09 F9 11 02 9D–
May 4th, 2007
Oh no! THE NUMBER! *Whew* Glad I forcibly interrupted myself there before I scribbled out all of the offending hex digits! If I hadn’t…well, I could be facing a DMCA takedown notice courtesy of the code’s “authors”, the defrocked and now defamed AACS, or perhaps the very end of the Universe itself. Remember that old Arthur C. Clarke story “The Nine Billion Names of God”, in which a computer deciphers all nine billion names of God and thereby initiates the End of Reality? How do you know The Number isn’t the 8,999,999,999th name?
With the amount of stink Advanced Access Content System has been stirring up surrounding the literally unstoppable proliferation of their cherished HD-DVD decryption key across the entire ‘Net, you’d think the damn thing was the code that will launch all of the United States’ ICBMs. Of course, it’s perfectly understandable and reasonable for the company to be upset that its Secret Code has been cracked and released into the wild, in effect invalidating their entire reason for being…but the extent of AACS’ anger has gone well beyond righteous and has become nothing more than petulant.
My advice to Michael Ayers, chairman of the AACS business group: At this point, shut up, give up–and start working proactively on a whole new product angle.
But noooooo….Ayers has declared that AACS “will take whatever action is appropriate”, including any and all “legal and technical” steps they deem appropriate to ensure their copy-protection scheme is not subverted. No doubt, this includes a number of DMCA takedown notices.
Well, at present count, there are 976,000 sites catalogued by Google that list the Sacred Code of HD-DVD Cracking. Hope you have deep pockets, Ayers…’cause you’re going to be paying a LOT of lawyers for a LOT of time spent sending out takedown notices!
Which is a futile process anyway. The Code’s presence on the ‘Net is growing exponentially. For every DMCA takedown notice posted by the AACS, The Code shows up on five more sites. How far up in one’s transverse colon must one’s head be lodged not to see that, obviously, the battle is already lost. The Secret is Out. AACS is busted. The End. It’s over.
I cannot think of a more obvious statement of the fact that the public does not want DRM, and both can and will do whatever is necessary to circumvent it–whether that circumvention is legal or not. Consider what happened on Digg.com when that site attempted to censor its community members’ ability to distribute information as they see fit. And yet, on the AACS website, you find the following words in the latest update concerning updated security protocols for their copy-protection:
Consumers can continue to enjoy content that is protected by the AACS technology by refreshing the encryption keys associated with their HD DVD and Blu-ray software players.
ENJOY?! How can you enjoy something that prevents you from watching the HD-DVD disc that you paid for on many different platforms? A person can’t pop an HD-DVD disc in a computer running Linux, because AACS does not support any Linux-based software players. A person can’t make a backup of his/her investment in case the original gets scratched. Half the damn time, a person can’t even get the disc to play on several different HDTV systems because of bugs in the hardwired decryption path between television and HD-DVD player. Does that sound particularly enjoyable to you?
I am truly amazed at Big Media–both in the US and abroad. They just do not get it. This has all happened before, y’know. Ars Technica reminds us that this exact same rigamarole happened previously in 1999, when the encryption used on standard DVDs was cracked and spread across the Web in a matter of days. Year after year after year, copy protection schemes are developed and are promptly broken. Not by pirates who simply want Something For Nothing–but by people who simply do not wanted to be told what they can and cannot do with their legally-purchased property by some copy-protection company/system.
The second any business stops giving the public what it wants, that business is as good as dead. And yet Big Media’s shumbling, brain-hungry corpses continue their onslaught despite widespread public resentment and resistance. Do they honestly think they can wear down the public by nonstop assault? That has never worked before, and it will not work now.
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