On our last News Desk post of 2006, we reported that an anonymous hacker called Muslix64 had announced that he had cracked the Advanced Access Content System (AACS) digital rights management (DRM) scheme. Muslix64 said he'd release more details (and decryption software) on January 2. That software, called BackupHDDVD, is now available online and the Internets have been all atwitter about it, with charges ranging from "bogus!" to "hallelujah!"
Integral to this discussion is that Muslix64 was prompted to crack AACS not out of a desire to pirate HD DVD content, but out of frustration that he could not watch HD content on his computer monitor or make back-up copies of his legally purchased discs. This is why open-content advocates refer to DRM as "defective by design." It limits legitimate users' options while offering few impediments to criminal enterprises, which frequently ignore considerations such as quality.
We're not qualified to judge BackupHDDVD's merits, so we turned to Professor Ed Felten's Freedom to Tinker blog for expert deconstruction. Felton is the founding director of Princeton's Center for Information Technology Policy, and Freedom to Tinker is the go-to site for informed commentary on technology, law, and policy. Scientific American named Felten one of its 50 worldwide science and technology leaders in 2004. In December 2006, Felton joined the board of directors at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).
Freedom to Tinker has so far devoted four major discussions to BackupHDDVD and AACS. On Monday, January 8, Felten explained how AACS works and what BackupHDDVD actually does. (It isn't a no-brainer solution.)
On Wednesday, January 10, Felten explained that BackupHDDVD only de-encrypted the second of two keys needed to access the content of HD DVDs. He sees this as part of the "game" played by content providers and reverse engineers: The very information published by the "engineers" alerts the "central authority" as to which discs have been compromised.
Thursday, January 12's column by J. Alexander Halderman explored the public relations implications of content providers' aggressively "blacklisting" the device keys of publicly decrypted HD DVDs—a move that would prevent legitimate users from viewing their legally purchased discs and lead many to abandon their "up-to-date" HD devices in favor of simpler ones, thus further eroding high-rez discs' market share.
In the last column FTT has published on the subject to date, Halderman explores further ramifications of blacklisting from a game-theory perspective. It highlights the truth that simple answers to the complex question of disc encryption simply aren't in the cards.
In the case of AACS, complex answers to this complex question may not suffice either. We're lucky we have Freedom to Tinker to help us understand the pertinent issues and interplay. We'll certainly keep reading Professor Felten's website for its insights into the issue.
