Advanced Access Content System (AACS). It's the wonderful system that keeps the average consumer from ripping their HD-DVD collection to create backups, transfer movies to a portable device, or add content to a central media server. You know, the system that's there for the consumers own protection.
But what about the not-so-average consumer? Well, these crafty individuals have other methods for achieving those goals. Namely, 16 random hexadecimal characters.
Hackers have discovered the 16 hexadecimal key that is used to encrypt most of the current HD-DVD titles on the market. This of course makes the AACS licensing authority a little unhappy. They are currently waging a war against any website that posts the encryption key. Just ask Cory Doctorow about why his blog was censored. But like any good cultural revolution, the hackers are fighting back on behalf of the common man. Well, maybe not the common man, but fighting back nonetheless.
And it's the method of the fight that's noteworthy.
Instead of posting the actual 16 characters, they post an MD5 (d1af2e56517a7202a1cc087a69c4e296) that when converted reveals 16 characters of freedom.
Or create a screen saver that has random numbers falling matrix style on the screen. Well, eight pairs of "random numbers."
Clever. And best of luck the AACS licensing authority on getting the genie back in the bottle.
UPDATE:
Last night Digg.com started pulling down all posts that contained the encryption code, and the Digg users revolted. By 2:00am the homepage was flooded with dozens of posts containing the code and criticizing Digg for pulling the posts.
Digg's founder, Kevin Rose, responded:
But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you’ve made it clear. You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be.If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.
Good for you Kevin.
There has to be a point when the producers of intellectual property figure out a new way to make money than by locking the property in a tower and demanding each individual member of the audience climb the ladder to peek inside. There is no way in the current computer-hacker saturated market to ensure that encryption remains unbroken, especially when there are many more hackers than there are programmers. It's as if the Great Wall of China was being erected by two men, and the Huns were standing behind them, taking down each brick as it is put into place. At what point do the wall builders say, "What are we trying to achieve here?"
Exactly. As the music industry is discovering, they can make more money by offering DRM free music. The same will hold true for all other forms of digital entertainment as well.