AACS LA Versus Digg, Google in DMCA Showdown Over Leaked Key
The entire uproar over whether the posting of a 32-hex digit code should be censored as copyright infringement or upheld like a banner of liberty, overlooks a fairly significant technical issue: specifically, whether the media key, discovered last February after all, still works.
Last month, AACS LA began its first wave of distribution of so-called revocation keys. Through Internet connections and through the distribution of new HD DVD discs, these keys are matches to media keys considered to have been compromised, and this list is believed to contain the now-celebrated 32-hex digit code.
Whether a site posting a software patch that contains revocation keys may, in so doing, be distributing the media keys that were compromised - and thus violating the terms of the DMCA, as maintained by AACS LA's lawyers - remains to be seen.
Meanwhile, members of the Doom9 Forum, including arnezami, have been working since last month to apply a homebrew patch to Microsoft's Xbox 360 HD DVD attachment drive, after having reverse-engineered the firmware from two drives to compare the differences in their code and determine the locations of secret keys. Their stated objective is to make it possible for software to decrypt the contents of a disc using its volume key only - which is more easily located.
If they are successful, then theoretically software could be permitted which enables Linux users to play HD DVD movies without a processing key at all, which would have made this whole two-and-a-half month discovery process another chronicle of wasted time.
In his Freedom to Tinker blog yesterday, engineer Ed Felten - who last year demonstrated the ease in which an unauthorized party could break into a Diebold voting machine - made a poignant comment about this whole affair.
"It's hard to see the logic in AACS LA's strategy here," Felten wrote. "The key will inevitably remain available, and AACS LA are just making themselves look silly by trying to suppress it. We've seen this script before. The key will show up on T-shirts and in song lyrics. It will be chalked on the sidewalk outside the AACS LA office. And so on."
5:35 pm May 2, 2007 - A spokesperson for the HD DVD Promotions Group denied to BetaNews late this afternoon that the organization had any involvement in the sending of takedown notices to Web sites and search engines. Press reports have cited, in addition to the AACS Licensing Authority, the HD DVD Promotions Group and the Motion Picture Association of America as being behind these notices; to the best of BetaNews' knowledge, and based on the spokesperson's comments to us, we believe these reports to be inaccurate.