HD protection hacked...

Richard S. · By: **Richard S.** On: Fri Jan 26, 2007 1:31 am

http://news.com.com/Hacks+on+high-defin ... 53615.html

As with anything where there is a will there is a way. I'm certainly not advocating piracy but when you spend $30 or $40 on a disc you should be able to view it where and when you want. The current trend is towards more and more protection, HD-DVD and Blu-Ray discs for example have the ability to prevent them from being played on anything that isn't HDCP compliant... sounds simple but...

HDCP compliance means everything within the system has to be HDCP compliant, this may be a wake up call for some of you if you bought some of the first HD TV's. These TV's are not HDCP compliant. Add to that everything down to the cables it's played over will need to be compliant. Same for computers, practically no desktop in the world meets these specifications....

About time either studios wake up and offer movies at a reasonable price and their sales will sky-rocket. That or consumers need to lay the law down and stop purchasing, Protecting content from being illegally copied is one thing but treating legitimate consumers like criminals is unacceptable.

Richard S. · By: **Richard S.** On: Fri Jan 26, 2007 2:00 am

Another great article:
http://gear.ign.com/articles/758/758675p1.html

The AACS exploit was likely developed faster than the encryption designers expected and is yet another example in the ongoing truth that is the fact that the talent and motivation of the internet collective is always superior to the groups that design the defenses. The BackupHDDVD/BluRay programs are, however, based upon an exploit and do not break AACS to the degree that DeCSS cracks CSS encryption on normal DVDs. Regardless, the fact that within roughly 6 months of the release of HD-DVD and Blu-ray into the wild 1080p rips are being distributed on the net should once again cause the movie studios to consider whether they are pursing a wise path in their approach to DRM and encryption. The process of ripping next-gen DVDs was not developed by Chinese-pirates with replicator facilities but by activist-enthusiasts who are more interested in being able to enjoy their media without restriction than in profit-making piracy.

Richard S. · By: **Richard S.** On: Tue Feb 13, 2007 1:14 pm

I don't know if anyone follows these things but.... the ongoing onslaught continues... :lol:

http://sww.engadgethd.com/2007/02/13/ha ... -all-hd-t/

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

I mentioned above I'm by no means a piracy advocate but on the other hand I disagree with many of the practices of the RIAA and MPAA . The reason I find it amusing is because of the millions if not billions of dollars that just got flushed down the toilet directly related to making these discs as secure as possible. Including but not limited to the software engineers that had to be paid, licensing fees paid by player manufacturers to play the discs, both formats were delayed over piracy concerns, and add to that all the equipment that is just coming on the market that would have been rquired to play these discs that is pretty much obsolete.

Serves them right, they haven't learned in the past that protecting their content only hurts legitimate users. Piracy will continue no matter what they do, time to start treating their customers like customers instead of thieves.

Yanche · By: **Yanche** On: Tue Feb 13, 2007 1:43 pm

This reminds me of the old Cable TV set top boxes of 25 years ago. They were designed by General Instrument and used various hardware techniques to restrict only paying customers from seeing premium channels. They were constantly hacked until they designed one using an integrated circuit that contained the anti-thief circuitry. It worked for a little while, until those with access to a scanning electron microscope in a federal government lab looked inside the integrated circuit. They scanned all the patterns on the integrated circuit and reverse engineered a solution to the anti-thief circuitry. After that the CEO of General Instrument decided to get out of the business. He concluded the hackers had more brains and collective analysis instruments than his company could afford.

Yanche

Richard S. · By: **Richard S.** On: Tue Feb 13, 2007 10:37 pm

Yanche wrote: He concluded the hackers had more brains and collective analysis instruments than his company could afford.

I think that's the gist of it, you have a huge collective of knowledge. Just like this forum you have the one at Doom9 and other places where they all figure it out together. If you read back this all strted by one person... don't know the exact quote but it was something like this:

"I went to play my disc on my non-hdcp monitor and couldn't so I hacked it"

Simple as that, someone got pissed they couldn't play content they had paid for the way they wanted.

Richard S. · By: **Richard S.** On: Sun May 20, 2007 5:38 am

Futile efforts continue.... :lol:

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20 ... lease.html

Latest AACS revision defeated a week before release

Despite the best efforts of the Advanced Access Content System (AACS) Licensing Administration (AACS LA), content pirates remain one step ahead. A new volume key used by high-def films scheduled for release next week has already been cracked.

My guess is that it's time for them to give it up. Coincidentally it appears that DRM for audio is heading in that direction, EMI announced a few weeks back they will be offering DRM free downloads. This will undoubtedly have a domino effect and the other companies will have to follow suit.