AACS Update Cracked Before It Even Hits The Market

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the banging-your-head-against-the-wall dept

The AACS copy-protection technology on HD DVD and Blu-ray discs was supposed to represent a brave new world of DRM that was not only difficult for people to circumvent, but pointless to circumvent as well, since it has features that allow for the revocation and replacement of cracked keys. So when AACS was cracked a few months ago, as pretty much every DRM technology is, it wasn’t supposed to be a big deal. Of course, the fact that the group behind AACS absolutely freaked out when people started posting a key online seemed to undermine that contention. Now, the first discs featuring an AACS update that revokes the cracked keys are about to come out — but the update has already been cracked too. This case of cat-and-mouse highlights the futility and wasted resources inherent to creating and supporting DRM and treating your customers like criminals, as opposed to channeling those resources into delivering them products they want through business models they like. Expect the group behind AACS to soon say that this isn’t a big deal, and in three months, it will issue a new update revoking these keys — and then that update will get broken, and so on and so on. The end result will be copy protection that doesn’t work, and plenty of wasted time, energy and money.