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New AACS Fix Hacked in a Day
VincenzoRomano writes "ArsTechnica has just published an update to the neverending story about copy protection used in HD DVD and Blu-ray discs and hacker efforts against it. From the article: 'The ongoing war between content producers and hackers over the AACS copy protection used in HD DVD and Blu-ray discs produced yet another skirmish last week, and as has been the case as of late, the hackers came out on top. The hacker BtCB posted the new decryption key for AACS on the Freedom to Tinker web site, just one day after the AACS Licensing Authority (AACS LA) issued the key.' The article proposes a simple description of the protection schema and a brief look back at how the cracks have slowly chipped away at its effectiveness. It seems it'll be a long way to an effective solution ... if any. One could also argue whether all that money spent by the industry in this race will be worth the results and how long it would take for a return on investment."
You know, they say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. Somewhere I picture entertainment execs, having been sold a big and expensive line of B.S. by the firm that developed BD+ (just as they had been sold the exact same line by the companies that developed CSS and AACS), sitting in some board room saying "Don't worry, THIS time it's going to work!" They just don't get it. If it's viewable, it's hackable--period.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
The reason the current system will fail is because they are selling plastic and keys, and pretending they are selling culture. But they don't own the culture, except by a legal loophole, and the lesson is... the true owners of the culture, the people, will in the end will prevail.
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My cat does this with spiders. Once he's got one of the hairy buggers pinned, he just sits there and waits for it to make a dash for "freedom". Then he chews another leg off it, and goes back to waiting.
Whenever I see this happen, I'm torn between horror at the grisly spectacle of such torture, and the guilty pleasure of seeing something I hate being toyed with so cruelly. If I can live with it in my own home, I can live with it in the media market...
Meta will eat itself
Indeed...one could argue that a company would better serve its shareholders and its long term interests by eliminating copy protection completely. After all, at this stage of the game, anyone who wants a pirated copy can either make it themselves, or knows some techie guy who can. Eliminating all copy protection would save money otherwise pissed away on ineffective measures that only serve to annoy legitimate users, and would build a measure of good will and consumer loyalty that is worth more than anything deterring piracy could realize.
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
I would have already bought an HD-DVD player had there not been DRM in place. If I knew I could make copies for myself, rip to a portable or my laptop easily, etc., I would already own an HD-DVD player an several movies for it. I guess the Industry doesn't take my demographic into account as it must be a minority, but surely there has to be some up-side to playing nice with consumers and letting us make copies/rips of their movies. I used to buy music, too, when I knew I could copy/mix/etc.
Would they lose a sale here and there because somebody copies a movie for a friend/family/neighbor? Yes, of course. Are they going to anyway? Yes. But...are they losing sales because of DRM in place? I think lots.
I'm sure you thought that was deep, but dude, put down the stick, exhale, and re-read your lines.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
If the MPAA want to protect their stuff they shouldn't license the decryption algorithms to PC implementations. You'd think they would have learned that with DVD. Don't put secret algorithms on widely available hardware with lots of debuggers and hacking tools. Duh.
This would slow down the crackers a LOT - but not entirely.
I know this has been mentioned before a million times, but...have dvd sales really been hurt that bad by the encryption for dvd being broken years ago? Those that will rip, will find a way to rip. The rest will buy the blueray/hd dvds.
Unless the industry is wanting to try a dramatic price hike, which would cause those on and near the fence to rip too...?
Other things there's never been a working system of:
Antigravity.
Perpetual Motion.
Sharks with Frickin Lasers on their heads.
Space Flight. -- Wait, we did that one.
Pocket Computers. -- No, sorry, that one too.
Seriously, just because it's never worked before is -not- proof that it never will. There's -plenty- of reasons, but this is -not- one of them.
To companies, copy protection is -not- completely useless, so we'll never see content completely free from DRM. Expensive DRM is pointless, though, as it provides nothing extra.
Why isn't it completely useless? Because their work is covered under additional laws other than just copyright. Cheap vs Expensive DRM makes no difference here, the law doesn't differentiate.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
If I understand how the new AACS implementation will work, consumers with devices using it will need to install the new key every time it is released, if they want new movies to play. The stupidity of this is that people who want to copy a movie probably have no problem finding the new crack. No matter how often a new key comes out, within a day they can crack and copy.
The only people inconvenienced by this system are the people who just want to watch the friggin' movie they just bought! I shudder to think of how my mom would deal with the situation if she just bought a new blu-ray movie and found it wouldn't play because she doesn't have the latest key. I hope they give up on releasing new keys soon.
Boom Shanka
Something bad is coming when people are suddenly anxious to tell the truth.
Personally I believe that as long as they allow software players, they do not have a chance to lock this down. Hardware-only players, on the other hand, will be expensive and are currently not available. And then it will still be possible to record the movie, just a little more expensive and using some hardware-hacking. Nothing that a bright EE student could not do in 2-3 months of spare time....
Will be interesting to see whether they learn that this is not the way before or after ther business will have entirely gone away.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
To add to erroneus's nonerroneus post, the main thing that they get out of DRM and the DMCA is the ability to dictate exactly what every electronic media device in this country can and cannot do. DVD burners are becoming as common as CD burners, but burning DVDs for your friend is not as common as burning CDs as because you cannot legally purchase software to do so. At the same time it hurts customers (especially ones with young kids) who cannot legitimately backup their DVDs. You cannot copy videos from DVDs onto portable media players, because the companies that sell them are afraid of being sued. Only one company that I know of has prevailed in court over something like this, and they had were sued despite having copy-protection mechanisms built into their device. They want you to buy multiple copies of your videos because that makes them more money.
And it has been working. The number of people who practice wholesale piracy is and always has been fairly low - what scares them is that it might become more widespread if the general public were allowed access to technology which they might abuse. I don't think that is true, and I think it is fundamentally wrong to put restrictions on an entire country just because you fear that some might abuse their freedoms, but that is where they are coming from, and in their eyes DRM has been successful in achieving that goal.
But the real heart of the issue is that they want control for its own sake - not just because they have specific things they want to enforce, but because they have been in control for so long and letting go of any of that frightens them. They don't know what the future holds, and so their reflex is to tighten their grip as much as possible.