Blu-ray Protection Bypassed

ReluctantRefactorer writes with an article in the Register reporting that Blu-ray copy-protection technology has been sidestepped by muslix64, the same hacker who bypassed the DRM technology of rival HD DVD discs last month. From the article: "muslix64's work has effectively sparked off a [cat]-and-mouse game between hackers and the entertainment industry, where consumers are likely to face compatibility problems while footing the bill for the entertainment industry's insistence on pushing ultimately flawed DRM technology on an unwilling public." WesleyTech also covers the crack and links the doom9 forum page where BackupBluRayv021 was announced.

Oh well...

...lasted a bit longer than CSS...maybe next time they might make it last a whole 6 months, maybe even ***gasp*** a whole YEAR before "pirates" start enjoying their blowjob while consumers just get a spiked dildo in the ass.

Re:Oh well...

It only lasted as long as it did because not enough people are using Blu-ray or HD-DVD to care.

Re:Oh well...

Actually both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray use the same DRM system, AACS, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AACS [wikipedia.org]

Re:Oh well...

Blu-Ray actually uses BD+ [wikipedia.org] as well.

Re:Oh well...

considering the theoretical impossibility of an unbreakable DRM scheme which is obvious to anyone who gives the idea 2 seconds of thought, I'd say that they are just deluding themselves anyway so facts and reality probably don't matter to them.

Re:Oh well...

considering the theoretical impossibility of an unbreakable DRM scheme.

Not too fast buddy!
It is very well possible, if they'd only not have released any disks the HDDVD and/or Blue Ray DRM would still have been in tact!

Re:Oh well...

I bet they're sobbing into their pillows right now.

Close. They're actually face-down on the pillow and muslix64 is breaking out the K-Y.

-Eric

Re:Oh well...

They're actually face-down on the pillow and muslix64 is breaking out the K-Y.

A real pirate wouldn't use K-Y.

"You see this K-Y, I'm not going to use it but I wanted you to know that I have it. On the other hand, this sandpaper condom..."

Re:Oh well...

It only lasted as long as it did because not enough people are using Blu-ray or HD-DVD to care.

Then it's good news for these formats, since it suggests there is more interest. And if I can ignore the DRM aspects of the formats, then I can use them, the same way I can play DVD's on Linux no problem. The formats are much less evil with their DRM fangs removed. The format owners should really pay those who crack their security for the improvement it represents, for making their formats much more accessible for everyone. That's a good thing.

Re:Oh well...

Hardly. DVD had the fastest penetration of any consumer electronic device in history -- faster than cell phones, faster than VHS, faster than PCs. It had very little to do with DeCSS; it had to do with the three things.

(A) the players are much less complicated to produce than VCRs, so the retail price rapidly dropped to the point where you virtually got a DVD player with your happy meal.

(B) The retail price of DVDs started low and got lower. I bought my first DVD for $20, and nowadays you can find B-list titles, used DVDs, etc. for $5 or less. VHS, on the other hand, started really expensive -- most titles were $90 or up in the early years -- and only started getting cheap when DVD arrived on the scene.

(C) There was already an established model and infrastructure for rental. It didn't take too long when VHS started, but it did take several years before 'renting a video' became a universal experience. With DVD, that happened pretty much from day one. People didn't hesitate to adopt a format when they could get content on it quickly and cheaply from the start. And Netflix has done more for the adoption of DVD than DeCSS.

Not to say that DeCSS hasn't been a boon, but even now most consumers don't have the expertise/wherewhithal/inclination to copy DVDs. Most of the pirated discs on the subway were initially mass-produced copies, not home pirated versions.

Re:Oh well...

What about

(D) It had features that made it significantly better than VHS

  (i) The seperation of a film into chapters coupled with the ability to the jump to said chapters.

  (ii) Able to store multiple sound tracks and/or cuts of the film.

  (iii) No rewinding.

Re:Oh well...

No. Region encoding the stupidest feature.

Explain to me why the DVD of Blade Runner I legally bought off Amazon (new) wouldn't work in the DVD player.

The DVD launchpad

I'm always curious though... DVD never really took off (it was popular, but not in-every-living-room popular) until CSS was cracked and people could copy their own DVDs (or rather buy copied DVD movies for $5 from the kid down the hall.) That was the real death knell for VHS.

I'd say DVD took off once the Playstation 2 came out. Before that, DVD players had been expensive and VHS was good enough for most. PS2 put millions of DVD players in people's living rooms as a side-effect of something they were going to buy anyway. Before PS2, DVDs were confined to a small slice of shelf space in video stores; once PS2 came out, they increased very rapidly indeed.

Things may have gone differently elsewhere, but in the UK the Playstation 2 was a major force behind mass-market acceptance of the DVD format.

I used to think that the Playstation 3 would have the same effect for Blu-Ray, but now I'm far from sure. Quite apart from the price, it's just too late; it's this generation's N64. In the NES and SNES days I was a total Nintendo fanboy, but if my parents hadn't had a fit of generosity and got a PC, I'd have given up waiting for N64 and bought a Playstation, and I'm sure many others did the same. How many people have already given up waiting for PS3 and gone out and bought a 360?

Re:Oh well...

inproper word

This amuses me greatly.

Re:Oh well...

Satellite TV encryption is dynamic. Got the keys? They just got revoked. Worked out the encryption? A download just changed it.

A DVD is a static medium and the players aren't normally connected to a source of data, so they can't update them so fast, and they can't invalidate the encryption without making your existing disks unplayable (=class action lawsuit)... so it's considerably easier to break (and re-break as they issue new disks).

Re:Oh well...

Dude, Sattelite TV has been cracked for decades.... DECADES!...

You can buy on ebay a china Mpeg2 reciever with a firmware on it that receives all Dish network programming without paying. and every time it stops working you get the new key on your PC via one of the rss feeds out there. IT is brain dead easy and dirt cheap.

Sattelite Tv has been broken hard for a really long time, longer than DVD... I remember helping a friend pull the epoxy off a VideoCipherII board in college to mod the prom so it would descramble everything (Playboy channel is what we were after)

The sattelite TV hack stuff is so pervasive it makes guys like me that are into FTA mpeg2 TV fight to find real info for our hobby. Every search turns up 60% hack and crack and 40% real FTA info.

Re:Oh well...

This hasn't been "cracked" in any meaningful sense of the word. All they've done is implement a decrypter working from the format specs, and worked out a way to hack decrypted keys out of a software player.

At any point, the player can have its keys revoked and code changed, and we'll be back to square one.

Re:Oh well...

Yes, I am sure that they are just going to let manufacturers have the keys sitting unencrypted in externally accessible ROM.

Irrelevant.

The publishers' problem is that there is ultimately nothing they can do to prevent the keys from being recovered from a hardware player.

Hackers just have to wait for one model of player to sell a few million units, then put in whatever effort is required to dig the key out of it. Once. It only takes once. It doesn't matter if the key is encrypted, because the player has to also have the key to decrypt it so that it can use it. They can make it hard, but not so hard that dedicated grad students with access to several million dollars worth of hardware (e.g. electron force probes) can't dig out the data.

Well, not and make cost-effective players that don't have a nasty tendency to suicide on a regular basis. See, high-end secure hardware that actually will hold secrets securely does it by being tamper-reactive -- actively trying to determine if it's being attacked and pro-actively zeroing its secrets if there appears to be a problem. Good for security, but it would tend to piss customers off if their Blu-Ray player broke every time they moved.

Even if they were to use serious hardware security, with its associated costs and problems, it only takes one defective device to blow the whole thing wide open.

By attacking a popular unit, the hackers achieve two things: first, they probably get an easy target, because the most popular models will be the cheap ones, and second, they make it nearly impossible for the publishers to invalidate that model's player key.

AACS, unlike CSS, is almost certainly not going to be broken cryptographically, but it doesn't matter. In order for people to watch movies, the players have to have the keys, and the players of necessity get placed under the complete control of very smart people who want to get those keys so they can use them themselves.

Until publishers move to a purely streaming distribution model, it's an unwinnable battle -- and it's far from clear that a streaming model will be workable, either.

Re:Oh well...

This hasn't been "cracked" in any meaningful sense of the word. All they've done is implement a decrypter working from the format specs, and worked out a way to hack decrypted keys out of a software player.

Yes, but this shows how trivial the process would be for true pirates, and ultimately proves that DRM is not about stopping the pirating of media, but rather about reducing the rights of the customers so that those rights can later be sold back to them. The new DRM schemes will do NOTHING to stop the pirates.

Re:Oh well...

All they've done is implement a decrypter working from the format specs, and worked out a way to hack decrypted keys out of a software player.

Once they've done that, they can hack decryption keys out of a hardware player. These cannot be changed without ticking off a whole bunch of consumers. Working out the decryption code was probably the hard part of the process.

Just doing his job

Sounds like Muslix is doing his part to help keep the entertainment industry regular.

Could be good news for Sony.

Now that Blu-Ray can be pirated, there's a chance the format might take off. This could have a positive benefit for PS3 sales.

Re:Could be good news for Sony.

Not that you can't buy a Blu-ray drive for your PC already, but you're looking at spending the best part of a grand to do so.

You can get Blu-ray *burners* for your PC for under $500.

This won't kill DRM

Microsoft and Apple are smart. Disk based DRM is doomed since you can't actually upgrade disk drives and disk media that easily, even with encryption programs written dynamically on the disk.

So as disk-based DRM is consistently wrecked, but can't be updated until the next hardware cycle (~7-8 years at least), which alternative becomes obvious?

Software based DRM via network downloads. You can update the DRM-ed player in the next software patch, automated via Internet distribution. Apple is covered with their iTunes store, and Microsoft has been working frantically on heavy DRM in Vista and WMP.

Now you know why.

Re:This won't kill DRM

Interesting premise, but think about it. For that to be effective you need to tell people that they can't watch the latest movies or whatever on any sort of player that isn't connected to the internet. If you release anything on HD-DVD or Blu-Ray, it's going to hit this "hole", get converted to some unencumbered format, and away it goes. And "Rocky 9, available today on AppleMovieThing" is locking a lot of people out.

Re:This won't kill DRM

You're right. But from what I understand you don't have to for an update - the movies themselves now include them I think. I think the Xbox 360 works the same way with games updating the system. Very sneaky.

One can hope.....

That these cracks and counter DRM attempts cause enough compatability problems that the Consumer electronics industry gives up on DRM, and the studios would have to follow if they wanted there content sold at hi def prices....

One can dream that they'll come to there senses. There is nothing more annoying than petty restrictions on the content you buy..

Why shouldn't I be able to watch my dvd/hd movie on my ipod OR computer OR TV. This is getting stupid. The thing is the studios are unified in there stance by the MPAA, maybe consumers should start lobbying or just stop buying..

Why I won't buy...

I WANT to buy, I REALLY DO! I think there is some great content out there that I WANT to own LEGALLY...

But I'll be damned if I am going to go through all the hassle of taking my ITMS DRM crap and converting it to a stardard mp3 format so I can play it on my "other" players. Same with movies... Its TOO MUCH HASSLE...

I'll just grab the pre-decrypted, ready-to-use, no DRM, no hassle, play anywhere, play anytime torrents, ftp files, usenet d/ls, etc... (hell I can automate this with a few scripts for God's sake)..and deal with the guilty conscience of cheating an artist out of a penny...

Its not that I WANT to cheat the artist out of his/her penny, but if you strip everything away it comes down to a pretty simple economic equation:

H = Hours of MY time spent converting DRM'd crap
V = Value of my time
X = Number of content files
AEC = Artist earnings per content file

So... you end up comparing H*V*X vs. AEC*X, and in MY mind the answer is always:

H*V*X > AEC*X

You go ahead and plug in your own numbers, I have, and to me, its just not worth it. My time is money, and if you think you are going to not only charge me money to buy your content, but then turn around and charge me (indirectly) to modify your content for my purposes, you're nuckin futs!

Hackers Hall of Fame induction

He has definitelly got an invite.

oblig Nelson

HA HA

Does any one remember when the PS2 was anounced, and they said their security method could not be broken? Atleast they don't try and make those types of claims any more.

All this really does is show (yet again) that DRM only hinders honest customers, as any one who WANTS to pirate something, can. The best you can do is force the pirate to do some rather annoyign things to get it all working (think Starforce).

Piracy is a red herring

They aren't doing this because of piracy. Piacy amounts to a drop in the bucket compared to the additional revenue they can squeeze out of honest customers thanks to the fair-use stiffling effects of DRM. The whole piracy thing is to give the honest customers someone else to blame.

"It's teh evil PIRATES wots doing this to you, not us honest content providers!"

The CPS unit key must be know

From the article "The early version of this utility only supports the decryption of Blu-ray discs whose CPS unit key is known." ... "A powerful crypto attack was used to analyze the memory dump obtained from a Blu-ray Disc software player (such as WinDVD or PowerDVD). The crypto attack helped to identify the encryption keys that are needed for decrypting the video files." So it has not been cracked as the keys still need to be found. This just decodes the contents once the keys are found.

Yes it IS a crack

The crypto is only as strong as the algorithm, and the method used for key management.

The argument that DRM is "workable" breaks down because the encrypted message is delivered to a party who is expected to BOTH decrypt the message, and NOT know the keys. But the keys had to be used to effect the decryption!

Basically, it makes very little sense.

The only way that DRM can work is if the playback device does not trust its user. Which means that it CANNOT be a general purpose computer.

The next generation of "DRM Operating Systems" cannot support general purpose computing. Pretty much the only way to guarantee that DRM will work is for such a computer to not allow ANY non-DRM compliant software while DRM content is playing.

In other words, while the DRM movie is playing, your spreadsheet won't.

But, since music playback while working is common, we can safely predict that DRM restrictions will be lifted from music. Movies? The next generation may well support "single tasking while movie is playing" mode.

If this is not done (as well as locking out all non-DRM approved drives and kernel extensions), the keyset can be recovered from the player software.

This crack just demonstrates this particular weakness. When I probe a cryptosystem, I look at the algorithm used (are there errors in the implementation? is it a good crypto algorithm? etc.), the keys (key length, is brute force possible or is the key recoverable from a known encyrpted plaintext, was the key produced by someone sane, or an idiot, etc.) and key management (where and how are keys stored and published etc.).

Remember "Spaceballs": the code is: "1", "2", "3", "4".

It is also good to remember that once a single digital copy is "cracked", the work doesn't have to be done for that title again.

It's not cracked, not yet at least

Again, as with HD-DVD, all that's happened so far is: - he has implemented decryption using the fully public specs - he has recovered some per-disk keys (using a clever technique) by finding them in the memory of software players Neither format should be considered cracked until a standalone software player could play all disks (independent of an online key database) a la DeCSS. That said, major props to him for actually getting done what he got done. The plaintext attack he used to recover the software keys, as described in one of the forum posts, was a nice touch.

Re:It's not cracked, not yet at least

Well, you were talking about a plaintext attack - so it's only right that you post in plain text.

Here's what will kill DRM...

"Honey, I have to reboot the TV because it's just gotten a security bios update and TiVo won't record until it sees the update. Oh, and I'm sorry the DVD player doesn't work: the last automatic update turned it into a spam-bot and I had to turn it off or get sued under CAN-SPAM 2.1"

Re:Here's what will kill DRM...

Honey, I have to reboot the TV because it's just gotten a security bios update and TiVo won't record until it sees the update.

Your post is more true than you realize. [popularmechanics.com]

/. Jeopardy

Muslix gives new meaning to the term "blueballs".

Err, "bluballs".

Nevermind, you guys can finish the joke properly.

Re:/. Jeopardy

Nevermind, you guys can finish the joke properly.

No, I don't believe we can. Sorry.

car-and-mouse game

The Register article has this amusing and quite appropriate typo in it:

muslix64 work has effectively sparked off a car-and-mouse game between hackers and the entertainment industry

Yes, I would say that pretty well fits. The DRM-mouse can neither catch nor flee a car. It's just roadkill at will. HD-DVD roadkill. BlueRay road kill.

-

This will last about 10 seconds...

FTA:

"Blu-ray and HD DVD both allow for decryption keys to be updated in reaction to attacks, for example by making it impossible to play high-definition movies via playback software known to be weak or flawed. So muslix64 work has effectively sparked off a car-and-mouse game between hackers and the entertainment industry, where consumers are likely to face compatibility problems while footing the bill for the entertainment industry's insistence on pushing ultimately flawed DRM technology on an unwilling public."

So.... The keys will be updated, someone else will come out with a "crack," and the merry dance starts all over again. Have we truly gained anything? Methinks not. But maybe content owners might get smart and not bother with this DRM bulls**t.

When wil they learn?

We've been saying on Slashdot for years. If it can be read, it can be copied. The only possible way to deal with that is to completely lock down all players. But the results of doing that too effectively always seems to end up indirectly reducing consumer demand.

And it's pointless. Most people are happy to pay for DVDs. When you eliminate the people who haven't the technical knowledge to download a movie, those who wouldn't buy it if they couldn't get a free copy, and those who would snub a free DVD quality rip over a paid for HD-DVD quality rip, you're looking at pretty small numbers. Meanwhile, they're putting off a similar number of geeks who are deterred by lack of openness, or region coding, or concerns that the encryption isn't going to be compatible with their TV.

DVD Jon the Second

Best part about this is that this time, nobody is going to doubt muslix64. After his first crack was posted people were wringing their hands for weeks wondering if it was legit or a hoax.

The network is now the problem...

With 20+ GB downloads of HD movies, we're going to need much faster pipes in order to continue to illegally download movies. Verizon should help fund these guys, as it will help sell the 15 Mbit FIOS intetnet option.

Andy

something useful?

Maybe muslix can fix the HDDVD and bluray players so they don't downgrade component outputs.

Not hacked or cracked - "bypassed"

I was testing /.'s FireHose system earlier today and saw another submission on this - except that one made it more clear as to what was done to get around the DRM content protection. Basically, its the same thing you can do with a DVD, VCD, or any video file - xvid, h264, etc encoding in avi, ogm, or mastroska containers - that is, make frame-by-frame screen-captures of the video and stitch the resulting images together for a new video file without DRM. To my knowledge, yes, this method does result in a pretty much exact copy of the video, except that because it's basically taking those million frames in the video and saving them as raster images and putting in a fast, 25-30fps slide-show...

or at least thats how I understand how it was done anyway - btw, I think it had said it was something like the Intervideo WinDVD player used, though there are other players which I am sure can do this (from the other article I mentioned)...

Unfixable

This problem that's been used to crack both BR and HD is basically unfixable the way things are isn't it? It's an interesting read on the forum how he did it (page 2, I think). The problem is that the key is in plaintext in memory. But it HAS TO BE doesn't it? You couldn't use it if it was still encrypted, and so you'll have to decode it and put it in memory at some point. The only fix to this would be what a poster on that forum mentioned wouldn't it? You rely on a piece of silicon you control to do all the decoding and such, which would require a BluRay player card or something. You'd have to basically get rid of software players.

He didn't crack Blu Ray or HD DVD

What he did crack is one software based player. There's now a difference. Key holders will now revoke the keys for that particular player, so it won't play newer movies anymore. There's no crack yet that would defeat the entire protection scheme.

People can pick locks too...

You can buy lock picking books and tools easily. Yet you don't see people leaving their homes and cars unlocked because they are suddenly made worthless. Locks are good, so is DRM, when it works properly. It needs to be open, non-intrusive (for the owner) and allow fair use. Unfortunately it seems that the **AA is more interested in forcing consumers to re-purchase every album and movie they own each time a new technology comes along. Anyone who thinks that DRM is to stop pirates is uninformed. It's to stop you from taking all those DVDs, converting them to XviD and storing them on cheap mass storage. It's more profitable to slowly kill off DVDs with Bluray and force everyone to buy both Godfather movies again (Godfather III, you're nothing to me now).

Re:People can pick locks too...

It needs to be open, non-intrusive (for the owner) and allow fair use.

The only difference between some fair use and illegal copying is intent. Not a system in the world can discern that.

This is very good news.

This gives the movie industry no where to run. There was the fear that when the HDDVDs had a work around that the movie industry would go bluray. Now this gives the movie industry very little room to do much of anything at the moment. They just don't get it. There will always be someone smarter than the people who are smart enough to reverse engineer things. They always think they are one step ahead but in reality they aren't. I would like to thank muslix64 for all his hard work.

The drawback people have spotted here

is that you can't just run the program to decrypt all your Blu-Ray(or HD-DVD) disks, you need to locate the key and use that to get the unprotected data.
This sounds like a right pain in the arse. I'm used to buying DVDs willy-nilly and just shoving films onto servers, PSPs, iPods, XBMC etc as the mood takes me. It always works, I just press a couple of buttons and away I go.
Reading these stories have made me think - I'm now even less likely to buy a HD disk than I am a standard DVD. I buy a HD disk in the shop and I've now got to worry, can I get the key for this disk? will it be for the right region? will it be the right version (you can be sure once a disk is cracked they'll shove new keys on all future pressings).
I don't think I can be arsed with all this really.. much easier just to download un-encrypted and know it'll work on everything I own, forever. FFS I'd pay more for the pirate version than the legit one given the chance.
My next prediction is the appearance of a site that'll serve keys. You put your HD disk in your machine, run a util that gets a hash from it, searches online and decrypts the disk automatically.
*scampers off to register hd-keys.com*

This guy beat you to it:

http://hdkeys.com/ [hdkeys.com]

Re:Oh FFS

We are probably going to find out that posting a 32 byte encryption key for a movie on your website does count as a DMCA violation, even though the key is only useful to people who own the disc.

Common sense be damned. Could an encryption key be the world's shortest copyrighted work?

it bears repeating

that all this is is minidisk versus digital compact cassette all over again. how many minidisk or DCC players do you own

bound to happen sooner or later

Ehh.. come on, is this such a shock? I mean, seriously. None of these schemes are safe, as long as there is time and bored hackers there will be broken protection schemes.

Content industries don't care about this

To call it a "cat-and-mouse game" is overstating I think. Why should the content sellers care about someone cracking Blu-Ray or HD-DVD encryption? They know that piracy is inevitable. They just want to keep it underground so the average consumer doesn't participate. And for that, under the DMCA any proprietary encryption system will do just fine. The DMCA gives them the permanent legal right to go after anybody who doesn't license their decryption technology, or who tries to circumvent it in an unauthorized way.

DVD is a great example. DeCSS has been around for years, but it hasn't had a material impact on DVD sales because DVD copying isn't widespread. (At least in the USA; parts of Asia like China are a different story.) Threat of legal action backed by the DMCA has kept DVD backup software generally unavailable to Joe Consumer, despite the widespread prevalence of DVD-R drives and media.

Bottom line: You could break their encryption and print up all the geeky De-AACS T-shirts you want, but it won't materially affect content sales.

One item of information missing from TFA...

immediately upon accessing the unencrypted data on the Blu-Ray disk, muslix64's computer fell victim to a rootkit . . .

It's funny really

The *IAA wastes so much time, energy and ultimately money on various DRM implementations and the end result is always the same. The DRM is eventually cracked so those who want to pirate material can and do yet the DRM is cumbersome enough to upset and turn off a certain percentage of legitimate customers.

My roommate purchased an HDTV a few years ago before the HDCP standard emerged and he recently bought a Playstation 3. He was seriously pissed when he found out he couldn't watch Blue Ray Discs at the highest resolution because his TV wasn't compatible.

Things like this only serve to alienate legitimate consumers who are already inclined to pay for the product. The pirates just wait for the DRM to be cracked.

Getting to the stage.

Where people will just download the pirated versions of their favourite movies just so that they can play them without any problems. DRM technology really proves that content providers really don't care about their customers and are willing to punish a majority of legal users to get sales they probably wouldn't have gotten anyway. When are they going to realise that there is no way that they can stop piracy? I mean it's really quite obvious that you can't encrypt something give you the key to the encryption and expect it not to be cracked.

Decryption algorithm needs an experts touch...

This is a shameless appeal for some coders with HDDVD or BluRay drives to come out of the Slashdot woodwork and finish what muslix64 started. He said he will not finish the AACS decryption tool beyond where it stands, and it has some some serious problems:

Read this forum post for a detailed explanation of the current revision:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=941169#pos t941169 [doom9.org]

See Professor Ed Felten's excellent blog explaining AACS in detail:
http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/ [freedom-to-tinker.com]

The official AACS specifications, straight from the source:
http://www.aacsla.com/specifications/ [aacsla.com]

Your contributions will apply to both HDDVD and BluRay, of course.

I predict

(With my limited understanding of how AACS works) I predict that someone will brute-force decode all of the AACS player-specific keys and post them.

Wish we knew how this guy was...

I want to buy him a beer!

Technology aside....

The huge sums of money invested in developing these new formats and DRM technologies is just staggering. What's more insane is that 97% of the content that these technologies will be protecting is pure garbage that I wouldn't wish upon my worst enemy.

Seriously folks, the vast majority of what we call "entertainment" is simply crap. The entertainment industry needs to do some serious soul searching and come to the realization that rather than blowing all this cash on binary wizardry they need to be investing in good writing, acting, directing, etc.

Good content = more $$.
More DRM = pissed off customers.

BD+ already deployed on future releases

They're already testing BD+ compatibility and preparing firmware updates for the set-top boxes in BD world headquarters. There will be no more Cyberlink support.

BD+ isn't a technology. All BD+ is, is an exception in the warranty that lets them disable customer's hard earned products without getting sued. Cyberlink knew the risk in basing a business on software players and they lost.

Worthless news...

...considering the recent announcement that Sony will not allow porn on BluRay.

The sooner it's cracked the better... for them

The sooner these stupid DRM schemes are defeated, the faster the new hi-def technologies will be adopted by the public at large. If either Blu-Ray or HD-DVD were totally and permanently cracked today, then they would become sooo much more attractive. I think it would convince more people to adopt the cracked platform. Sales would go up and lots of stuff would get pirated. But they wouldn't see the increase in sales as a result of a more flexible DRM-less platform- all we would hear about is the increase of piracy and all the money lost. But it all goes hand in hand. It's a symbiotic relationship.

Re:memory dump

Key has to be decrypted somewhere. Where else do you want to put it?

Sure, a hardware player could put it in a reasonably tamper-proof ROM, but what's a software player going to do?

Re:Muslix?

Ah, tradition [wikipedia.org]. I didn't know about Müslix.

Re:Muslix?

I'm surprised no one has has called him a terrorist yet. After all, the name choice is quite.....salient.