Decryption Keys For HD-DVD Found, Confirmed 473
kad77 writes "It appears that, despite skepticism, 'muslix64' was the real deal. Starting from a riddle posted on pastebin.com, members on the doom9 forum identified the Title key for the HD-DVD release 'Serenity.' Volume Unique Keys and Title keys for other discs followed within hours, confirming that software HD-DVD players, like any common program, store important run-time data in memory. Here's a link to decryption utility and sleuthing info in the original doom9 forum thread. The Fair Use crowd has won Round One; now how will the industry respond?"
Even simpler (Score:2, Insightful)
I predict that any backlash against key revokation will be addressed by very polished newsvertisements which state that the key revocation is the result of "hacking" by the "pirates" and despite the sincere regret of the problems caused, there is nothing they can do at this point.
"now how will the industry respond?" (Score:3, Insightful)
"Hello, Doom9.com's ISP? Yes, this is Microsoft. We're auditing your sofware licenses."
"Hello, Doom9.com's registrar? You're being charged with violating the DMCA. Pretty much all of it."
"Hello, little tiny country? This is the MPAA, and as official representitives of the US government, we're asking you to hand over all people involved in this post on Doom9.com's forum. If you fail to respond, we'll enact sanctions on your country and drive you into the dark ages. Just look at North Korea for an example.
We have a Winner... (Score:4, Insightful)
Wait!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The fair use crowd? (Score:5, Insightful)
or people who want to watch movies they bought on their mythtv system
or people who like to buy movies and watch them, but don't run windows
Re:The fair use crowd? (Score:4, Insightful)
The response will be the dumping of HDDVD. (Score:5, Insightful)
The point is to create as much damage as possible, so the industry learns that the only one hurt by DRM are they themselves. Revoked keys mean more work, more expense, more hassle and dissatisfied customers who have to jump the hoops. This will in turn create more awareness for DRM and the problems it creates.
We have to teach the studios that DRM is a failure. That it only generates hassle and problems for their paying customer and is no barriere or even a deterrent for the pirates. For this, the customer has to be the one hurt, too. Learn the easy or the hard way, learn about DRM by investigating or by having your tools stop working.
Yes, that's not the usual gentle way of teaching. But appearantly some people don't learn 'fore it starts to hurt.
Again, this is NOT a crack! (Score:5, Insightful)
However, it is my understanding that the decryption process can be done by the TPM; once this is supported, the problem will be much more difficult. Make no mistake, the battle has only just begun. Before long, software based attacks may be rendered impossible.
When will tech people starting getting (Score:5, Insightful)
The real question is not how they will respond, but when will they learn?
Re:Even simpler (Score:3, Insightful)
Except settle in a class-action lawsuit.
the lesson here... (Score:4, Insightful)
people have been xeroxing books for like 40 years and nobody ever made such a stink as the mpaa and riaa have. their whole thing is so wrongheaded, if they would spend all those legal fees and lawyer salaries on hiring better directors/writers/actors their profits would skyrocket. its not piracy that loses them profits, it's SHITTY PRODUCTS.
Re:Blu-Ray Rules Supreme! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Even simpler (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:youtube demo removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Analog Hole (Score:5, Insightful)
No piracy is being stopped by these means. They're and will always be utterly useless.
Re:The response will be the dumping of HDDVD. (Score:4, Insightful)
Except for the fact that HD-DVD is cheaper for the consumer, and also has the backing of the porn industry since Sony is prohibiting porn on Blu-Ray. So consumers will continue to buy HD-DVD players to watch their porn in HD and Blu-Ray usage will continue to flounder. Sales of mainstream titles on Blu-Ray will do poorly and the movie studios won't make any money. They'll either have to offer titles on HD-DVD or give up on HD sales altogether. On top of that, it's only a matter of time before Blu-Ray protection is cracked as well. IIRC, the Blu-Ray encryption is similar to HD-DVE encryption, so it shouldn't be all that difficult.
Re:Again, this is NOT a crack! (Score:3, Insightful)
Only one person needs to "crack" the encryption once.
It doesn't matter, at all, that they (the "big evil guys") can revoke keys. Get one key, decrypt it, and you now have DRM free audio and video. It only takes one to fire up that BitTorrent client. Who cares if the key is revoked after that? Once you have the data, you have the data, plain and simple. All it takes is once to seed a torrent.
Put it that way, and you can tell it's not about stopping pirates. It is about stopping free usage of a media you have legally purchased through other methods, which it does perfectly.
Pirates just give them a "pubically acceptable" reason to DRM your house, down to the nails that hold it together.
You do have a good point about the TPM, though. However, seeing as nothing that I know of to date uses it, well, I for one am going to wait and see just what happens with it. It has a lot of potential, for good, and for bad...
Who cares about existing titles? (Score:4, Insightful)
The point is that they will make this about Piracy, and that its the Pirate's fault that you have to go download an update to get your machine to work. Not their fault (Say "Not my fault" in David Spade's voice an you'll get the idea). Most consumers will believe the newsvertisement they see on ther local station that blames those evil pirates for their suffering. If it weren't for the pirates, their stuff would work. Which can easily be spun at truth - pirates cracked the system, system must be safe or poor artists children will starve, so we had to change the system - all pirates fault. Your mother would fall for that, and you know it.
Right and wrong is irrelevant - it's who takes the blame for the mess that matters, and the industry has a lot of PR money to make sure the finger points at someone else.
It does hurt the consumer (Score:5, Insightful)
So, because the MPAA is afraid of an attack that isn't feasable, and may never be, they are forcing early to buy new hardware (for no good reason). I can't help but wonder if this wasn't a simple money grab -- force everyone to upgrade so they pay you twice for the same hardware.
Re:Even simpler (Score:3, Insightful)
But it's volume keys leaking? Sure, they could re-encode the content and release new copies (hmm, to what estimated extra costs??) for a volume key revocation, but what use would that be when the previous version of the disc has already been decrypted and released as torrents?
Re:Blu-Ray? (Score:3, Insightful)
The GP is correct. If you can actually capture DVI in realtime, then you're probably inside the industry already, where no form of copy protection can prevent leaks.
Also, especially referring to 1080p TVs, regardless of the signal stored on the disk, the output is pretty much 1920x1080x60fps. And, if anything, it's probably 32bpp between device and monitor.
Re: Don't like Movies Much? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Even simpler (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Blu-Ray Rules Supreme! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Blu-Ray Rules Supreme! (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not sure these are the same Slashdotters. Also, I'm not sure there is a contradiction here (as you seem to suggest). Personally, I believe in competition, but I also believe in interoperability. In fact, I believe that interoperability makes competition more effective. Having two incompatible formats pollutes competition with another factor: rather than being about the quality and price of the content, it's suddenly about compatibility.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Too many customers ARE 'criminals' though (Score:3, Insightful)
Customers shouldn't be treated like criminals, but they shouldn't act like criminals either. Many "customers" act as criminals then bitch and moan when they're being treated as such.
What is needed is a DRM that is advanced enough to be flexible enough to allow all "fair use" while curtailing piracy. That would be the ideal. But the reality is that DRM isn't advanced enough and won't be any time soon, if ever. So the best would be to get rid of DRM altogether. But please do NOT pretend that DRM is broken primarily for "fair use". It's broken for piracy over torrents and P2P and warez sites. In other words, it's broken for "criminal" activity, so I seen no reason why those engaged in such should be treated as "criminals".
Note: I put "criminal" in quotes, because copyright infringement is actually a "civil" offense rather than "criminal", in the US. Unless one pirates more than $1000 worth of works in 180 days, in which case it does become "criminal". [usdoj.gov]
Re:Who cares about existing titles? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, right. Take a look at the prices for DVD seasons of for example Babylon 5 or Star Trek... they're incredibly expensive even though they're many years old. How much does Disney classics go for again? Besides, it's probably not like pirates are going to announce their player keys, they'll likely just release the titles.
The sad thing is that it'll work for release groups having decryption keys and pirates getting decrypted versions, while it probably won't work for average consumers who wants to do fair use like back-ups, format shift, non-HDCP screens and so on, because they don't have a disc from the same batch.
Re:Um, no (Score:3, Insightful)
In this case, fair use is a pretty damned good argument. The fact that the videos will refuse to play because the player software has decided that it simply doesn't like your hardware is a good enough reason to circumvent the restrictions, IMO.
And if I owned the necessary hardware and such a disc, I'd be making that argument to the secretary of state [duke.edu] that I should be allowed access to an unprotected copy, in order to be able to access the data as is my right as a valid licensee.
Re:The response will be the dumping of HDDVD. (Score:2, Insightful)
Sony goon #1: How do we win this format war?
Sony goon #2: Well, if ours was more secure than the other, the DRM-obsessed executives at the other studios would have to choose ours.
Sony goon #1: So, what you're saying, is we should hire up some hackers to ruin the competition's technology, post the crack to some public forums, and we win! Brilliant!
Re:Too many customers ARE 'criminals' though (Score:1, Insightful)
That's complete nonsense. All of those torrents out there result from breaking the DRM once. Meanwhile, every time I use VLC to play a DVD I'm breaking the DRM, just because I like VLC better, or because my discs have the "wrong" region code. Whenever I rip a DVD to an MP4 so I can play it on my iPod, I'm breaking the DRM.
All DRM really does is make fair use harder, without affecting piracy. I break DRM just so I can timeshift or format shift, but when I actually pirate stuff off the internet I'm never breaking the DRM.
Meanwhile I get pissed off because I can't legally develop an application that captures the video stream of a DVD, even though that app wouldn't be breaking any copyrights. Why is that criminal?
Re:Too many customers ARE 'criminals' though (Score:5, Insightful)
Only because exercising fair use is acting like a criminal. Except its only acting; it isn't being.
The actions of a criminal can also be the actions of a law-abiding citizen legally exercising his rights. It is to what ends the acts are performed that (are supposed to) define them as criminal.
I can swing my fists in the air as long as I like as long as I don't hit your nose. It's bad laws like the DMCA that would make swinging my fists in the privacy of my single-occupancy home a crime.
Re:Recording DVI out (Score:3, Insightful)
BTW, macs don't come with software or codecs to record, transcode or play back the HD MPEG streams available on firewire. Firewire hard drives aren't required either. You could have just as easily said firewire deck + PC + magic software. Nice try.
You are so right, sort of... (Score:3, Insightful)
Linux users whose computers don't come with the software automatically will just choose Applications->Add/Remove Software and choose "HDCrack", which by then will be a graphical frontend for mplayer. Mplayer and the cracking software will be downloaded automagically and probably will access a network of online database of title keys hosted in openness friendly countries. Thereafter when they insert a supported HD-DVD, it will just play. It will, as usual, contain ripping software for translating the content into a more accessible, device shiftable and back-up possible format.
When you run Windows, freely available (and commercial) software (and even sometimes simple media!) often comes with evil code. Linux users usually don't have to deal with that. Linux users can use trusted repositories and the free choices available are an embarassment of riches. The question isn't if the software is available, but which package best suits your goal. Access to this global pool of application resources is built in to the standard interface on most distributions.
It must be tough to be a Windows only user these days. All that going to the store and giving your credit card number to anonymous websites and all... Not knowing whether you're installing something that works, doesn't work, crashes your computer or is just a trojan horse program that surrenders your computer to anonymous remote control whether you paid for it or not. So sad. And the OS comes with absolutely no real applications, except of course the world's least secure browser. And that's just the stuff you install on purpose. Stuff that installs itself unbidden or hacks that come preinstalled by the OEM (without an OS-Only install CD!) are an entirely different level of sad.
Don't worry, though. The world understands. They expect less of you because of the poverty of your tools.
Sit down, boy (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Too many customers ARE 'criminals' though (Score:5, Insightful)
DRM will never be this advanced, because this proposal is fundamentally impossible, because it implies logically inconsistent outcomes. Either I can copy no part of the video for any reason, or I can copy some part of the video (no matter how small) for any reason. If I can copy any part, even screenshot by screenshot, for any reason, I can re-assemble it outside the player and the DRM is therefore useless. If I can't, fair use is violated.
DRM, in all it's manifold and perverted forms, can go to hell.
Re:No problem (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm pretty sure they can't. (Score:3, Insightful)
Come to think of it, who is responsible when a manufacturer makes a product and a revoking authority with which they'd signed a contract turns it into a paperweight? Whose responsibility, whose fault?