discardia

From here:

Those cooky kids over at the Doom9 forums hate themselves some DRM. Not more than two months after discovering a means to extract the HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc “volume keys” to decrypt AACS DRM on individual films, we’re now getting word that DRM hacker arnezami has found the “processing key” used to decrypt the DRM on all HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc films. Let’s break this down for what it is: instead of needing individual keys for each and every high-definition film — of which there are many — the processing key can be used to unlock, decrypt, and backup every HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc film released so far. As arnezami points out, “nothing was actually hacked, cracked or even reverse engineered.” All he had to do was keep an eye on his memory, watch what changed, and voila… the processing key appeared.

And from here:

AACS took years to develop, and it has been broken in weeks. The developers spent billions, the hackers spent pennies.

For DRM to work, it has to be airtight. There can’t be a single mistake. It’s like a balloon that pops with the first prick. That means that every single product from every single vendor has to perfectly hide their keys, perfectly implement their code. There can’t be a single way to get into the guts of the code to retrieve the cleartext or the keys while it’s playing back. All attackers need is a single mistake that they can use to compromise the system.

There is no future in which bits will get harder to copy. Instead of spending billions on technologies that attack paying customers, the studios should be confronting that reality and figuring out how to make a living in a world where copying will get easier and easier. They’re like blacksmiths meeting to figure out how to protect the horseshoe racket by sabotaging railroads.

The railroad is coming. The tracks have been laid right through the studio gates. It’s time to get out of the horseshoe business.

And as I have said from here:

To fight against those that think usage rights are negotiable. DRM is fundamentally wrong, and will always be wrong. Fair use is not a crime.

DRM is flawed. Horribly, horribly flawed. And content creators cannot outlaw fair use. By trying to prevent the hacker from stealing, they are punishing all of their customers. And their “protections” are nothing but a punishment to their paying customers, while not affecting the hacker community at all.

All they are doing is just providing entertainment for a bunch of guys that think breaking encryption is fun. Now it just may be me, but if there is a group of people that enjoying tinkering with technology, no amount of money you can spend will completely secure your content without completely, and I mean completely, abstracting your customer base. As in generating zero dollars in revenue. Yeah good luck running a studio on zero dollars a year.

So if it has DRM, give it your finger, and check out the EFF and while you are at it, check out Creative Commons.