May 02, 2007
So now numbers are illegal - specifically, 13256278887989457651018865901401704640, or 09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0 in hex. Besides being the total amount (in yoctograms) of sediment needed to maintain the deltaic wetlands in coastal Louisiana, it is the "Processing Key" that will let open-source developers make Blu-Ray/HD DVD players.
Um, yes numbers are illegal when they're copy protected, what's hard to believe about that? Why is everyone so shocked that you can protect numbers? Also, the DMCA protects copyright owners against reverse engineering cracks to their encryption. Why is it hard to believe that it's illegal to brake locks on intellectual property when you know it's illegal to do so on physical property?
Maybe I should reverse engineer the key to your apartment and put the schematic online. Why not just say it's a depiction of the rocky mountains. It's just 2d line art.
You and I probably agree that copy protection in its current form restricts fair use and should be changed but that doesn't mean breaking copy protection isn't illegal.
Why don't you send a letter to your representative asking for them to amend the DMCA instead of getting into a huff over something as pointless as this.
This is the same crappy argument that people make when they get busted for smoking pot. Hey man, it's just a plant, it grows naturally in the wild, what's the big deal? The point is that it's ILLEGAL whether you want to accept it or not.
Oh, and it's NOT the total amount in yoctograms of sediment needed in Lousianna. -20 for sig. figs
The end result of this will be just that they'll eventually just develop increasingly new media with increasingly less hackable encryption, culminating in some sort of quantum encryption and $75 home movies. This is a zero sum arms race.
Interestingly (speaking of QE), I read somewhere that some quantum cryptography setup at MIT is eavesdroppable about half the time, without being detected.
I've written letters to my representatives about the DMCA, thanks for asking.
This is hardly a zero sum arms race. The cost of distribution and marketing for media -- which account for most of its price -- has dropped to effectively zero. Yet the large record, TV and movie companies that buy these laws have neither dropped prices or demonstrated any imagination in the face of this new reality.
In doing so, the companies have created a system in which a consumer with means has two choices: 1) pay five to ten times what the product is worth or 2) pay zero times what the product is worth.
More to the point, what you're missing sG is that the media companies are engineering a land grab with laws such as the DMCA. These media keys are essential to have open-source players. There is in fact nothing illegal about posting a dimensioned engineering drawing of my house key on the net, and it would have a negligible effect on my home security. (I hope I'm not giving anything away when I point out that smashing a window is simpler than CNC milling a copy of my home key.) What's illegal (as well as immoral) is to *break in* to my house.
Talking about keys (or, say, posting plans for making a bump key that can class-break pin-cylinder locks) is not wrong and should not be illegal. Using those keys for nefarious purposes is wrong and should be illegal. Trying to put the toothpaste back in the tube, as the AACS is doing here, just illuminates the media companies' generally foolish and retrograde approach to the digital era.
I agree with everything that you're saying here, and I agree that current copyright laws are absurd and should be reformed.
But I also know that the media companies are just going to add more and more security as the new hacks develop. If current media are hackable, they'll come out with new media that are wholly unhackable. Reading those threads makes it clear that they aren't even currently using the entire encryption machinery that's currently built into Blu-ray.
It will be sold as "increasing quality" but it will actually be for the purposes of security. And it will make everything more expensive. The answer is for congress to get off of its ass and regulate the beg media conglomerates. Hacking into the system will only end in this endless escalation.
Honestly, in this, as in many, many other things, the answer is some anti-trust legislation that breaks up the big media conglomerates.
But that's socialism and that's bad.
I'd say the solution is to let the market effects take over (there's only a limited amount of time the large companies can compete with free) and less government involvement (specifically, the market-restrictive whoring out of fair use). But you know me -- I'm just a Republican that way.
yes, market effects. if you publish a crack to blueray/HD DVD encryption won't people be more likely to buy the disks because now they can back them up and use them on other devices?
I say leave the horrible DRM on the disks so people don't buy them. That's a market force.
Another: there's little question in my mind that the greatest marketing force acting in Apple Computer's direction is the Vista DRM subsystem.
I think free market forces will end in the media companies just making things more and more expensive, and increasing the security and insanity of their hacks. They won't be competing with free, they'll stop making blu-ray and make some sort of less hackable medium. And when that fails, they'll step it up more.
Everything is hackable. Period.
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More on AACS protection and way more than you want to know about AACS
posted by mrflip at 03:33PM CST on May 02