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AACS Vows to Fight Bloggers
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Fri May 04, 2007 10:09 AM
from the guerilla-bloggers dept.
from the guerilla-bloggers dept.
Jonas Wisser writes "The BBC is carrying the story that AACS has promised to take action against those who have posted the AACS crack online. Michael Ayers, chairperson of AACS, noted that the cracked key has now been revoked, and went on to say, 'Some people clearly think it's a First Amendment issue. There is no intent from us to interfere with people's right to discuss copy protection. We respect free speech.' The AACS website tells consumers how they can 'continue to enjoy content protected by AACS' by 'refreshing the encryption keys associated with their HD DVD and Blu-ray software players.'"
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Cue oft-used Leia quote... (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, as I said yesterday [slashdot.org], ignore these threats. Go out and blog. Understand that freedom of speech is NOT a government-granted freedom, it is an inherent one that all people of all citizenship must understand. The U.S. Constitution's (Bill of Rights) 1st Amendment does not say "You are free to speak," it says that Congress shall make NO LAW restricting the freedom of speech -- NO law. Discussing encryption mechanisms is free speech, and Congress shall not abridge that. As for patents and trademark and the rest, as long as you do not mimic the mechanism in your own hardware or software, you're fine, Constitutionally. As long as you do not quote verbatim the actual code used to create this mechanism, you're not violating copyright. The DMCA is unconstitional, and regardless of what Congress, the Supreme Court, the President, or any company says, it is non-binding in terms of the moral realization that Congress, and honestly no State organization, can prevent you from freely airing your opinions. You are free to talk, but no one has to listen.
From yesterday's post I made about "legal recommendations for bloggers," go out and blog. Say what you want to say. There are more of us than there are of them -- not only can they not afford to go after everyone, they can not afford to go after even a small percentage. Let some bloggers get caught, and all it will do is show other people that non-violent actions should not be criminalized or penalized.
AACS, your days are numbered. Your salaries will end. Your powers will be diminished. It won't be because of competition from another company (that you are likely in bed with, in terms of promoting the abuse of State power), it will be because millions upon millions of people will ignore you, and all you do, in trying to revoke our inherent (and in my opinion, God-given) right to speak freely amongst ourselves.
Re:Cue oft-used Leia quote... (Score:5, Interesting)
then you take it down and repost it with a refrence to the public record document.
Parent
Re:Cue oft-used Leia quote... (Score:5, Interesting)
The hex code is a key. The key has certain protections under U.S. law. They have revoked the key. It is no longer a key. It no longer has certain protections under U.S. law. It is just a number that used to be a key. You publish the former key on your website. Nothing happens.
There, wasn't that fun?
Parent
Re:Cue oft-used Leia quote... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes. Just before the Death Star blew her home world to smithereens.
But let's hope that's not the case here, eh?
Parent
Re:Cue oft-used Leia quote... (Score:5, Funny)
>
> Yes. Just before the Death Star blew her home world to smithereens.
"I feel something hilarious has happened. As if 13,256,278,887,989,457,651,018,865,901,401,704,640 geeks cried out in laughter, and were never silenced."
> But let's hope that's not the case here, eh?
Not very long ago, on a website only a few dozen hops away, a great adventure took place.
(cue scrolling text)
Code Wars IV: A New Hope
"It is a period of civil war. Rebel bloggers, striking from all your base, have won their first victory against the evil MAFIAA Empire.
"During the battle, Rebel spies managed to steal secret keys to the MAFIAA's ultimate weapon, the AACS, an armored DRM system with enough power to annoy an entire planet.
"Pursued by the AACSLA's sinister agents, Princess Leia races home aboard her starship, custodian of the leaked key that can save her people and restore fair use to the digital media..."
Parent
Re:Cue oft-used Leia quote... (Score:5, Funny)
Well, here's a screencap of HD-DVD.org showing the key [mac.com] on their own web site!
I guess they're going to have to go after themselves, now. Ve haff the evidence!
Parent
Re:Cue oft-used Leia quote... (Score:5, Interesting)
I just want a working Video jukebox solution. The major players like Sony don't seem very interested in providing one and the industry will sue anyone else that tries.
The whole point of capitalism is that the garage shops get to fill niches that the megacorps don't want to bother with.
The sad fact remains that I will easily be able to pull BR/HD-DVD's into my Myth setup before there's a proper BR/HD-DVD jukebox from Sony.
Parent
Re:Cue oft-used Leia quote... (Score:5, Informative)
Also very easy to crack players, as far as region free goes.
Parent
Re:Cue oft-used Leia quote... (Score:5, Insightful)
I disagree. A free society is one where all citizens are equally free from legal force that gives power to some and takes power away from others, without their express consent (ie, a contract). In a free society, you and I can contract to limit each other -- but the State can not unless we individually tell them that they can. Also, a free society is one where an individual can make any decision they want, as long as they do not directly harm the physical property or body of another individual. Speech can not do physical harm, so speech can not be criminal, no matter how repulsive it is. The effect of the speech could be a physical reaction, but if that physical reaction is performed by a person other than the speech giver, the speech giver has not caused harm.
People will visit their library more. They'll go walk at the park with friends more. So while I think it's good to fight for our rights, the result wouldn't be that bad. "Burn the land, boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me..." We'll find plenty other things to occupy ourselves with. Who cares about AACS and movies and stuff when you can find something else just as, if not more entertaining, for half the price?
Entertainment has more to do with time preference decisions than just saving "money" doing something that might seem entertaining. Someone who is very busy and who has a high hourly-value to the market may want a quick relief of "getting away from reality" and may be more than happy to pay $150 per person to see an Opera. Someone who is not so busy, and may not command a high hourly-value to the market may be more entertained reading a book, which could take hours or days or weeks. It all boils down to how you (and the market) value yourself.
Personally, I see nothing wrong with paying $20+ to buy a movie -- if I can use it the way I want to. I prefer to live in a tiny home so that I do not have to pay for extra unused space. This means I have no room for the clutter of physical movies (DVDs, VHS, etc). Instead, I have a great Media Center PC (yes, Microsoft), and I have 1TB of movies and TV shows available to watch based on my mood. This is considered illegal, even though I have paid for all the movies and shows I watched. I also used my own time/labor to put those movies/TV shows on that PC. I've harmed no one physically, so the law is unjust and ridiculous. Provide me with a process to reimburse the authors/distributors/producers of a given content, and also allow me to put that content into a system that works with my life, and I will pay AND continue to be a customer. I don't believe in NOT reimbursing those actively involved in the creation of content. I have no desire to pay for the lawyers, DRM researchers, or those who lobby the State to use force against me to uphold their monopoly.
Parent
Re:Cue oft-used Leia quote... (Score:5, Insightful)
Dude it's a number. Granted a large number, but still just a number.
Are you telling me that projects like the one trying to find the largest prime can't publish that they've tested this number as a prime?
There are certain things you should NOT be allowed to own - a number is one of them.
Parent
Re:Cue oft-used Leia quote... (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think you can copyright 14 bytes. But the issue is not copyright, it is the violation of DMCA by providing a tool necessary to break any sort of copyright protection measures.
you can't post plans to view scrambled cable TV anymore (in the US), you can't post utilities designed to decode CSS so you can watch your DVDs on your computer. etc.
What's dumb is these companies going after average joes rather than people who are pressing boatloads of DVDs and importing them to the US. Or people who are hosting huge pay torrent sites to download movies. Or couriers posting the latest films on Usenet to be distributed to sites all over the world.
so will I be in trouble? My DNS resolves any string you give it, so if someone goes to http://09f911029d74e35bd84156c56356.rm-f.net/ [rm-f.net] they will get a page. (although not [currently] related to those keys)
Parent
Re:Cue oft-used Leia quote... (Score:5, Insightful)
No we cannot. Many of us believe that for that very reason (attempt at "ownership" or integer numbers, in defiance of the very phillosphical ideas of "ownership" or "trade") the so called "copyrights" are nothing but a scam, although they might have originated as an badly thought out, naive scheme to promote arts and science.
All of the so-called "intellectual property" schemes invariably fail the test of basic logic when analysed in depth, primarily due to the fact that they attempt to treat information as an entity which is subject to "trade" or "private ownership", for which information simply lacks the required attributes.
Parent
Re:Cue oft-used Leia quote... (Score:5, Insightful)
+1 Funny, -1 Dishonest.
To wit: Can I publicly post your credit card number, expiration date, and CVN? They're just numbers... and how can ordinary numbers have implications for property and finances?
In fact, I have a list here of 10,000 valid bank-account and PIN numbers. My right to distribute them is a First Amendment Issue, damnit!
Parent
Re:Since they're just using Primes (Score:5, Interesting)
Oops - have I just infringed someone's valuable intellectual property?
What if I said it's also divisible by 19?
Or that the next-to-last digit is 4?
Could a lawyer please advise how many clues I can provide before I might get sued?
Parent
Michael, you're dumb even by MAFIAA standards (Score:5, Informative)
Well, he certainly has that part right. What he fails to appreciate is that he will be on the losing end of every single one of those rounds. Even as he tries to downplay the key by saying it has been revoked, AACS has already lost the second round [arstechnica.com] (as hackers have created a hack that CAN'T be revoked).
Always a step behind, buddy. But feel free to keep wasting your money and pissing people off.
I'm not sure bloggers are the real audience (Score:5, Insightful)
The real target of this action is likely a different audience, namely Hollywood. The AACS doesn't have to make their DRM undefeatable. They do need to convince their customers - and remember, that's not us - of the value of their work. And when their DRM is broken and seen to be broken, they need to convince those who want to believe that they at least have not lost faith in the cause.
So we may talk about winning and losing, and people like use may be the targets of lawsuits. But I think we may be giving ourselves airs when we assume that for the other side it's about us. If, on the other hand, we figure out who our real audience is then we have a better chance.
Parent
The 'unrevocable hack' (Score:5, Insightful)
I spent a while trying to get my head around AACS last night, and the bottom line is that what comes out of the un-revocable hack that you mention isn't the same thing as what's being posted around the internet, and what the AACSLA has the whole revocation scheme for.
Oversimplification ahead, and I may have some of the details wrong or, but this is the gist of it: the content -- the movie itself -- is encrypted with title keys. These title keys are encrypted with a volume unique key (VUK). The VUK is composed of two parts, a media key and a Volume ID.
The Media Key is the thing that you get with the code that's being posted all over the Internet (the Processing Key). Processing Keys can be revoked, but only for new discs -- so the discs that are out in circulation as of the compromise of the Processing Key, are out. They're cracked. However, future discs will use a new Processing Key, and that one that's around on the internet won't work
The "un-revocable hack" you mentioned, doesn't have anything to do with the Media Key, it's all about the Volume ID. The purpose of the Volume ID is to prevent bit-for-bit copying. In a lot of ways it's very similar to parts of the CSS system used on DVDs right now; it's a key specific to each batch of pressed discs, written to the disc in a way that's difficult to read off manually (the drive isn't supposed to let the user see it at all), and impossible to write to a blank disc
So: while the Volume ID hack involving the XBox360 drive is a major step forwards (backwards if you're the AACS!), it's not a silver bullet, and it doesn't make future titles trivial to compromise. There's still going to be a cat-and-mouse game in the near future, where the AACS will try to revoke Processing Keys and try to discourage the publication of new ones as discs are released. (It's been pointed out by several people now, that the AACS' over-the-top reaction to publication of the processing key, may indicate that they've realized that their revocation procedures aren't nearly as fast or as flexible as the people who are going to be compromising them.)
Parent
Re:Michael, you're dumb even by MAFIAA standards (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 (Score:5, Insightful)
mI0mUyOUE8S24UAsIVqR12Z8_P1WveIRFqpBO4FEeH_TPGuc0
QDhXbGpiERffrXz6lvQpcOFlDY_AXJWGw7f9saosuSBDj7c4e
l4APCHQIzYXETWu"xkhR4MNnw7zI_mBf5YJOLJ3DKD6wSQ6Pv
ZAPkCzunB7xarymAJEOOu0fe"tdhy"rZZY5XOSiipi6vf_84x
rPfhQQNneUX"JGXWhN3bgRIZwIOoIUu8c282MQ5_Grb6ALolI
j7cWlf2G2V467N4EjnJbR"9j_4oDCytfpkQBFX0jGOCsjRYcL
HH7DzXzB2tPz7i"L1Unvljgh05d1qoFs2N38qWugtaUMGM9RX
yUXVAbsO9ZcD33UKD80sulFF0FiSxIr4NOiRv4EZBoIU3eY1F
yi4NfhRLz3ai50dbx0CWCJwlvti_gsXgQLJrE70ihDROzdUyj
9AM2M99"s2d"hQxtoj7yTTki2M4dK3Y8_wvSyM8fp5fyyDpJW
z3W8iYIMIObDRG1H914rayBqj3EPhUDsz2NfVhjYBIxHBPgeW
saZXht6YNavXOyFLh24D84kXC4weBrJsI598yUpFhg41NB694
vZaHrMlSDxODtGlaU5rfJkODjrCr99Rr6hgQaegXnHE6Oe6iK
DwDtOw3"khTuVWYDStjRd4w2eOt2wvl24XvC3iDQBIA40uJQh
29XXEh_9hplaGD1YBw6pW2yiuyW8ifdaS4Mm7IGdH"6JMgSFg
k8"H70be7kCOdyDSLX9jLkz"4MF_LD"yaYdWopVnoryVQ9YD5
RqZmxLv2loAoM5WFs2""qGG4yATAMz9zhyuc4wMPZZLiZJhTt
pNNm045ma6vnqBdwtEE00zdjJBhBjz5VMoqPS6EZvQbwbEyiU
KJdzO7ATz47fYRWQZNWjy7Uda1P8RPnhSd2FbrL"aOegRzUX_
Azf
Re:09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 (Score:5, Interesting)
Quite right, and moreover, since it is a "lost trade secret", I would argue it has now become "common knowledge." I don't see how any law (DMCA, copyright, etc.) can be used to suppress common knowledge. For instance, Star Wars may be still protected by copyright, but no one can prevent people from quoting it to their heart's content. So many of the quotes have become a part of our culture, our communal consciousness, that they are very much ours, and no amount of government or corporate power can take them from us.
As others have noted in this discussion, this isn't merely about freedom of speech, it is a spontaneous and massive civil disobedience, basically highlighting how the citizens affected by these DMCA do not respect the law, do not want the law, and increasingly do not tolerate the law.
Parent
Re:09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
To the AACS: Get real. (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't care how hard you fight the damn cat, it's out of the bag, and it's not getting back in.
One part of the article I find funny is this:
Isn't that the point? I'm neither trying to justify nor rebuke file sharers, but think about it, man, and be practical for a change. Among those who download and share movies, who really cares about the nitty-gritty details of how keys are cracked, who all gets them, which ones get revoked, what players are and aren't affected, and so on? Most of them only care about one thing: Can I download the HD-DVD of [insert movie titles here]?
And as long as a key out there is cracked enough for the answer to that question to be "yes," the copy protection industry has lost. They can fight all they want to, but the thing is that unless they literally shut everyone down everywhere, they're doomed. As soon as one single solitary person is able to crack a key and unlock the encrypted data, all of their massive—and expensive—efforts will be in vain.
I also thought this was funny:
To Mr. Ayers, I would say this: Get real. For one thing, how many times has it been proven that your technical efforts are futile? How much more time and money are you going to waste developing something that consumers at best don't want and at worst outright resent? For another, what exactly do you plan to legally do to people who live in places where publishing the cracked keys is not illegal? As much as people like you would love to have the U.S.'s misguided laws apply to the whole world, it will never happen, and even if it did, people would still break such laws in civil disobedience.
If only they could figure out how to fight a winning battle for the hearts and minds of paying customers instead of this inevitable losing battle against people who are much, much smarter than they are, maybe everyone could be happier. This industry could sure learn a few things about the direction the music industry is headed, finally dropping DRM after realizing how useless it is.
Re:To the AACS: Get real. (Score:5, Funny)
Have you checked Google recently?
Results 1 - 10 of about 746,000 for "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0". (0.11 seconds)
The cat isn't just out of the bag, it's having kittens...
Parent
Re:To the AACS: Get real. (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Oh, is that so? (Score:5, Insightful)
"There is no intent from us to interfere with people's right to discuss copy protection. We respect free speech."
A comparison comes to mind here. Here's a hint, Mr. Ayers. It comes from a bull and it ain't a steak.
The hubris of thinking they can ban the mention of a number, and then turn around and say they "respect free speech", is breathtaking doublethink. Part of free speech is the right to discuss things you don't like. Part of it is the right to discuss them in as specific of terms as anyone wants. And part of it is being able to mention any number one wants to, from zero either direction to infinity. There's not a bit of respect for free speech here.
Re:Oh, is that so? (Score:5, Funny)
"There is no intent from us to interfere with people's right to discuss how much they love copy protection, and how good we are at building it. We respect free speech."
Surely that's what he meant to say. Otherwise he'd be some kind of idiot.
Parent
funniest bit I see on that AACS page (Score:5, Funny)
emphasis mine...
yes, intel, microsoft and sony are three of the eight on the list...
I wonder (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I wonder (Score:5, Funny)
Now what's that supposed to mean? Did Bob give up on Alice to run off with Charlie, or did she dump them?
Can't they just stop this childish messages thing and watch a movie together or something?
Parent
Good reporting (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess its times like these when it is good that there still are some news organizations independent of the big media conglomerates.
Re:Good reporting (Score:5, Insightful)
We each pay around $250 a year so that the world can have an unbiased mass communications system which is not driven by audience ratings and can produce quality. And, in the case of radio, in all the world's languages.
It would be nice if some of the anti-licence-fee Americans on
Parent
Two faces (Score:5, Insightful)
this is the hallmark of the world we live in: (Score:5, Insightful)
we can all 'continue to enjoy being ignorant slaves' by 'reaffirming our desire to be shackled.'
the audacity to think of people as so supplicant to corporate will is incredible
Get a copyright (Score:5, Funny)
Good point (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Good point (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it's not in 99.9% of the cases. It's about getting in on the fun of watching the class bully getting his butt handed to him while spins around crying for everyone to quit being mean.
Revenge doesn't make you a better person, but sometimes it sure is fun to watch.
Parent
Internet whack a mole is a game that (Score:5, Insightful)
The part where he says over 700,000 pages on the Internet reference the code is fscking hilarious. I want to see AACS group try to sue 700,000 people. Before they even get started there would be 1.4 million more references to it on Google. That is how the IWaM game works and exactly why they can't win. The sheer volume of people working against their worn out DRM business model will overwhelm both their resources and those of the court systems around the world.
In the US it appears that the courts are still willing to waste time on this. Other countries, not so much. Sure, if they find commercial pirates distributing DVDs for profit they will shut those operations down, but there just are not enough law enforcement resources to stop this hack, or any other.
Playing IWaM = stupid and the more you play, the more money you lose. period.
Certainly, some will be harmed, and there will be small wins for the AACS group and **AAs of the world, but in the end all their money will be gone. The DMCA was ostensibly implemented to protect them from exactly this. Legislating DRM doesn't work, DRM doesn't work, and if your business model depends on DRM, it won't work either. It's time that Wall Street and VC groups started to act on this one principle. If their business model is DRM it's a bad investment.
Sure, you might argue that MS is an exception but I think that the sales performance of Vista is going to prove me right on this. MS has been trying to play Whack A Mole with malicious software and spam. Yeah, that has been working out well. Their new flagship DRM laden secure operating system
Back on topic, the lawyers for the AACS group must be staggeringly stupefied. Maybe if they make an example of Digg and Mr Rose they can send a message, and if they try, every new key will be poste in blog comments on every blogging system around the globe. They literally need to surrender and rethink what they are doing. DRM DOES NOT work.
Almost Surreal.... (Score:5, Funny)
It is not intended for you. (Score:5, Interesting)
the AACS plan (Score:5, Funny)
"There are three things you can do:
1. Kill yourself.
2. Kill your manservant.
3. Kill everybody in the whole world."
Now 2 is fine, 1 is reccomended, but 3?
Still lying (Score:5, Insightful)
That is the part that ticks me off the most. The DVDs already could be copied without the key. Their "technology" is "playback protection", not "copy protection". The only honest sentence in the quote was earlier, where he said, "Some titles could now be played on more than one software player." Yes, THAT is what your evil scheme is trying to prevent. (Not that I will ever buy HD DVDs until I can actually play them whenever/wherever I want.)
As long as "playback protection" is working, you can't actually "buy" an HD DVD. You can only rent the privilege of playing it under conditions specified by the publisher. Whatever happened to laws against false advertising?
09F9:1102:9D74:E35B:D841:56C5:6356:88C0 is an IPv6 (Score:5, Funny)
I am trying to ping my server at
09F9:1102:9D74:E35B:D841:56C5:6356:88C0. However,
it seems like the address is in the unallocated space.
Perhaps there's a typo somewhere?
AACS LA:
That's the Processing key. You are not allowed to publish it.
Hacker:
No sir. That's a IPv6 address. Surely you won't deny me to have links on my website? =)
Problem with barring publication of the key (Score:5, Interesting)
One of the following series of hex values, according to the AACS, cannot be published by anyone besides them:
09-F9-11-02-9D-74-E3-5B-D8-41-56-C5-63-56-88-BF
09-F9-11-02-9D-74-E3-5B-D8-41-56-C5-63-56-88-C0
09-F9-11-02-9D-74-E3-5B-D8-41-56-C5-63-56-88-C1
Trying to bar one of them from publication will necessarily reveal what it is. As Wikipedia is discovering [wikipedia.org], you have to be able to describe what you're not allowed to publish in sufficient detail in order to effectively prevent its publication.
With other forms of intellectual property, the problem is avoided in various ways: in order to obtain a patent, the description itself becomes public domain. In copyright, the description is bounded by the creative content of that which you create. Trademarks are delimited by "confusion in the marketplace," and trade secrets are delimited by that which is actually kept secret.
The DMCA purports to create a fifth type of intellectual property, not limited in time, that would bar distribution of information (rather than just physical devices), but has no boundaries on the AACS's theory of what constitutes a "part" of an circumvention device. The boundary becomes "whatever the AACS moves to protect as a part of a circumvention device." But in order to enforce that right, we all have to know what we're not allowed to distribute.
So maybe the AACS, in order to avoid the paradox, can seek to protect a *range* of values. The scenario just gets even more absurd.
No. The answer is really that the key, without more, cannot be afforded protection as "part" of a circumvention device. It has to be a accompanied by something more, at the very least a description of how it can be used to circumvent. Otherwise it's just a string of text.
And that's where the DMCA falls apart, as people with an interest in circumventing can always break apart the information to such a degree to avoid any one part being classified as a "part."
It's a tough problem, and it should be brought to a court to evaluate. The court in Remierdes had an easy time, because the circumvention device was whole. Fair use will have to be read into the DMCA at some point when it comes to these alleged partial circumvention devices.
A conversation with mom (Score:5, Interesting)
Me: You probably need to refresh the AACS encryption keys.
Mom: *blinks*
Me: Your encryption keys need to be refreshed in order for you to play protected content.
Mom: I don't have encryption keys or protected content, whatever those are, I just have this movie that won't play.
Me: Right... in order for your movie to play you need to refresh the encryption keys that unlock the protected content on the disc.
Mom: I never had to do that before.
Me: No, no you didn't.
Mom: So how do I do that?
Me: I'm not really sure... I heard the assholes that made this all so hard in the first place have instructions on how to fix this mess on their website. I don't know if that applies to your model of HD DVD player though.
Mom: So if it doesn't, then what?
Me: Then you'll have to get the owners manual for your HD DVD player out and look through it.
Mom: Why does this have to be so difficult? I just want to watch my movie...
Or something like that. Then she'd start crying because she's easily frustrated by technology when it doesn't work. My parents have called me from half-way across the country because they didn't know what button to press on the remote to get sound out of the TV. There's no way they'll be able to "refresh their AACS encryption keys" if it's not automatically done for them. It's not like there's a "Refresh AACS encryption keys" button on the remote that I can tell them to press...
DRM = media content + frustrating, crippling, broken security
Revoking keys? Finally? Finally! (Score:5, Insightful)
Kids, the mafiaa revoking keys is a good thing in the fight against DRM. Find more keys and publish them, so they revoke them! The more the better!
What happens when a key gets revoked? Some player stops working. Actually, a whole batch of players stop working. And thus, Joe Shmoe Average might get a clue. It might not matter to him that DRM exists ("Duh, I buy my movies anyway"). It might not matter to him that DRM restricts him ("Duh, I don't copy them anyway"). It might not matter to him that it takes away his ability to actually play that content on other media ("Duh, I only use it in that DVD player anyway, not the computer").
But it does matter to him when that new blockbuster doesn't work in his DVD player anymore.
It does matter to him when his DVD is "broken" and he has to get a new one or has to get his fixed. It is a hassle. He might not know how to update his player. He might have to get a friend to do it. He will get angry 'cause why the heck doesn't it "work" anymore the way it used to?
Maybe, just maybe, it's a wakeup call for Joe Average. And maybe he'll stop buying crap that suddenly stops working.
we need MORE mirrors (Score:5, Informative)
only 700k sites?
come on guys, get CRACKIN'.
if you want to really make their jobs harder, embed that number EVERYWHERE. keep their minions searching for this for YEARS.
afterall, they have nothing better (truely) to do with their time
I hope they tell us the new keys (Score:5, Funny)
For small values of "free" (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, we can "discuss copy protection" as much as we want so long as the DMCA and the Sonny Bono Copyright Act still stand, hm?
It's funny how everybody agrees that speech should be free so long as that speech is completely impotent. It's the speech that empowers, empassions, that enables legitimate users to do with their purchased media what they will that suddenly gets declared "unprotected."
"We respect free speech."
This from the same industry that wants to ban cell phone usage from movie theaters not because they annoy the rest of the audience, but because they don't want to let people warn others just how bad a particular movie is?
Re:Um, too late? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
You said the magic words... (Score:5, Insightful)
The present - perhaps "previous"? - business model relied upon scarcity. If you held the negative to a photo, you held the only thing capable of producing a high-quality reproduction of that image. It was possible to make new negative from positive prints, but doing so resulted in a marked loss of quality, and the negative itself was irreplaceable.
Plus there was a certain investment of time, skill, and resources involved with producing a new print from the negative.
If I broke into your place of work and stole/destroyed your negative, that photo was gone forever.
But nowadays, the digital file can be copied without loss of quality ad infinitum. If I make a copy of your raw data file, you have not been materially harmed - you can still make copies - and all that has happened is you have lost exclusivity to that image.
And that image can be reproduced almost anywhere with minimal skill and investment in resources.
Effectively, the scarcity of the ability to duplicate images has been eliminated. There is next to zero cost involved with the duplication of images once they are in the memory card. As such, the image files themselves have next to no actual value.
What HASN'T changed is the necessity for a skilled photographer to take that image in the first place.
This implies - hell, it yells at the top of its lungs - that the business model of selling exclusive prints is now utterly broken, and pro photographers (and other media producers) need to find other business models. If the automobile obsoletes your buggy whip manufacturing business model, you need to adapt.
My suggestion is that you regard photography as a service. You are being contracted for your ability to take artistically skilled photos. You price your services based on the amount of time you have invested and your level of artistic skill, and you sell the customer the digital data files you produce for him.
I know photogs working to this model now, and they seem to be doing well. The days of the reprint gravy train are over, but people seem to be willing to pay for the quality of SERVICE they get.
DG
Parent