New AACS Crack Called "Undefeatable" 554
Tuoqui writes "With all the focus on the infamous hexadecimal number, people may be ignoring a bigger weakness in the AACS armor, which emerged two weeks ago. Some hackers have figured out how to crack AACS in a way that cannot be defeated, even by revoking all the keys in circulation."
Not a good start for the morning (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Got it! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Got it! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Got it! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Got it! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Got it! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Got it! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Got it! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Got it! (Score:5, Funny)
Security Through Undesired Format - Intelligent Termination or STUF-IT..
Re:Got it! (Score:5, Funny)
It's cool to have some fun, but when everyone is cracking lame jokes about any theme, it just becomes tiring. In most threads, I have to skip about 5 to 10 "Funny" comments to find an "Insightful" or "Interesting". When did everyone become a comedian?
Re:Got it! (Score:5, Informative)
-5 Funny.
There you go.
Re:Got it! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Got it! (Score:5, Funny)
Lucas claims that his proprietary JarJar technology is showing incredible promise and that many of the summer's biggest blockbusters are planning to include this protection scheme. Yet the technology is not only effective for new movies. "One of our biggest markets is in the protection of older movies as they are released onto the higher definition formats. For example, we've added a 10 minute scene to 'Forrest Gump' featuring a conversation between JarJar and the title character which test audiences have indicated is 'more painful than child birth', as one woman put it."
Re:Got it! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Got it! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Got it! (Score:5, Informative)
effect verb - cause to happen; bring about.
affect verb - 1 make a difference to; have an effect on. 2 touch the feelings of.
(source: Compact OED, www.askoxford.com)
So 'affect' is the closest verb in meaning to the noun 'effect', which is what 'effective' is derived from. Confusing, but that's English for you.
Re:Got it! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Got it! (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Got it! (Score:4, Insightful)
So what? It's the content that sells the format, not the other way around. The studios can pick whatever standard they see fit, Sony's the one who has to sell the BlueRay dream to them to make their R&D profitable. I'd say the studios are in an excellent position to ask for a little financial assurance that they aren't releasing their content in an armored car made of aluminum foil.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Undefeatable? (Score:5, Funny)
Huh, looks like the new strategy is issuing DMCA Takedown orders against anyone who suggests that it is undefeatable...
Re:Undefeatable? (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, wait a minute...I think I hear a zipper too.
Re:Undefeatable? (Score:5, Insightful)
The DMCA is an unpopular law passed by surreptitious means. The more people run into it, the more they're disgusted with it.
Most Americans don't feel that it is ethically wrong to behave in ways that the DMCA marks as illegal. Worse, they're inconvenienced by the law and are actively looking for workarounds for the technology it impacts.
The Digg vs. Hex number story is a good example. Digg tried to comply with the law, but its users revolted and forced the site's admins to acquiesce. Even if Digg is shut down by federal authorities, arresting thousands of users for posting a 32bit number is going to prove... difficult.
The RIAA's spam lawsuit settlements have proven that it's massively difficult and probably more trouble than it's worth to go after widespread casual copyright infringement. Widespread casual DMCA infringement, like many other 'casual' crimes simply won't be prosecutable to the degree even the most vicious police force would like.
The Doom9 Xbox crack is much the same. It's certainly a very technical challenge to the AACS scheme. Both its undertaking and disseminating how it's done is illegal under the DMCA. However, nobody cares any more.
What's the worst that can happen? You get arrested, have to pay a fine, and maybe even go to jail. The RIAA is already trying to apply that same punishment to innocent people.
Obeying this law doesn't even carry the benefit of being free from prosecution. Why should anyone worry about breaking it if those behind it are going to press charges anyway?
The DMCA is dead-- killed by apathy.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0
$
"I swear you honor, my computer came up with it randomly"
Re:Undefeatable? (Score:5, Funny)
09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0
$
"I swear you honor, my computer came up with it randomly"
It's worse than that. Your computer randomly came up with a shell command that produced it. The chances of that are... well... freakily low.
Re:Undefeatable? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Undefeatable? (Score:4, Funny)
And just to rub it in, Mr. +5, you tell me that you didn't even have to spend five years and $50,000 on an education to get where you are. psh.
Re:Undefeatable? (Score:5, Insightful)
They censored all discussion critical of their actions. They banned users critical of them, even those who never posted the number. They deleted all commentary that pointed out their previous sponsorship by the AACS-LA, and banned anyone attempting to bring this to light.
Their apology pretended like they had never deleted or banned anyone for simple dissent, or even banned anyone, only just deleted the magic number. Even after the apology, they continued to suppress stories calling attention to their censorship of pure, non-infringing dissent speech and mention of their financial relationship with the AACS-LA.
THAT is what much of the Digg revolt was about. It's a LOT more than just the number. Here are a couple good articles with the real truth. The Digg folks would like nothing more than for everyone to believe this was ONLY about a 16 byte number. Please read these and next time you see this mistruth, you'll know better.
Digg fights user revolt over HD-DVD ban - Digg founders took HD-DVD sponsorship. [texyt.com]
Digg still isn't telling the whole truth about its HD-DVD sponsorship [texyt.com]
Re:Undefeatable? (Score:5, Insightful)
Nowhere in it did they admit wrong doing or say "I'm sorry". He only said "we get it." What is that shit??
Not to mention that the digg community would probably not have been mad if they removed posts with the numbers by court order, and were open about the process (like Slashdot did). Instead, they removed references to the numbers which the MPAA had not yet even complained about, and also banned the users! (none of which is required by the DMCA)
And, to add icing to the cake, rather than being open about this and saying "look, we're removing these posts because we have to, we're sorry! write your comgressman about the DMCA." Instead, they deleted stories and posts in secret, and hoped that the truth would not come out.
Why are people so willing to forgive Digg's admins for this offense without even an apology??
Re:Undefeatable? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not just true with technology law. People obey laws because they are what they normally would do anyway, aren't overly inconvenienced by it, or it only affects a small percentage of people. Laws aren't effective ways to change behavior, which is why I just shake my head at all the folks who want more regulation to "fix" something.
Speed to work anyone?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I reject your reality and substitute my own (Score:4, Funny)
Re:I reject your reality and substitute my own (Score:5, Funny)
Perhaps if this is proven to be true.... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'll believe it when me shit turns purple (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
2. Wait for adoption
3. With ample support from a corrupt gouvernment, make it so that the only way to view the movies is to use a easily encountered but illegal circumvention tool
4. ???^H^H^HLawsuits
5. Profit!!!
(6. Be the first against the wall when the revolution comes)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Quite the scam, eh?
Re:Perhaps if this is proven to be true.... (Score:4, Funny)
Quite the scam, eh?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Get 'em while you can (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyway, in the bizarro-world that the people who write DRM systems inhabit, I think that this will probably just push them to make the drives harder to "tamper" with; I fully expect that they'll eventually just pot the circuit boards in epoxy or something, to keep you from desoldering the chips.
So if you're interested in this stuff, you might as well go out and get one of the MS drives or other first-gen drives, because I suspect the hacking possibilities may decrease over time; it's going to be these early drives which are the most hackable.
Re:Get 'em while you can (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Get 'em while you can (Score:5, Funny)
Good thinking. After all, what better investment over time than computer hardware. I can't even begin to imagine how much I could get for my Atari 800 now. And to think I paid only $1,000 for it! But I'm no fool. I'm passing this one down to my grandkids to help fund their college education.
Re:Get 'em while you can (Score:4, Informative)
that did not even slow me down in the 80's and early 90's with the VideoCipher II boards. After 1 week we found a easy way to "unpot" the board and continue on.
I personally hope they try it, it will be amusic to watch their attempts fail as they try things that early hackers defeated decades ago.
Re:Get 'em while you can (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Get 'em while you can (Score:5, Informative)
The article is a little old, the links to the doom9 forum go to posts from early last month. Within a few days of those posts, there was a link to xboxhackers where they were able to accomplish the same thing without having to patch the firmware, ie, no desoldering.
Didn't know they were there yet (mod parent up) (Score:5, Interesting)
That's pretty interesting. (In TFA the [hack|crack]er is quoted as saying that one of their goals is to eventually be able to pull the Volume Unique Key from the drive without a hardware hack, but he made it seem pretty far off.) I didn't know they had gotten to that point already.
Slightly OT: I'm really hoping that someone will write up a good introduction to how AACS works, in semi-layman's terms. I've read the official AACS documentation (as much of it is public, anyway) and it's not the easiest thing in the world to get your head around, if it's not your field already. It's obvious these Doom9 guys know their shit, but it would be nice if somebody made some documentation just so the rest of us know what the hell is going on; AACS has so many keys and keyblocks and keys-within-keys-within-keys that I'm never quite clear what exactly they've cracked, or which key is required to read the actual content without any other intervention from the player.
It would really be good if Wikipedia handled that, but right now the AACS article is just a lot of news-bites about the progress of the hacking, and it's very light on the technical stuff (and it's currently locked due to some pissing contest or other).
Re:Didn't know they were there yet (mod parent up) (Score:5, Informative)
Strangely, this was announced April 9th, while the article was published April 15th.
Re:Didn't know they were there yet (mod parent up) (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.full-disk-encryption.net/lurker/messag
Re:Get 'em while you can (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
More deeply, it depends on the fundamental mistake of trying to use encryption for content protection. As the article says:
The real problem with trying to create an "uncrackable" copy protection is that the media must come with the keys used to decrypt it somewhere on the device and the media itself. Hiding these keys in different places--security by obscurity--merely delays the inevitable. Of course, for the content providers, any dela
Re:Get 'em while you can-MISSING THE POINT (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Get 'em while you can (Score:5, Funny)
Then they really will be cracking them.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
To put into the context of this discussion: you buy an HD-DVD, you insert it into your player, and you watch the movie. The disc constitutes the totality of the message, the sender is the manufacturer, and the recipient is your player. Within the larger message is contained the movie, and the me
Re:Maybe it's just me... (Score:4, Interesting)
I wonder why the HD-DVD people don't get together with the satellite people? Satellite TV is extremely secure and has never really been cracked successfully. Most cracks involve emulating a smartcard, which is easy since the smartcards still use early 80s technology. Even then, nobody has really done a crack that wasn't fixed within a week.
Re:Maybe it's just me... (Score:5, Insightful)
The difference is that for HD-DVD you have both the source and the player, where for Satellites you have only the player and they can change the source to disable whatever smartcard was emulated.
Changing the source for already-shipped HD-DVDs is troublesome, at best.
Points finger of blame (Score:3, Funny)
I hope the hacker isn't suggesting that this whole encryption key debackle is somehow Microsoft's fault, could you imagine the lawsuit?
Let's celebrate DRM (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe it's better to pirate afterall. Less hassles that way.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The fact is, this is a losing battle for the MAFIAA... Any DRM scheme that can be dreamed up can be cracked eventually. They would benefit more form making their content easily accessible, readily available, and cheap enough for people to get at that piracy becomes a background issue. Eventually, all that content is going to get from DVDs to the Internet -- if I were them I'd given up trying to stop people via DRM and start trying to woo people by giving some content away.
You got that right. (Score:4, Informative)
With the size of today's hard drives, carrying around physical DVDs to watch on one's Powerbook just seems silly. Rip 'em (I personally think most movies look fine using MPEG-4 2-pass, target size of 700MB) and chuck 'em on your hard drive; uses a lot less battery power and it's one less thing to have to keep in your laptop bag.
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Poor Sony? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Poor Sony? (Score:5, Informative)
Sony's probably really happy about it, actually. If they can show that HD-DVD is worthless, studios will drop it in favor of the far more DRM-heavy Blu-Ray.
There are things that Blu-Ray could use (they're in the spec) but possibly aren't at the moment.
Basically, HD-DVD only has AACS to protect it. It doesn't have region coding (yet?) or other crap that just didn't work on DVD (someone at the DVD Forum saw the writing on the wall for region codes and just didn't put them in for HD-DVD). Every HD-DVD/DVD combo has the Region 1 logo, followed by "DVD Only" - implying that the region code is strictly for the DVD part. Same goes on the HD-DVD player - Region 1 logo, "DVD Only".
Blu-Ray has the BD+ protection, plus something they call ROM Mark. And of course, region codes. Though, Sony at least tried to be reasonable, and instead of the 9-odd regions of DVD, they reduced it to 3. ROM Mark protection basically says every Blu-Ray disc has to have a fingerprint that tells the type of the disc, and who pressed it. So if a flood of pressed Blu-Ray discs come out, the Blu-Ray association can find out who pressed it, pull their license and shut them down. (And discs without said mark... just don't work). It also keeps stuff like movies from being played if they're on the wrong medium (e.g., BD-R).
Blu-Ray is far more technologically advanced (25GB/layer) than HD-DVD, however, the latter makes use of existing DVD production lines (trivial upgrade, which is why HD-DVD/DVD flipper discs are around), and uses lessons learned about DVDs to produce a better product (like the uselessness of region coding). I suspect that the DVD production tools also underwent just minor changes (support for new codecs and JavaScript) since the HD-DVD releases seem to be of better quality despite the fact that they're 20GB smaller (dual layer BD vs. dual layer HD-DVD) to fit the data... (extras and everything).
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The funny thing is, that means I would actually *buy* movies in the hackable format. I wouldn't make copies, I would purchase physical disks! I'm not interested in distributing copies, either - but if I want to cut out clips from movies and edit them together, or if I want to add funny subtitles for my own entertainment, or if I want to copy the d
dear music/ movie industry: (Score:5, Insightful)
you should give up. you've lost, and will keep losing. it's just silly to keep going down this path. there is only more pain in store for you
people will still make movies. people will still make music. it's just that your particular pre-internet business model is now obsolete
go ask the aztecs or the incans if the appearance of new technology was fair to their empires
it wasn't. but it didn't stop technology in the form of gunpowder and sailing ships and metal armor from rendering them obsolete
so it is with you and the internet
sorry
reality is a bitch
Re:dear music/ movie industry: (Score:4, Insightful)
I can't wait to see all the product placement blockbusters. And all those ad-laden songs are going to be really cool to dance to. </sarcasm>
Just because distribution is easier on the internet does not give anyone with access to a computer the right to distribute content they do not hold the copyrights to. Many new services of downloadable content are springing up and work just fine and they support the production studios. Use them if you want to download movies/music or don't consume copyrighted entertainment. It is really they simple.
Re:dear music/ movie industry: (Score:5, Insightful)
Who said anything about that?
I buy a [HD-]DVD. I want to play it on my $OS-OF-CHOICE box, as well as my set-top box. However the [HD-]DVD consortium refuses to license a $OS-OF-CHOICE player. Therefore, I need to crack their DRM to make use of my legally purchased [HD-]DVD.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
This is completely irrelevant to what I believe the majority of us who abhor DRM are all about.
First, understand that people who want to pirate/get "free" content will regardless of whatever DRM is created. If that means they get movies that are nothing more than low quality videos from pointing a home video camera at a monitor, then they won't
Re:dear music/ movie industry: (Score:5, Insightful)
Copyright was considered a necessary evil. I make this claim solely because of this reason; if it were considered a true right to own "intellectual property", the founding fathers never would have given this "right" a shelf-life.
The fact is, they did. On the one hand, they recognized the lunacy of giving anyone the sole ownership of publicized thoughts, ideas, and concepts, whether artistic or other. It is one thing to own a physical object. That is core to almost every single society that ever existed on earth (there are exceptions, of course). But the perversity of feeling one can "own" intellectual property is quite ridiculous. It may be "the way things have been" for the last hundred years or so, but the fact of the matter is, it is still wrong.
The founding fathers recognized the fact that entrepreneurial types would see no reason to pay someone to produce new works, both artistic and scientific (or do it themselves) if they could not get any money for it. So they decided on a plan that would essentially subsidize the creation of such information via many small-scale monopolies that were to last for a very short period of time, one monopoly per copyrighted creation.
If this "right" were a true Right, it would not have been limited by time. It would have been perpetual, just as physical ownership of an object is a perpetual right, to you and your heirs, unto the ending of your line (or you forget to pay bills and they take your shit and sell it off). But the fact is, it was a very limited "right", whose sole purpose was to provide a vast amount of intellectual "property" for the masses to consume, remake, reuse, reproduce, and better society as a whole.
Instead, publishers of intellectual content (whether it's the recording industry, the motion picture industry, or literary industry) began to claim that they could not afford to subsidize the creation of such intellectual works - at least not on such a large scale - unless these miniature monopolies were extended far beyond their initial terms. Conveniently forgetting (or, more accurately, ignoring) the true reasons for copyright protection, these content publishers raised a tremendous cry with the United States Congress, which was easily able to ignore those same reasons for copyright protection as campaign contributions steadily flowed into their warchests.
Were these content publishers only able to publish these intellectual works for 17 years, it's true that many wouldn't take a chance at producing works such as Waterworld or Lord of the Rings. The money spent on these productions might take an exceptional amount of time to recoup, much less profit from. So society would lose works such as these, but be able to take pictures such as Star Wars and expand it out well past what Lucas would have wanted. In some ways, this is bad (I don't trust many people would do better than Lucas with any prequels or sequels), but in some ways, it is good (I can certainly imagine there are more than a few people who would do a stellar job expanding on the Star Wars universe).
Back to your comment, which I have not honestly or accurately addressed yet: just because reproduction and distribution of content is easier in the "digital world" than it was previously, it does not imply that others have the right to distribute content. However, to treat copyright as a sacrosanct right, akin to that of the other Rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights, without taking into consideration its initial (noble) intent and its current manifestation is another miscarriage of justice as well. We, as society, have been wronged by the content publishers, the producers, and our elected congressmen and women, all so the above mentioned parties could get more rich, without truly benefiting society in any real tangible way outside of the economic sector. I agree this is an important sector, but it should not be considered the
Re:dear music/ movie industry: (Score:4, Insightful)
120 years after death isn't quite the temporary they were thinking though, what do you think?
teehee. it was inevitable. (Score:5, Informative)
"what physical science can devise and synthesize, physical science can analyse and duplicate" - e. e. doc smith (one of my favorite authors).
sorry almost forgot the obligatory 09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0!
The Art of Information (Score:5, Interesting)
Thanks! (Score:4, Funny)
Well, what do you know. The inevitable happened. (Score:5, Funny)
Developing an overblown DRM system: Millions of dollars.
Hiring consultants to tell you it'll really, really work this time after firing all the ones who informed you copy protection is a cryptographic impossibility: Thousands of dollars.
Paying lawyers to send cease-and-desist letters to thousands of websites after the key leaks: $500/hour.
Watching yet another DRM scheme go up in flames shortly after its release: Priceless.
At what point is enough just enough already?! (Score:5, Interesting)
NeuroMPAAncer (Score:5, Funny)
"It's not like I'm leeching," MPAAse heard someone say, as he shouldered his way through the crowd around the door of Reality. "It's like my body's developed this massive plot deficiency." It was a Slashdot voice and a Slashdot joke...
Apologies to Gibson.
The Volume ID is just one piece (Score:5, Informative)
The Volume ID is a small bit of data that's stored partially in the lead-in section, and partially in some other non-data area physically on the disc (which I don't fully understand, and apparently isn't available in the public HD-DVD documentation and is only available under NDA). Compliant drives only read and provide the volume ID after completing a cryptographic handshake, which hasn't been broken yet. So now they've made a firmware patch so the drive reads the Volume ID without authorization, without going through the as-yet-uncracked crpyto authorization process.
The purpose of the Volume ID is to prevent copying a disc by simply copying all its data. Because the Volume ID isn't stored within the data sectors, it can't be read normally. Well, that is, without impersonating the software (which hasn't been accomplished yet), or without a modified drive that doesn't require the software to authenticate before reading and returning the data.
That's all. Just one piece, not a full crack of AACS.
Old security law... (Score:3, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Incorrect summary once again (Score:5, Informative)
QUOTE - Original post [doom9.org]
In order to decrypt a disc you need the keys the content is encrypted with. These we usually refer to as Volume Unique Keys (although technically VUKs give Title Keys which are used to decrypt the content but this amounts to the same thing). What is important is that VUKs cannot be revoked. In other words: once we have a VUK for a disc then the AACS decryption-protection is broken for that disc. AACS cannot undo this.
So how can we get VUKs?
There are several ways to get VUKs for discs. But none of them are permanent solutions for retrieving all VUKs for all discs (released in the future).
* Get the VUKs out of "old" versions of a Software Player * Get a Volume ID (unique per movie) and a Processing Key (unique per Media Key Block version) and calculate the VUK.
The first method will expire quickly: we can now use WinDVD to retrieve VUKs out of its memory. But when new discs come out they won't work with this old version of WinDVD so you would have to install a new version. Therefore making this method obsolete for new discs.
The second method requires not one piece of information (like taking a single VUK out of the memory of WinDVD) but two pieces of information. We have several techniques now for a drive to reveal the Volume ID of a disc. So this part of the method is permanent. However the Processing Key will change every time they change to a new MKB version. And since we also need this second piece of information to calculate a VUK for a disc we always need to get the new Processing Key out of some player (whether its a Software Player or a standalone). The Processing Key (or better a Device Key) is very powerful though: if found it makes it possible to decrypt all discs released so far (assuming we can also retrieve the Volume IDs of those discs).
UNQUOTE
Moral of the story: We still need the processing key and that can be changed by the AACS, or by the abuse of language, "revoked". So the new AACS Crack is not "Undefeatable".
The only development since the time this article was written is that the firmware doesn't need to be changed anymore for the drive to reveal the VolumeID. There are some standard commands which get the job done.
Back to the grindstone, fellows... (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, like arguing the relative merits of Linux versus Windows, or Apple versus MS
Re:At what point... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:At what point... (Score:5, Insightful)
Them: "Hey, want to buy a movie?"
You: "Sure, how much?"
Them: "$100,000,000.00."
You: "F*** off."
Them: "Sorry, that was the price to purchase all rights to the movie, including redistribution and royalties. Would you like to buy a subset of those rights instead?"
You: "Sure, like what?"
Them: "How about, the right to public exhibition, and reproduction of media for sale, but no royalties? That'll be just $5,000,000.00."
You: "No thanks, too much."
Them: "How about, the right to public exhibition? Just $500,000.00."
You: "Do I look like I'm made of money?"
Them: "Sorry. How about, the right to private exhibition? Only $5."
You: "Now you're talkin'!"
Them: "So we have a deal?"
You: "Yep." [you hand them a fiver, and they hand you a DVD.]
Them: "Have a nice day."
You: "Hey, wait, this DVD is copy-protected! I want to copy it!"
Them: "Yes, sorry, we didn't sell you the right to do that. If you have more money -- equal to the amount we'll lose on average for each copy-producing customer -- you can buy that right too."
You: "But I paid for this!" [you shake the DVD at them]
Them: "Do you understand that you paid for limited ownership, and that you consented to the limits stated and known to you at the time of sale?"
You: "No, I'm too dumb-stupid to grasp that. I can only handle concrete meanings of the idea of ownership."
Them: "Yeah, we figured. You probably also think HOAs are usurping your god-given right to paint your house pink, eh?"
Certainly the movie studios are obnoxiously attempting to prevent format-shifting, in order to sell you the same movie twice. But that doesn't mean they are violating any of your rights.
Re:At what point... (Score:5, Insightful)
Or, there's always "Hey, I want to exercise my rights under fair use laws, which have always existed and which you don't have to pay a penny for." Or "Hey, I want to exercise my private-exhibition right (which I paid you for) on a platform of my choosing." Or "I want to make a backup of this, so I can continue to exercise that private-exhibition right (which, again, I paid you for) if my kids scratch the crap out of the original." It's not quite so black-and-white as you put it there.
Re:At what point... (Score:5, Insightful)
They are selling you an entire physical copy, which you can do whatever the hell you want, short of selling copies.
Look at their advertising. They don't say, "Purchase a license to private exhibition today!" They say, "Own it on HD-DVD, today!!!".
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Exactly!
Software has long been sold as a license transaction, not a physical item or intellectual property transaction.
Entertainment products are still treated as physical items, when really the manufacturer would prefer it be a license but without the right to back up the "software". By keeping the distinction fuzzy, the argument can be left unresolved.
Because of this, my biggest fear with all the fires stoked by the *AA orgs is not that they actually expect to be able stop casual or large-scale copyin
Re:At what point... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:At what point... (Score:5, Insightful)
No because it was never explained to anyone buying a DVD nor is it printed in legible and readable size fonts on the DVD. Also the Advertising done for said DVD is the reverse of that by proclaiming "OWN IT TODAY!"
therefore, your contract is null and void because it was not presented at the time of sale AND your advertising suggest the reverse of what you claim your contract to say.
I would give THEM the benefit of the doubt if they made that fact clear. They do not because they know for a fact it will significantly impact DVD sales in a bad way.
Re:At what point... (Score:5, Informative)
Wrong. See USC title 17 sections 107 thru 109 [copyright.gov].
1201 trumps 107 through 109 (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:At what point... (Score:5, Insightful)
1)Legally, you have a right to make fair-use excerpts. DRM prevents that.
2)Legally, everything goes into the public domain eventually. DRM prevents that.
3)DRM is an enabling technology for censorship (eg "un-leakable documents") Do we really want that?
Lastly, there is NO natural right to the so-called "intellectual property". Society grants a temporary monopoly to artists as a concession.
Re:At what point... (Score:5, Insightful)
In the most pedantic sense, you're right. Nothing in copyright law dictates that the copyright owner make access to copyrighted works easy. Copyright law merely dictates that there are certain actions that an owner of a copy may not perform without the copyright owner's permission - namely distribution and public performance. The original intent was to insure that only the copyright owner could profit from distribution so that they'd be incented to create creative works.
The bit of the equation that violates my (and everyone else's rights) is the DMCA which says that it's illegal for the first guy to workaround the DRM to tell me and everybody else how he did it (remember, computer software is "speech" in the first ammendment sense). As soon as that law is properly neutered, then all will once again be right with the world.
Copyright law used to work just fine back in the days when making a copy of a copyrighted work was non-trivial. In the digital domain, because making a copy of a work is trivial, it is virtually impossible to police. As we have seen, DRM only makes it slightly more inconvenient for a little while.
Where this leads us, I don't know. The current system of copyrights is irreparably broken. Some new system based on the notion that copies are easy and trivial to create will need to replace it. But the problem there is that you need to compensate artists for their work. The Spiderman movie cost many hundreds of millions of dollars to create. If you want movies like that to be made in the future, then some way to gather those hundreds of millions to do it will need to be found. But there's more to copyright than huge Hollywood productions - it needs to work for the garage band selling CD-Rs at their concerts too.
Re:At what point... (Score:4, Insightful)
We should concentrate on the garage bands and videos. Let the studios wither and die. Power to the People!!! and all that crap.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Once you move out of the rights given to you by copyright law (basically, the right to view for personal use, making fair use excerpts, and fair use copying -- backups and time shifting and format shifting and viewing, copyright expiration after a given time) you move into contract law supplemented by copyright law.
I don't sign contracts when I buy music or videos so your scenario doesn't apply. Here's a more accurate scenario:
Them: "Hey, want to buy a movie?"
You: "Sure
Control (Score:3, Insightful)
This isn't just about DRM, it's about dictating every part of your media playback system: no participation in creating content (home, low-budget & independent movies/music, etc.) nor in creating playback systems (no MythTV, homebrew playback hardware/software, etc.). It's about marginalizing everyone who does not fork over licensing cash - LOTS of it - to those holding the core IP rights. Don't pay? can't play.
From AACS to HDMI via DCMA, they want to own every b
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
And then somebody cracks it.
Re:ZKP (Score:5, Insightful)
Most users wouldn't be satisfied with being able to prove mathematically that the movie they wanted to watch really was on the disk, but still have zero knowledge of what it actually looked and sounded like.