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Media Encryption Security Your Rights Online

Claim of a Blu-ray BD+ Crack 307

Google85 writes in with a brief Enquirer piece reporting on an announcement on a German site that SlySoft claims to have cracked BD+, the extra copy-protection layer in Blu-ray. Here is the German original.
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Claim of a Blu-ray BD+ Crack

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  • by Silverlancer ( 786390 ) on Tuesday October 30, 2007 @03:54PM (#21176395)
    The amount of time the MPAA claims it will take to crack something (in this case, 10 years) is inversely related to how long it will actually take (in this case, a few weeks).
    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by aweiland ( 237773 )
      If that's the line they used to get exclusive deals with studios they're gonna have some 'splaining to do.
    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by AxemRed ( 755470 )
      I reckon that you are right. ;)
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by TWX ( 665546 )

      ...and the beat goes on...
      ...and the beat goes on...

      Drums keep poundin' a rhythm to the brain...

      Let me know when they've got a copy-protection method that doesn't get cracked in a few weeks or months of its debut. Otherwise it's just the regular pattern.

      Maybe if they want their precious movies to avoid this, they should consider using a media that physically has no computer-based player...

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by nuzak ( 959558 )
        > Let me know when they've got a copy-protection method that doesn't get cracked in a few weeks or months of its debut.

        Anyone cracked MagicGate yet?

        Heck, even AACS is just weakened, not really permanently broken. Though I suspect as long as they're giving keys to software players, it's going to keep getting cracked.
        • What about Direct TV? Since they updated to the P4 or higher, I'm not aware of anyone that's cracked their copy-protection/content protection scheme....just some unverified rumors. I haven't checked up on it recently, so I'd be interested to find out if I'm wrong.
          • Re:Direct TV (Score:5, Interesting)

            by Em Adespoton ( 792954 ) <slashdotonly.1.adespoton@spamgourmet.com> on Tuesday October 30, 2007 @05:56PM (#21177775) Homepage Journal
            This raises an interesting point... why don't the movie moguls just go to a smart card based system? All hardware players are shipped with a SIM that comes from the distributors, software players require a reader hooked up to the PC. If a key is cracked, the SIM range is blocked on future discs, and a person needs to get their SIM replaced but can keep the same hardware. As with Direct TV, there are multiple ways to beat the system, but the moving target is MUCH easier for the media moguls to keep up with. On the PC side, this SIM card could also be used to provide online content to people with a specific disc in their drive, which would tie the SIM into a service agreement that could be revoked when evidence of tampering is found. Not that I'm FOR any of this mind you (except for the online streaming content), but this system seems so much more obviously effective than what they're trying to do right now. Think about it: buy the box set to your favourite TV show and get access to bonus features, interviews, and a sampling of later shows not included in the set via an online service via keys stored on your SIM and on the disc. They wouldn't even need user-side DRM, but could use it as device verification for your free subscription account instead.
            • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

              Not that I'm FOR any of this mind you but this system seems so much more obviously effective...
              Exactly how the MPAA engineers justified themselves to their collective consciences?
            • Like, the content would have to be downloaded to the pc and thus it would be trivial to get rid of the DRM yet again.
            • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

              by cheater512 ( 783349 )
              I think that would just make it easier. People can eavesdrop on smart cards.
            • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

              by cayenne8 ( 626475 )
              "This raises an interesting point... why don't the movie moguls just go to a smart card based system? All hardware players are shipped with a SIM that comes from the distributors, software players require a reader hooked up to the PC. If a key is cracked, the SIM range is blocked on future discs, and a person needs to get their SIM replaced but can keep the same hardware."

              I think because you would have a LONG way to go to get Joe Average consumer to even understand what this new paradigm is that you're to

        • by jandrese ( 485 )
          It's one thing to make unbreakable encryption (DRM), it's quite another to make a DRM that nobody can be bothered to break.
    • by AchiIIe ( 974900 ) on Tuesday October 30, 2007 @04:45PM (#21177003)
      It's great news but keep in mind the entire procedure has not been cracked yet. There are three major layers of security in a Blu Ray Player
      1) AACS (currently we have ways to sniff the code out of software, cat and mouse game for now) (Cracked - sort of)
      2) BD+ (The virtual machine decrypting the AACS content) (Cracked)
      3) BD ROM MARK - A small key that has been stored on the cd using alternate technological means. This is an extra key that is read using only BLU RAY players using mysterious methods.

      Without the BD ROM Mark the disk can't be decrypted quite yet.
      The article makes no claim that this has been cracked.
      • by Jherek Carnelian ( 831679 ) on Tuesday October 30, 2007 @06:08PM (#21177883)

        Without the BD ROM Mark the disk can't be decrypted quite yet.
        The article makes no claim that this has been cracked.
        No, it just means that without the BD ROM-Mark (and the magic equipment needed to write it to another BD-ROM disc), a bit-for-bit copy can't be made. However, a remastered copy should present no problem at all.

        In other words, the BD ROM-Mark is not intended to stop access to the encrypted movie, it is intended to stop someone from duplicating the original disc without decrypting it all.
    • by feepness ( 543479 ) on Tuesday October 30, 2007 @05:43PM (#21177639)

      The amount of time the MPAA claims it will take to crack something (in this case, 10 years) is inversely related to how long it will actually take (in this case, a few weeks).
      As further proof of your theory, DRM-free media will never be cracked.
  • Why doesn't this surprise me? And this time it's not DVD-Jon!
  • that means Fox will have to cease all BD disks since they're so particular about BD+ being the "be all end all" encryption they need to prevent "rampant piracy"?
    • by cromar ( 1103585 ) on Tuesday October 30, 2007 @04:21PM (#21176753)
      I'd like to see Fox (or any other studio) sue the MPAA asking for arbitrarily large amounts of cash to compensate them for all the piracy this weak crypto causes. It would be really nice for the tables to turn a bit.
    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      They knew it would be cracked this way, but they expect BD+ to protect them trough the first weeks of release (when most money is made), unlike AACS which was fully cracked and now completely useless.

      As of now there are no universal cracks in the wild for BD+ and no vulnerabilities were found in BD+ yet. The keys need to be cracked from a new software players version, every cycle of disk release. This doesn't make the scheme uncrackable, but it takes time to crack every time and that was the whole idea. It
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Kythe ( 4779 )

        AACS which was fully cracked and now completely useless.


        AACS hasn't been "fully cracked" -- the encryption scheme remains unbroken. It's just proving impossible to keep people from extracting the keys once they're in memory -- which they have to be to decrypt the movie. Software players have evidently gotten extremely sneaky at obfuscating keys, yet it's not enough.

        So AACS isn't really cracked. It's just trying to do what can't be done.
  • I reckon (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 30, 2007 @03:55PM (#21176415)
    I reckon that what Slysoft reckons and what Sony reckons don't reckoncile... Man, you reckon they used reckon enough in that article on the Inq?
  • doom9 (Score:5, Informative)

    by legoman666 ( 1098377 ) on Tuesday October 30, 2007 @03:57PM (#21176449)
    Some more info about it at http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=130527&page=5 [doom9.org] Knew it was only a matter of time...
  • by oahazmatt ( 868057 ) on Tuesday October 30, 2007 @03:58PM (#21176467) Journal
    Dare we credit this blatant act of piracy to, yet again, a Sharpie?
  • by decken ( 883938 ) on Tuesday October 30, 2007 @03:59PM (#21176477)
    TFA in English used the verb "reckon" four times in as many sentences. I reckon I ought to have struggled through the German.
  • by r_jensen11 ( 598210 ) on Tuesday October 30, 2007 @03:59PM (#21176481)
    we can safely expect flood of new signatures on /.? Or is this unrelated to any encryption key?
  • Problems? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by AlphaDrake ( 1104357 ) on Tuesday October 30, 2007 @03:59PM (#21176485) Homepage
    Was it this extra layer of protection that was causing some players to have some ungodly load times that was mentioned on /. a little while ago? And if the companies spent half as much money on increasing space/fixing problems as they did useless protection schemes, we'd be on Terabyte sized dvd's by now :P
    • by tkrotchko ( 124118 ) * on Tuesday October 30, 2007 @06:06PM (#21177859) Homepage
      I looked in my DVD collection the other day and I realized had purchased well over 300 DVD's. It just sorta happened. And I realized it's a tremendous waste of money and space for discs that, for the most part, are watched once and done. But the price point is low enough that they're an impulse buy every time we go to the warehouse club, and so everybody throws one in. I should probably sell them on ebay.

      Anyway, to my point. When I go to the store, new releases are $13-15, and 2-3 year old releases are typically under $10. I can't believe anybody copies for that price, particularly when you only watch once.

      So DVD piracy is effectively solved by lowering the price so it's just not worth it to the vast majority of people. If they get high definition disks down to under $15, this is really a moot point.

      The only reasons I can think spending this much time and effort by the record companies is either (a) They think that they'll eventually drive piracy out of the market allowing them to raise prices or (b) they're crazy control freaks who aren't completely rational. Or maybe both.
      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Opportunist ( 166417 )
        The price isn't even the point. I do agree that they're cheap enough. But as you said it: It's a lot of wasted space. A current hard drive could hold 30+ HD-movies easily, or 100-200 in DVD quality. You could put your whole DVD collection on hard drive and drop the originals into some storage.

        Or ... can you? No, at least not legally. Media shifting is intrinsically impossible due to DRM. So you're stuck with those reflective plastic discs, no chance to transfer them to your hard drive, hell, chances are goo
  • t-shirt (Score:5, Funny)

    by jibster ( 223164 ) on Tuesday October 30, 2007 @04:00PM (#21176495)
    OK, now when will the T-Shirts be up on ThinkGeek?
    • Re:t-shirt (Score:4, Insightful)

      by legoman666 ( 1098377 ) on Tuesday October 30, 2007 @04:04PM (#21176547)
      Slysoft is safeguarding their decryption method. So you won't see any t-shirts this time around. They worked hard to get here first, and they want to make their money off of it before others crack it also. Well deserved in my opinion.
  • I don't have an HD-capable TV, so I don't fool around with Blu-ray or any of that stuff yet.

    But I wanted to take this opportunity to say how great Slysoft's software is.

    I tried at least half a dozen pieces of "free" software trying to rip DVDs and re-encode them to .AVI files. While I could usually get the ripping done (Ripit4me worked), I could never get a re-encoding to work that didn't have audio/video sync issues.

    I plied all the forums, downloaded endless codecs and other whosit and whatsit pieces here
    • FWIW your problems were with the rips.
      I had similar issues, related to some of the copy protection inserting null or unreferenced frames, etc. AnyDVD filters those out beautifully.
      -nB
    • Hmmm, I didn't think it was that tough.

      I use the free DVDFab HD Decrypter to rip and AutoGK (http://www.autogk.me.uk/) to encode to avi.
    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by moosesocks ( 264553 )
      Although their Windows version has a ways to go, HandBrake [m0k.org] is fantastic for ripping/encoding DVDs in one fell swoop. 99% of the time, 'it just works'.

      The more recent versions have made it a bit less "mac-like" (ie. they added a whole lot more configuration options), but it's still dead-on simple to use.
    • by jedidiah ( 1196 )
      What the H*LL are you talking about?

      I transcode tons of stuff. The only things that
      have ever given me any sorts of problems are
      attempts to convert from NTSC -> PAL sync rates.
      The rest has been easy breezey (even with the CLI
      tools).

      Anyone that pays $80 to rip DVD's is an idiot.

      Sure their HD stuff is worth the money but the
      other stuff is completely generic at this point.
      There's even got to be cheaper payware in winland
      then that stuff.
      • I tried at least 7 different pieces of software trying to make a go of it with free stuff.

        I tried AutoGK, etc. etc. etc.

        And I know I'm not alone with an isolated problem because if you go read the DVD-ripping related forums you will find that audio/video sync problems is a consistent theme.

        So kudos to you for figuring it all out and saving the 80 bucks. Myself I figure I spent about 20 hours all told trying to get it to work with free software - well over $80 worth of time to me.

        Not to mention the fact tha
      • I transcode tons of stuff. The only things that have ever given me any sorts of problems are attempts to convert from NTSC -> PAL sync rates.

        But most of the free tools have problems with some of the newer copy protection schemes - such as the ones on newer Sony discs. Slysoft is almost always the first to support cracking of new protection schemes.

        Anyone that pays $80 to rip DVD's is an idiot.

        Anybody who doesn't see the value in paying for good software and saving time and headaches is a bigger idiot. What you don't seem to realize is that AnyDVD is not just for ripping, it works seamlessly for playing DVDs with copy protection (in any application) and overriding blocks on skipping unw

    • The SlySoft stuff, especially AnyDVD, but CloneDVD is nice if you're into ripping & copying, is excellent.

      It is constantly being updated for free to support any new tricks they throw onto the latest DVDs. Once you have it installed, playing DVDs works as you would have expected, instead of being the FBI warning/preview infested/disabled buttons nightmare that DVDs have become.

      I don't copy DVDs, and I still think this software is worth every penny, for its ability to automatically remove annoyances from
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Problems (Score:5, Insightful)

    by king-manic ( 409855 ) on Tuesday October 30, 2007 @04:02PM (#21176517)
    Well DRM is a pretty hefty mountain to climb. How do you:

    1- Protect media with lock
    2- ensure customer can open lock with key to use
    3- ensure customer can't copy content with the same key

    Given enough time clever customers will always find your keys and always figure a way to copy your media. Isn't it better to stop trying and just offer products not licenses. The alternate route is to simply make copying hard enough to deter most people (console games + mod chips) or dial home to get some nifty extra features (MMORPG's).
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by ScrewMaster ( 602015 )
      The alternate route is to simply make copying hard enough to deter most people

      That's not an alternate route for the studios ... that is the route! From the early Macrovision anti-VHS-copying technique to Blu-Ray, the idea has never been to have an unbreakable protection system. They just want to eliminate casual copying, and to that end good old CSS does just fine, when you get right down to it..
      • They are dead fucking convinced they can make an unbreakable encryption scheme. In fact, they thought they had one with AACS. After all, they used AES, which the government says is great, how could anyone break it?

        They live in a fantasy world.
      • Re:Problems (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Sneftel ( 15416 ) on Tuesday October 30, 2007 @05:21PM (#21177423)
        That was a great idea when casual copying was the norm; that is, when sneakernet [wikipedia.org]'s bandwidth was several orders of magnitude greater than any other link. But now that P2P is a fact of life, "casual copying" is unimportant. What's important is "casual acquisition", and as long as even one guy can crack the protection there is no significant barrier possible to casual acquisition.
        • What's important is "casual acquisition", and as long as even one guy can crack the protection there is no significant barrier possible to casual acquisition.

          True enough, at the current state of the art, network-wise. So ... if you were a big media company what would you do?
          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by meringuoid ( 568297 )
            True enough, at the current state of the art, network-wise. So ... if you were a big media company what would you do?

            Give up.

            No, seriously. All this copy protection is pissing off the paying customers who find that their TV, while quite capable of displaying HD signals, won't display this signal because Hollywood won't trust it. Or whose new PC is dedicating clock cycles every second of the day to enforcing a Hollywood-mandated lockdown on the whole system, and will crash the fuck out if anything's even

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by Sneftel ( 15416 )
            I would:

            * Cut it out with the byzantine copy protections.
            * Great special features, like deleted scenes and director's commentary-- content which is rarely maintained when ripping.
            * Ensure that there are insanely convenient, reasonably cost-effective legal distribution systems available.
            * Quit worrying so much. The industry's profits aren't falling off a cliff, and if they were going to they would have already.
          • Re:Problems (Score:5, Insightful)

            by Sloppy ( 14984 ) on Tuesday October 30, 2007 @06:16PM (#21177963) Homepage Journal

            So ... if you were a big media company what would you do?

            Never fuck over a paying customer. Never do anything that causes my product to be inferior to a pirated copy. Never ever send the message, "We don't want your moneyl you might want to consider looking for a pirated copy instead." Ergo: no DRM. Don't try to prevent copying through technical means; don't do anything that prevents interoperability; don't do anything that restricts the availability of players, since that restricts my market.

            Go ahead and prosecute copyright infringers when it's easy to do so, but don't fixate on them. Keep existing customers, try to gain customers, but don't worry too much about people who aren't customers, except in terms of luring them.

            In other words, try to think of revenue as a desirable thing, rather than as something to snicker about when the stockholders aren't watching me.

    • Re:Problems (Score:4, Insightful)

      by PCM2 ( 4486 ) on Tuesday October 30, 2007 @04:39PM (#21176939) Homepage

      The alternate route is to simply make copying hard enough to deter most people (console games + mod chips) or dial home to get some nifty extra features (MMORPG's).

      Actually, the alternate route might be to make the blank media cost enough that people can't be bothered. Double layer DVD media are still too expensive (comparatively) for many people I know to bother with; they either use DVDShrink or, if they like the movie enough, buy it for $15. This is probably the reason why the MPAA lobbies for media taxes in Canada.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by jabuzz ( 182671 )
        You must my joking. Here in the UK I can get dual layer media for 82p each in a cake box of 25. I know my brother uses them to knock of Disney DVD's so that when my niece has scratched it to pieces he can just bang out another copy from the original. A lot cheaper than a new Disney DVD at upwards of 15GBP each.
    • 2- ensure customer can open lock with key to use

      You'll have to mark that one as a Sometimes operation.

    • The basic problem remains, the PRIVATE KEY IS STILL BEING DISTRIBUTED! As long as there are off line media players and accompanying encryption schemes, it's only a matter of time and some effort.

      This won't stop the media conglomerates boasting about their newest encryption scheme. After it's released the crack will always be soon to follow.

      The encryption scheme still works though. For example, the Chairman/CEO at Sony won't be calling in any of his elected officials that are on their dole to stop it. Am
    • I had to use AnyDVD HD to rip my legally rented Spiderman 3 (BR) to my HD so that I could watch it with PowerDVD. Some mumbo about the title using a new Java engine menu that wasn't compatible with PowerDVD... and a bunch of other standalone players.

      I guess the rip might have taken away some of the junk that prevented playing. Now, the total was ~40GB. I'm sure this could be reduced by taking away unwanted audio codeks and extra material, but still you're looking at ~25GB or more for a rip and a fair amount
  • translation (Score:4, Informative)

    by bvdbos ( 724595 ) on Tuesday October 30, 2007 @04:04PM (#21176541)
  • by MachineShedFred ( 621896 ) on Tuesday October 30, 2007 @04:06PM (#21176581) Journal
    ... Blu-ray player sales are up 4000%
  • Just cracked? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Splab ( 574204 ) on Tuesday October 30, 2007 @04:40PM (#21176957)
    I'm a bit confused about what has been cracked and not, lately quite a lot of BlueRay and HDDVD movies have shown up in 1080p format on my favorite torrent site. Ok, they might not have "cracked it" whatever that means, but they sure as hell have started distributing the movies.
  • by logicassasin ( 318009 ) on Tuesday October 30, 2007 @04:41PM (#21176961)
    This "War On Piracy" does nothing more than keep people in jobs, much like the "War On Drugs". Like the drug war, piracy cannot be stopped unless it's made legal, but to do that you would put those in charge of fighting said illegal activity out of a job.

    It's stupid...

    Any digital content that can be seen or heard can be duplicated with some form of analog technology. Copy protected CD's can be recorded with near perfect quality simply by flying the audio from a CD player into a PC equipped with a $100 pro-level audio card (like the Emu 0404 or M-Audio Audiophile 2496). DRM protected mp3/wma/etc files can be duplicated through two pc's in exactly the same fashion as a CD. Copy protected DVD's can be duplicated by recording it's content from a DVD player into a PC with a decent video capture card.

    And that's just the tip of it.

    Nothing they do keeps DVD's off the streets. Every trip to the grocery store I make, I get a guy or gal coming up to me selling the latest movie for $10 on DVD (3 for $25!) or the latest yet-to-be-released CD for $5.

    It's not going to stop. No amount of copy protection will help, no law passed will deter, it's a useless waste of money, but it keeps a few folks in a job.
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Bryansix ( 761547 )
      Exactly why do people insist on comparing "Piracy" to "Controlled Substances". I don't remember the last time Piracy altered somebody's life, caused physical distress or even death, or even contributed to a fatal car accident. The "War on Drugs" exists for a reason. The war on Piracy is made up by the RIAA/MPAA because they think they can brainwash us enough to think that we can't make copies of our own content for backup or use.
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by dangitman ( 862676 )

        The "War on Drugs" exists for a reason.

        To fuel police corruption and organized crime?

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        I don't remember the last time Piracy altered somebody's life, caused physical distress or even death, or even contributed to a fatal car accident.
        First two have been accomplished by lawsuits, and I'm sure they're working on the last one.
        • The piracy was not the cause though, it was the frivolous lawsuit that altered lives. Drugs alter lives directly.
      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        It's the methods of deterance that makes them similar. That, along with the fact that you can never make either go away. They both broadcast their busts, campaign against said illegal activity, shows how both hurt the economy and neither accomplishes the intended goal. The war on drugs also serves to keep useful substances off of the market for fear that their proliferation would harm major industries (large scale Hemp production alone could threaten pretty much every major industry in the US from cotton to
        • I would have no problem with Hemp being legalized. They should just regulate the process of becoming a hemp grower so people don't start a side business with their MJ. Hemp is great and yes it should replace all paper.
  • Are normally released as HD-DVD titles in other countries, so you can just buy them online from Europe.

    But this crack will be useful for those few of us with Linux PS3 units.
    • That's excellent news!

      Thanks for the tip.

      Stuff like this is half the reason I read Slashdot.

      After looking at Wikipedia's list of required HD-DVD/Blu-Ray features [wikipedia.org] for players, and what that has meant, especially for audio quality on actual releases, as well as being region-free, I'm convinced that if anyone is going to "win", it's going to be HD-DVD. I was about 65% ready to buy. This little gem, if true, pushes me up to at least 75%.

  • If this is indeed cracked, I'd wait until there's something more than just their black box - actual code that works on its own.

    Until then, Slysoft is just part of the problem.

    • I agree with your sentiment, but this is still encouraging news:

      1) It's proven to be do-able, so the Good crackers just got a shot in the arm
      2) If you buy this, it allows you to skip those annoying unskippable sections, and perform "forbidden" operations
      2a) If enough people become aware of a world in which this is possible, it's much more likely that congress will get off of their asses and finally make it illegal to insist on those kinds of requirements.
  • There should be Fear and Trembling at Sony right about now. True, or not, this isn't the news they're going to enjoy reading today.
  • Can't be Done (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Bellum Aeternus ( 891584 ) on Tuesday October 30, 2007 @05:13PM (#21177357)

    This just brings me back to my original hypothesis that it is impossible to encrypt something one time that you want to be easily distributed to the masses. There's just no way to say "here's the encrypted content and the key, but the key only works when we say so" unless you have some kind of root server doing the authentication in real-time and creates randomize keys for every download/view (think TSL). Even then, the user on the recieving end can (in theory) just record the incoming stream and redistribute.

    It's time for the media distributors of the world to wise up and realize that they just cannot protect their content through DRM. The best they can hope for is to make it tough on Joe Sixpack, and rely on legal means to tackle the large scale pirates. (think 1980's style).

    If BD+ is cracked, then the writing is pretty much on the wall for DVDs and we'll see a faster migration to online, streaming content. So let the "you cannot save this file" wars begin (ala Flash and QuickTime) - soon people (smarter than me) will spend time on fixing, er um... breaking that too.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by sethstorm ( 512897 ) *

      If BD+ is cracked, then the writing is pretty much on the wall for DVDs and we'll see a faster migration to online, streaming content.
      Apparently Slysoft wants it that way too for their "cracking service with a client".
  • by rsmith-mac ( 639075 ) on Tuesday October 30, 2007 @05:53PM (#21177737)
    This is a bit off-topic, but on the subject of HD encryption, is it me or does it seem like HD-DVD/BR discs are getting harder to crack? There have been several big releases lately that have taken a while to crack the encryption on and rip; the HD-DVD version of Transformers for example wasn't broken until some two weeks after the disc was released. Obviously the MPAA's engineers can't completely fix AACS due to flaws in its design, but they seem to be getting better at using what they have and keeping groups from cracking their discs for a bit longer.

    On the whole this is still a loss for the MPAA, but none the less being able to stop people for even a couple of weeks would likely encourage anxious people to buy movies they'd otherwise pirate, so it would seem the MPAA hasn't completely lost yet.

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