Film Funding Blog

Pirates (not the Caribbean ones) are sending shockwaves through the motion picture industry. Hacker sites are reporting cracking the encryption on both formats of high definition DVD. This is a tremendously negative development for consumers. Already skittish about making high definition programming available due to piracy concerns, this news confirms the entertainment industry’s worst fears. I think we can look forward to even more stringent digital rights management (DRM) that limits available content and decreases consumer enjoyment of the latest movies and entertainment programming.

Here is a summary of the hack:

HD DVD and Blu-ray Now Completely Hacked, Cracked, Sacked

Gizmodo , February 13, 2007 Tuesday 11:15 AM EST

Feb. 13, 2007 ( delivered by Newstex) –

The guys at the Doom 9 forum are marking February 11, 2007 as the day when digital rights management was defeated on Blu-ray and HD DVD discs. It turns out that cracking the high definition disc formats was much easier than was originally thought. The processing key that can unravel the DRM on all HD DVD and Blu-ray discs has been found by a clever encryption fighter named arnezami.

It gets better:

The first-reported and Blu-ray discs were not completely effective, because each individual title had secret codes that were needed to unravel the rest of the encryption on that disc. But now this newly-found processing key is apparently the holy grail that unlocks the DRM on all HD DVD and Blu-ray discs released so far. The guy found it by simply watching his computer memory, where the secret code–which we won’t publish here for fear of doing jail time–simply appeared. Incredible. Let the free downloads begin! — Charlie White

[Doom9 Forum]

http://www.contentagenda.com/articleXml/LN570885857.html?industryid=45180

You can also check out this post on Boing Boing:
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/02/13/bluray_and_hddvd_bro.html