz"4MF_LD"yaYdWopVnoryVQ9YD5
RqZmxLv2loAoM5WFs2""qGG4yATAMz9zhyuc4wMPZZLiZJhTt
pNNm045ma6vnqBdwtEE00zdjJBhBjz5VMoqPS6EZvQbwbEyiU
KJdzO7ATz47fYRWQZNWjy7Uda1P8RPnhSd2FbrL"aOegRzUX_
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.
"Read about the trusted industry names behind AACS. "
emphasis mine...
yes, intel, microsoft and sony are three of the eight on the list...
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The key is out there. It's too late to suppress it. Game over. The wombats have left the chicken coop!
(Wait, that's not right. What's the real metaphor?)
#include <stdio.h>
int
main (int argc, char **argv)
{
char *blah = "\x09\xf9\x11\x02"
"\x9d\x74\xe3\x5b"
"\xd8\x41\x56\xc5"
"\x63\x56\x88\xc0";
printf("Hello AACS world! Here's a bunch of completely random non-ASCII characters: %s\n", blah);
return 0;
}
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
I know, they should copyright the encryption key so nobody else can post it. Or maybe they could patent the process of posting encryption keys on the internet. I'm sure the USPTO would grant that one.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
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?
Someone send this man a t-shirt with the key on the front and "It's not over yet!" on the back.
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.
Um, what, close to a million hits for the key right now on Google?
DMCA applies only in the United States.
What is that sound? A toilet flushing?
I'm not wrong. You haven't thought about it hard enough.
I wonder if he actually believes that people "enjoy" content protection. How could you even say that with a straight face? It would be like a prison warden, after a jail break, saying, "soon the escapees will enjoy protection from the free world once again."
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
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
"There are three things you can do:
1. Kill yourself.
2. Kill your manservant.
3. Kill everybody in the whole world."
Now 2 is fine, 1 is reccomended, but 3?
Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious
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?
I think it was called the Manhattan project. At the end of the movie the scientist asks "What are you going to do? Make them all disappear?"
Simple fact is that it is out. It is a number. You forbid them from positing it in hex then they will octal, decimal, or binary. They will just invert it or flip the first two bytes so it is no longer the same number. I have a suggestion from now one when we post any HD keys we will just add 42 to each byte. That way we are encrypting it and any attempt to subtract 42 to prove that it is a key is a violation of the DMCA.
It is impossible to prevent the copying of audio or video if people can see it.
It is also rubs people the wrong way to try and control what they do with something they own. Yes if I BUY a DVD I own the DVD. Unless you start making me sign a contract I consider it no different than buying a piece of wood. If I want to watch it on my Ipod I will. If I want to rip it and put it on my server so I can watch it on my notebook I will.
If I sell it then yea you can sue me.
Go away RIAA and MPAA. You are boring us now. You will become irrelevant. Dear music companies I am going to write my congressman and tell them I don't want them to support you suing innocent people and getting government help for what should be civil court actions. I will also point out that you have a history of supporting drug use, profanity, and violence. Helping you is hurting the children.
Game over. The music industry can be such a jucy Judas Goat.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Here's the translation for the lazy:
While I can respect his point about the issue being a legal one rather than a free speech issue, I would argue that they took the matter too far. It's one thing to revoke the key, then prosecute the original crackers under the DMCA. (As distasteful as that is.) But once the information is in the public realm, it effectively becomes a lost "trade secret".
Dear helpdesk,
I am trying to ping my server at
09F9:1102:9D74:E35B:D841:56C5:6356:88C0. However,
it seems like the address is in the unallocated space.
Perhaps there's a typo somewhere?
AACS LA:
That's the Processing key. You are not allowed to publish it.
Hacker:
No sir. That's a IPv6 address. Surely you won't deny me to have links on my website? =)
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.
(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."
continue to enjoy content protected by AACS
reads like
"continue to enjoy having a sword through your lung"
how long until
https://www.spreadshirt.com/shop.php?sid=114476I want a t-shirt....
You cannot copyright a number. Good luck with that wild goose chase!
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
What about hardware-only players?
Assuming that the old key was imbedded in the the player firmware, and that the existing crop of HD-DVD/BluRay players are as locked down as their DVD brethren, how do you plan to "update" standalone players to work with newly-released content? A recall?
Whoops. 4 hours of sleep does that to me. ;) I should've posted as AC too, but too late now.
;)
Here ya go:
While I can respect his point about the issue being a legal one rather than a free speech issue, I would argue that they took the matter too far. It's one thing to revoke the key, then prosecute the original crackers under the DMCA. (As distasteful as that is.) But once the information is in the public realm, it effectively becomes a lost "trade secret".
The DMCA may not recognize encryption keys as trade secrets, but that's all they are. Once the secret is lost, you cannot recover it. You simply have to move on and extract any damages from the party that disclosed the secret in the first place.
As Mr. Ayers stated, the key was already revoked. If they hadn't tried to put the genie back in the bottle, they wouldn't now have a several-million member strong community of talented and bright individuals trying to crack HD-DVD just to spite them.
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?
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.
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
The AACS Founding members IBM, INTEL, MICROSOFT, PANASONIC, SONY, TOSHIBA, WALT DISNEY and WARNER BROS should be ashamed.
Reduce, reuse, cycle
While I can appreciate the level of craftsmanship and artistry that went into the repair of the barn door, I cannot fail to note that the cows seem to have escaped in the interim.....
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
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!
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.
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.
;)
only 700k sites?
come on guys, get CRACKIN'.
if you want to really make their jobs harder, embed that number EVERYWHERE. keep their minions searching for this for YEARS.
afterall, they have nothing better (truely) to do with their time
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
I hope they publish the new keys. I don't want to post some random number and find myself in court because of it.
"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
A comparable problem faced another industry years ago. In trying to implement regulations, the government discoverd that firearms are not monolithic devices, but instead consist of a number of parts, each of which can be replaced and which can do nothing harmful on their own or even fully assembled save for one part.
The legal solution was to declare a key part, the "receiver", as the regulated item. That hunk of metal is harmless/useless on its own, yet - due to intentions to control an industry - was declared THE essential part and is thus is the precise subject of otherwise over-broadly worded "firearms" regulations.
Relevance? Considering the billions of $$$ perceived at stake and intense motivation of the *AA, coupled with the intense opposition's creativity, the DCMA will be modified to declare decryption keys something equivalent to a firearm's receiver: federally registered, and if you're caught possessing one (even if plainly harmless on its own) without proper licensing, very bad things will happen to you.
Yes, the key on its own is useless - as is they decryption software lacking the key. However, the intention is clear and the motivation to regulate/restrict combining and using them is powerful, so possession of the essence of decryption - the key - will eventually be regulated.
And yes, they WILL hunt down anyone distributing decryption keys without a license. While warm fuzzy arguments about "anyone with a lathe & drill press..." may be true, nonetheless the BATFE exists as a very large, powerful and motivated government agency.
Someone paid a quarter-billion dollars to make SpiderMan 3, not to mention hundreds of other 9-digit-buget movies. That someone will see to it that a government agency is enacted, empowered, and funded enough to be motivated to ensure every bit moving from camera/mic to screen/speakers moves entirely within a fully licensed (i.e.: aggregating massive royalties) environment.
You just want a few free movies, and to play movies on hardware of your choice.
They're not going to let you.
Don't underestimate their motivation.
It happened before. It will happen again.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
Don't blame that poor AACS-LA spokesperson. He is just doing what he is required to do, i.e. claim that AACS "has not been broken", is "very robust" and that they will "vigourously fight" those oh-so-evil hackers who distribute keys. If he did not do that then he might jeopardize their future chances in DMCA litigation, and movie companies would sue AACS-LA into oblivion. If he admitted the obvious, that AACS simply cannot effectively protect content then the movie companies would jump ship and he would lose his job. I petty that guy, really. He is in a no-win situation.
The real issue here is if movie companies will learn from this. Let's see... first they spent millions of dollars to finance the development of AACS and have it peer-reviewed, then they held back their movies past the optimum release date to wait until AACS is "ready" (whatever that means -- bus encryption still did not make it into the standard, so volume IDs are transfered in the clear -- ROTFL). Then they spent lots more money on buying new software, training their staff how to use AACS and on following AACS procedures (content-signing by AACS-LA etc.), next there were the inevitable DRM-related compatibility problems leading to recalls and bad press. Shortly afterwards (and long before HD ever reached critical mass in the market) AACS was broken. Now they are holding back movie releases yet again, hoping for some magic AACS fix, and in the case of Blu-ray hoping for BD+ to magically solve all problems. Exactly how much money did they spend on all of that, how much revenue did they lose by delaying releases while waiting for DRM, and how many movies could they have produced with that money instead ?
The funny thing is that they made all those bad decisions after they had already been burned by the DVD DeCSS fiasco, and after industry experts had predicted that exactly this would happen again. Bruce Schneier's May 2001 CryptoGram article should have been required reading for all of them http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-0105.html#3. I wonder just how long it will take for them to learn. From what I have seen so far I fully expect the next round of AACS to be broken within one day, and BD+, once it is used, within one week, and no "technical measures" or take-down threats by AACS-LA will be able to stop that.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I just want to add who I think our audience is or should be: the public. Not Hollywood: unless we can align their interests with ours, convincing them of the futility of DRM will only alter their strategy.
The processing key protest has taken on symbolic importance. If we can frame the event in terms of free speech, we will have won. I don't think we're succeeding. Hollywood and the AACS folks are explaining it in terms of property and theft. News media are reporting about mobs and an online riot. The wider public may end up believing that a mob of hackers and teenage vandals attacked Digg, disregarding the property rights of others and in order to enable theft - and that users must be prevented from controlling the Web. If that's what they believe, they may start passing laws to back it up (witness the attacks on MySpace and other social networking sites).
I believe this is wrong on every count. Most in this "mob" have a better understanding of the issues involved than do their opponents. The distinction between theft and copyright violation (never mind trafficing a circumvention device) has been covered numerous times on Slashdot. And criticism of user participation displays a tragic ignorance both of who creates the value of web sites like Digg, and of the original purpose of the World Wide Web which was supposed to allow the browsing and creation of content by all of its users.
The sheer absurdity and irrelevance of the number itself makes it the perfect issue. The courts may see otherwise, but for the vast majority of the public and of the protesters, it is a symbol, not a "circumvention device". Protesters are not going home and using that number to pirate videos, so their protest must be seen as an act of disobedience, not of self-interested theft.
We have a good story. We need to get it out to the people that matter. The AACS LA may be the opponent, but winning on their terms gets us nowhere. Winning the minds of the public, however, is the first step to getting these disastrous and immoral laws fixed.
AFAIK, AACS is just AES. So they key is just 128 bits of random data; it does not have to have any other special qualities.
HAND!
I don't think the number should be posted, I've put a write up about it on my site! http://www.nelson-techonline.com/09-F9-11-02-9D-74 -E3-5B-D8-41-56-C5-63-56-88-C0/index.html
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.
I would never say what the AACS key is... I just say what it is NOT (see sig).
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
I use numbers a lot, to avoid getting sued, I now ask the AACS permission for every number I use. It's cumbersome, but hell I don't want to get sued. I wonder what a lifetime license for the first 10 billion numbers is gonna cost me.
Seems a bit easier.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
How about while we wait for them to get back to me on that we start a little political activism to start bringing consumer rights back to consumers in our various countries? Writing your representative is OK but if you really want to get their attention you need to be wielding a block of about 200,000 voters. Hop to it!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
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.
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.
2^6 x 5 x 19 x 12,043 x 216,493 x 836,256,503,069,278,983,442,067
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
All she has to do is something like this: (Typical update process with a consumer stand-alone Blu-Ray player)
Option A:
1. Go to website (Mom: Website, what's a website? I don't have a computer)
2. Download the appropriate file (Mom: Download a file? Which one? From where?)
3. Burn it onto a CD-R (Mom: Burn it? CD-R ??)
4. Put in player and wait for it to install, hopefully it works
5. Watch movie (finally!!!)
6. Get fed up with new Blu-Ray player, and stop buying movies, possibly taking player back to store for a refund.
Option B:
1. Go to website to get support phone #
2. Wait on hold for minutes / hours (YMMV)
3. Get asked what model you have (Mom: Where is the model? On the back/bottom? I gotta unplug the cables ?!?!?)
4. Start over at step 2 when you know the model
5. Give them your name, address, other personal info, along with the serial # (Mom: see #3) If no serial #, get it and start over at step 2, again!
6. Wait until they can ship it to you, could be days or weeks
7. Put in player and wait for it to install, hopefully it works
8. Watch movie (finally!!!)
9. Get fed up with new Blu-Ray player, and stop buying movies, possibly taking player back to store for a refund.
Option C:
1. Decide disk is defective (Mom: My other disks work, so it must be this disk)
2. Drive to store and get new copy
3. New copy fails, too. Store won't refund, until you raise a ruckus.
4. Get fed up with new Blu-Ray player, and stop buying movies, possibly taking player back to store for a refund.
You will note that all three cases lead to rejection of Blu-Ray by average consumer. Mom, or your average consumer, wants a player where they can:
1. Buy any Blu-Ray disk
2. Put it in the player
3. Push play
4. Movie plays!!!
Anything beyond that, and you alienate your customer. Simple.
V for Vendetta: People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.
I wouldn't say anything about it either, but I did hear this great joke the other day...
A man walks into a talent agent's office, and says, "We're a family act, and we'd like you to represent us."
The agent says, "Sorry, I don't represent family acts. They're a little too old-fashioned."
The man says, "But this is really special."
The agent says, "Okay, well what's the act?"
He replies, "Well, my wife and I come out on stage and she begins to sing the "Star Spangled Banner" while I take her roughly from behind. After a minute of this, my kids come out and begin to do the same, but my daughter's singing the original "To Anacreon in Heaven" lyrics while my son performs anal sex on her."
The agent looks uncomfortable, but the man continues, "Just when my daughter hits the highest note in the song, my son and I switch partners. He turns my wife around and gives her a dirty Sanchez before having her perform oral sex on him. When the song's over and we're both getting close, we all stop and lie down on the stage."
The man smiles fondly as he recalls, "This is the best part: our dog then comes out on the stage, and he's trained to lick each one of us to orgasm in turn. He just goes right down the line, looking as happy as can be! We all get up and take a bow."
He looks at the agent and says, "Well, that's the act. What do you think?"
The agent just sits in silence for a long time. Finally, he manages, "That's a hell of an act. What do you call yourselves?"
"09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0!"
The television will not be revolutionized.
Google's intelisense auto complete thing now has it as the 2nd suggestiong after typing '09 F', lol.
I started laughing when I let the mouse hover on the third picture in this TheInq article : http://www.theinq.com/default.aspx?article=39411, the alt text says "And the magic number is: 09 f9 11 02 9d 74 e3 5b d8 41 56 c5 63 56 88 c0" . Good job , Kudos The Inquirer ! :D
Fuck-you RIAA and consorts. (see .sig)
France's highly regarded mainstream paper Le Monde also published the key, repeating it on purpose in their article. Now imagine how those AACS-LA lawyers will get laughed out of french courts should they try to curb Le Monde's freedom of press! C'est trop tard messieurs, get over it.
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
but now that they REVOKED the key have they not made it legal to post under the DMCA? I mean if the key is rovoked it can not be used to bypass a DRM so how can they say it does?
The only way to bust a doper--is when you yourself become a smoker!
I'm not sure if you're very confused here or mostly getting it right, but just in case, I'll clarify:
1. Hardware players can be individually revoked. That is, per physical unit, not per product line.
2. However, the X-box is not a hardware player. It can't even read HD-DVDs at all.
3. However, the X-box add-on HD-DVD drive exists, but it is not a hardware players, it is a device to be accessed by a software player. Those follow different rules, and as far as I know cannot be indivdually revoked.
And as it turns out, it is mostly the X-box drive people are hacking at this point. This is not so much because it is hard to revoke, which is true, but because it is cheap and ubiquitous and can be connected to a computer instead of an X-box just as well.