Newest AACS circumvented: The Matrix Trilogy set free
By Thomas Ricker 
posted May 17th 2007 2:59AM
posted May 17th 2007 2:59AM
Just in case you didn't already piece it together, many (if not all) of the new HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc titles set for release on May 22nd will feature the latest revisions to AACS. Right, the update hinted at by those forced user updates to the WinDVD and PowerDVD software. Yeah, well no worries... it's cracked. That's right, a week before the disks have even hit the shops, the kids over at Slysoft have already released AnyDVD HD 6.1.5.1 (beta) which kicks AACS MKB v3 swiftly to the curb. Thus you can continue to rip all your newly purchased HD DVD and BD flicks for playback any damn way you like. The update has already been demonstrated to work with an early-shipped release of The Matrix Trilogy on HD DVD and will likely work for Pirates of the Caribbean - Dead Man's Chest when it arrives on Blu-ray. Come on AACS LA, you're gonna have to at least try. Better yet, why not just give up this silly charade.[Thanks, Garth M.]
This is how the trend will continue and wrong or right AACS won't be stopping anyone that's trying to circumvent copy protection. It will only limit the average user that has no idea what AACS is.
"This is how the trend will continue and wrong or right AACS won't be stopping anyone"
If having AnyDVD on your computer was a crime for which your computer would be seized and you'd spend 1 year in jail, I think AACS would work just fine at stopping almost everyone.
The reason DRM is failing now is that it costs nothing to attempt to circumvent it, so of course people will continue to do that.
If it wasn't a crime to try to sneak a bomb onto an airplane, and 10,000 Americans tried to do it every day, we would have planes exploding on a weekly basis. That doesn't mean it's foolish to have metal detectors in airports.
Don't misinterpret me, I don't want harsh laws, I'm just pointing out that they're a real possibility, and that they would keep DRM alive and well.
Wait... let me get this straight. You're comparing circumventing copy protection to blowing up planes. I'm sorry but I don't believe they are comparable and also people don't avoid blowing up planes because its a crime. Now let me counter your points on DRM. The recent revision to the AACS protection was cracked a week before it came out therefore it is not alive and well. It is actually on deaths doorstep if we are using metaphors. Also, circumventing copy protection can land you in jail for more than a year especially if your distributing large quantities and yet this is still not stopping anyone. In fact I think that copied movies are more common today then they were 5 years ago from major distributors. I live in NY and I see this everyday and with amounts that would easily land anyone in jail. Finally, copy protection is not circumvented because it is free to do. It is circumvented because people want the freedom to do what they please with the media that they purchased, whether those decisions are morally and legally right or wrong.
I have just one word to say about this:
Ahahahahahahahahahaha.
Matrix was on torrents since yesterday, i will download shortly (need some free HDD space). I like seeing DRM cracked. The more DRM they put the bigger the fun seeing it cracked!
It's guys like you that undercut the "fair use" argument. If only the cracks were available for use by those that own the discs to make "backups", then fair use would apply. But that the torrents themselves are available, and guys like you celebrate that and download them, shows that this isn't about fair use, it's about piracy. If it weren't for guys like you, there wouldn't be DRM to begin with.
Although I'm not going to make use of these cracks (I've never bothered to make "backups" of commercial DVDs even though that's been easily doable for years), I do appreciate that the cracks open up the the various "fair use" scenarios. But engadget should stop being intellectually dishonest and admit that these cracks are by and large used for piracy (by guys like you) when they continue to advocate cracking DRM.
BTW, the second and third Matrix movies sucked. :p
Matrix was on torrents yesterday because it uses the old version. Only Reloaded and Revolutions contains the new v3 MKB.
Jesus Christ.
Just... just shut up. You're just wrong. *Sigh*
Go watch the FBI warning at the beginning of a movie some day.
Your ignorance of the law is mind boggling.
"If having AnyDVD on your computer was a crime for which your computer would be seized and you'd spend 1 year in jail, I think AACS would work just fine at stopping almost everyone.
The reason DRM is failing now is that it costs nothing to attempt to circumvent it, so of course people will continue to do that."
erm... it is a criminal act, in the US at least. The DMCA makes it illegal to circumvent any DRM system (with no fair use exceptions), and AFAIK, to make or posess the tools to do so. Not sure whether it's a 1 year jail sentance or not, but it is most definately a criminal act.
Of course, as the digg debacle the othe week suggested, is that this section of the DMCA is pretty much unenforcable an any notable scale. That's the importance of this sort of mass civil disobediance, it shows what a ridiculous and unworkable law the DMCA is.
Cheers,
Tim
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Yeah - you don't seem to get it Daryl. We are in a worldwide community right now. Sure, the US can continue passing the backwards laws bought and paid for by the **AA, but that doesn't change anything in the EU where the DMCA doesn't exist and P2P sharing is legal for personal use.
The US has two choices: it can continue a futile fight which logically ends when we do what China is doing and create our own internet (walling out the rest of the world), OR we can wise up and take steps to update an outdated business model that relies on restricting what people can do with media they buy. The media companies need to be selling an experience, rather than a product. As long as they fail to see that, they will continue to lose the war.
Bad analogy Daryl.
1. Copying a disc doesn't kill people. Bombs on planes do.
2. Your metal detector in airports comparison is the same as saying that all computers should be scanned for AnyDVD installations by some law enforcement organisation prior to inserting/playing a HiDef disc.
There are harsh copyright laws thought of and passed practically every day, trouble is, most of them are thought of and lobbied for by senators that are "supported" by the MAFIAA. Until the public get a clue, these laws will continue to be passed by proxy.
Apologies for my atrocious spelling above.
Molly,
"It's guys like you" - and it's girls like you that make baseless assertions based on an inadequate appreciation for all the factors involved. DRM is control - nothing more, nothing less.
Damn, you sound like a whiny tattle-tale.
Joe
You forgot a more critical argument- region control. I live in China- region 6. The US is region 1. I can
1- buy pirated all-region discs on the street to play
2- wait for the official release (which usually comes months to a year after the US release, the lone exception being Spiderman 3)
3- buy a US disc and play it on my- but oh, the DVD player I have has *region control* and I don't know the code to crack it (it's a Shinco if you can help the situation any) if there even IS one.
1 is out of the question because I don't want to be arrested by Customs, 2 is out of the question for someone as whiny as my sister (she gets straight A's, honor roll, the works- and my mom thinks that she gets the right to make all the demands she wants because of that), and 3- *region control*. So, that leaves torrents. Torrents aren't region-controlled.
No offense, Molly, but this is silly.
If these companies are concerned about money in the first place (the whole argument against piracy makes that clear), then the idea they don't recognize the potential cash cow from technologically circumventing fair use rights, forcing consumers to buy multiple copies of everything (or new copies of old copies are destroyed) is just nuts.
Of *course* we'd have DRM if there were no piracy. It's too good an opportunity to pass up when it comes to making money.
Now, would circumventing DRM be illegal if it weren't for piracy? Perhaps...it depends upon whether the companies could still get laws passed by claiming piracy was a problem. Part of that effort, of course, would have to consist of re-defining "piracy" so that it no longer means "selling someone else's work for your own financial gain", and now means everything from that to the kid who hands his friends a cassette copy of a song. The latter, of course, has been going on for decades, but only now that DRM is available has that become a huge issue. Kind of puts things in perspective.
How can people even joke about the second Matrix Sucking?! Yes, the third one was an abomination, but the first was ground breaking, the second was not only good, but the technology was cutting edge and today is still a marvel to behold.
Sorry for the side note, please continue :-)
Molly, you by far are the biggest moron in this comment debate. most pirates cant afford the stuff they are pirating. yes this includes movies. and this whole "the industry loses X amount of revenue for every copy pirated" is bullshit. a pirate never would have purchased the legal version in the first place so there is no lost revenue. you need to get off your high horse and really learn about it all.
also the reason people are fighting DRM has NOTHING to do with piracy. its us tech geeks that want to be able to use music purchased of the ITMS on NON apple players. or we want our ipod to be able to play flac or ogg media files. or just maybe we are wanting more freedom. for shit sakes it was legal to copy a VHS and give it to a friend. then the DMCA came around and made that illegal cause you werent allowed to circumvent the copy protection (Macrovision) which then violated your FAIR USE rights.
i could go on but i think im going to stop there.
Molly: the gist of it is stfu and gtfo. why? because your an idiot. the DMCA and the MAFIAA (aka RIAA and MPAA) are the Bush adminitration pushing the iraq war of the movie and music industry.
gehzumteufel, you by far are the biggest moron in this comment debate. Suggesting that pirates only pirate because they cant afford something is one of the stupidest things I've heard. I've heard this comment before but decided I had to reply to it this time. Perhaps in some few select cases and in certain countries this may be true, but the majority of people can afford the material they are pirating. My circle of friends and I pirate a shitload and we could easily afford it, and i know this is the most common case. Most people pirate because they are cheap, or because the majority of crap these days isn't worth paying for. DRM sucks but that has nothing to do with not playing ogg on your ipod. Copy protection only servers to harm the people who actually buy the stuff, people who don't will always find a way to circumvent it.
No gehzumteufel, I would say that YOU are the biggest moron. The argument that pirates wouldn't buy the product anyway is one of the most ridiculously stupid excuses used. Not only is it stupid, it's a flat-out lie. You're telling me somebody that can afford the computer, the burner, the broadband internet connection, etc. to download the movie can't afford to buy a legitimate copy of the DVD?!?! Are you f'ing kidding me?? Stop trying to make excuses for your illegal behavior and just admit that you're a cheap slut. Downloading a torrent of The Matrix is no different than walking into BestBuy, shoving it down your pants, and walking out with it. It's theft. Not saying I haven't been guilty of it myself from time-to-time, but at least I'm honest enough to admit that what I'm doing is wrong. The fact that you would bring the Bush administration into this argument just proves that you are a raving lunatic. You, sir, are an arrogant a*hole...go f* yourself.
Your comment assumes a static universe. If everything I wanted but couldn't afford was readilly attainable by stealing it, and there is no risk to speak of, Why would anyone with little ambition be driven to higher goals so they COULD afford the stollen goods?
IOW: if everything was free, no one would excell to obtain it, thus no one would be willing to make it, hence nothing would be made.
My son tries to use the "it's more expensive than they have a right to charge", I say B.S. If everyone was as dishonest as most people who torrent their movies, there wouldn't be any movies to torrent, and stealing is stealing no matter the excuse.
I agree with being allowed to backup your purchased CD's, but to say Hackers are not effecting the market because they wouldn't have bought it in the first place is wrong! Desire is what drives us, if our desires are met without work, then we needn't work at all!
Don't you think it's gotta be starting to get embarassing being one of the guys whose job it is to write all of these DRM schemes? Assuming their friends are probably techies too, do you think they laugh at them the next time they see them when they read this?
And when are they going to get fired? If I sucked this consistently I'd be fired from my job.
HenryJones. Downloading a torrent is not like going to best buy and shoving a disc down your pants. In the BestBuy case, BestBuy physically loses money that they spent to stock the shelves, and so the production company loses nothing, in fact they have still made a 'sale' to you. A torrent causes no monetary loss to anyone, assuming that you weren't going to buy the movie in the first place. I know that assumption isn't always true. There are certainly people that will go to any length to avoid having to pay for something.
Whats the difference between movies and other products? If you buy $20 worth of ground beef, and its rancid, you'll probably get your money back. If you pay 20 bucks for a Matrix Revolutions DVD, also rancid, you are out of luck. People that buy DVD's usually know they like a movie and want to have it around. I've watched movie torrents and then bought the DVD. I've never bought a DVD for a movie I haven't seen. I have a hard time believing that movie studios or BestBuy are really losing money on torrents.
"Downloading a torrent of The Matrix is no different than walking into BestBuy, shoving it down your pants, and walking out with it."
No. That's a completely wrong analogy. Downloading a movie is no different from walking into a Best Buy and WATCHING there on one of the many screen they have showing movies.
- OR -
It's no different from BORROWING a movie from a friend and watching it.
- OR -
It's no different from borrowing it for a library - a public/government funded inistitution - and watching it.
- OR -
Watching it at a friend's place.
- OR -
Opening the disc at Best Buy and using one of their computers with a DVD burner to make a copy of it.
"It's theft"
No. Theft implies that the owner has lost the property. Mirriam Webster's dictionary defines it as "the act of stealing; specifically : the felonious taking and removing of personal property with intent to deprive the rightful owner of it b : an unlawful taking (as by embezzlement or burglary) of property" Since downloading or copying a disc is not depriving the owner of it - they still have their disc - it's not theft. It's actually copyright infringment, though the MPAA and RIAA like to muddy these waters with the term 'data theft'. The difference is that stealing a DVD from a store results in the physical loss of that DVD to the store, which has to still account for disc when it pays the distributers for it; they've been deprived of the disc. You can't physically steal a disc and still leave it on the shelf at the same time. The RIAA (I like the term MAFIAA) loves to use the theft analogy every chance the get because it makes them appear the victims, when it's actually the other way around. The software industry is the only one that doesn't feel that the need to fulfill any form of promise with their products; if you don't like it, too bad. It doesn't work? Here's another copy of the same thing that also won't work. Doesn't play on your player or computer? Get a new one. And my favorite: out of print titles, where you can't replace the content that you pay for if the media wears out, or your license key needs to be replaced due to hardware changes and the original company was taken over by someone else, or just up and vanished.
With all this extra DRM crap, it's getting less and less likely that you'll actually be able to play what you paid for. And the RIAA has yet to define what exactly you ARE paying for; the media, or the content on it? If it's the content, then you should be able to get that content replaced for a nominal fee to cover the cost of the media it's sent on, or the cost of bandwidth (which would be negligible) used to download it. I have several old tapes that have deteriorated over the years and I'd like to watch their content, but I can't; I either have to pay DOUBLE what I originally paid for a CD/DVD or it's just not even available in a digital format - Out Of Print.
If it's the media we're paying for, then why are music downloads so expensive? When tape and vinyl were the only format, an album was about $8; tape was a buck or two more. When CDs hit the scene, prices doubled, and they've there ever since. The excuse was that CD mastering was more expensive, but that's hardly the case anymore. CD mastering, labeling, printing, and shipping is cheaper than those other formats, yet we're still being gouged. An $8 album, which would play on any player, now costs about $20 on CD, which may or may not play on your particular player (or may even cause problems, like Sony's rootkit). You could argue that it sounds better, but there are a lot of people out there that prefer the sound quality of vinyl. Either way, a vinyl or tape format of an album generally worked out to 60 cents or less (most albums had 12 or more tracks, at least mine did), and that cost included the packaging, and a fair amount of physical product. A blank CD now costs about 15 to 40 cents each, and that's a recordable CD that anyone can buy. The cost of mass pressing a CD is a fraction of that, per disc. And yet you can buy a CD - a PHYSICAL item that has been produced, printed, packaged and shipped - for less than it costs to download that same album from various online music stores, and that same CD costs about double what a vinyl or tape version costs.
Now here's the kicker. DVDs frequently cost LESS than CDs, and they have much more content on them. Why buy a CD when I can buy a DVD of the same band that includes extra channels, videos, interviews, etc., for less? Since CDs first appeared 20 years ago, I've bought less than 200 of them to date. I know this because I have 200 disc changer and it's still not filled. The last CD I bought was over a year ago - the soundtrack to "Lemony Snicket's A Series Of Unfortunate Events". I rarely buy any CDs because, honestly, the music that's available now is little more than anal drippings. The stuff I do want to buy isn't available on CD.
On the other hand, in the ten years since DVDs arrived, I've bought over 1200 of them. With a collection that large, anyone is bound to run into a bad disc or two - more like a couple dozen at least. I've run into the disc that won't play in my player scenario several times. I've also run into the disc that suddenly refused to play ever again, as well as the disc that never played at all, and the disc that bounced around in the case until it was thoroughly scratched. Other than a scratched disc, or one that's known to the producer to be defective, you're screwed; you can't take it back if it doesn't play. Even if you can, the replacement disc will be the same and also not play. So am I supposed to get a new player? No thanks. I'm not about to drop another $100 or so and go through the hassle of hooking up a new player to my home theater. The studio got my money and I essentially got a coaster, and they think this is fair. But damn you if you dare to COPY that disc you PAID for the content on, onto a recordable one that WILL play in the player (assuming your DVD burner can read it), and watch the content you paid for off a different disc. That can't be allowed and they'll sue your ass off for that. How foolish, expecting to be able to watch the content you pay to see, no matter what.
All the DRM crap does is just make it harder for the average person to watch anything. I don't touch anything that has DRM in it. If it doesn't play all my players, then I don't want it; as far as I'm concerned it's busted. That pretty much rules out any wmv or wma files, which appear to be little more than a new route for viruses and other exploits.
The codes were going to be hacked, no matter what. That was a given as soon as the idea was first thought up. They're like mountains to climbers. I'm just waiting for the day that a whole bunch of players stop playing discs altogether because their DRM shut them off.
DRM and copy protection schemes in general, only punish the paying customers, and do nothing to prevent piracy. And the region coding BS only encourages it. The sooner all of these are done away with, the better.
He Who Wishes The RIAA And MPAA Would Get A Clue.
@Moly... programs like this don't support pirates, because programs like this only make sense if you have the original DRM'd disk. If I wanted to simply steal a DRM free movie I would go online and download one.
I used to work for the U.S. Military in Europe. I could buy American DVDs at the PX but couldn't play them on my 220v DVD player thanks to DRM. I couldn't play European XBox games on my U.S. XBox thanks to DRM.
I'm not the only one who has had to fight tooth and nail to use the media that I purchased for my own personal viewing. Just because DRM hasn't caused you any heartache doesn't mean it didn't cause others any.
It's amazing how much denial there is about this subject. You people will go to great lengths to try and justify why you deserve something for nothing. As much as you try and spin it, you are stealing and there are people and companies affected by it. It's not YOUR movie to decide how it should be offered. That's GREAT that you think you should be able to get it for free, or that you should be able to return it if you don't like it, or that it's your right to have 10,000 CDs in your collection, or that you feel you should be able to try the movie before buying. But guess what??? It's not your damn decision to make! You don't own the rights to it. You aren't the ones that put up the money to get the movie made, you aren't the ones with buildings to pay rent on, or the ones with the employees to pay. If you want to steal, fine! Just stop trying to justify it already.
I agree with HenryJones.
If you take this into another context, DRM = locks on a car. Oh sure DRM an be circumvented just like locks. Oh look, a nice new BMW there. Maybe it's my right to break into it and see if I can, and test drive it before I buy one?
I guess what the public fails to understand is that when you buy a (DRM), it is only intended to be played back on that particular device, and hence the lock-in. The same goes with online music stores and their respective locked-in players. Only consumers who WANT to play that content outside of the "intended device" that complain about DRM locks and fair-use.
Why isn't anyone complaining about the HD content that they are able to stream from their set-top boxes, and I the fair-use about being able to play that content that they paid for on their iPod video, portable dvd, computer, etc,etc,etc? What's the big fuss about HD-DVD and Bluray encryption? If you want it, pay for it. If you can't pay for it, rent it (netflix).
@HenryJones
Ok, that's fair enough. I don't disagree that it is 'theft', but you didn't dispute my claim that the no one actually loses money on torrents. I think you'll agree that it isn't exactly the same as shoplifting from BestBuy, since no one really loses money. When Napster was on the scene, music company profits consistently rose, all while the record companies were claiming billions in losses.
I wouldn't use the phrase 'you people' that always brings hackles up.
As far as it not being 'your decision to make', you obviously overlook the fact that consumer demand will drive the market. Right now there is consumer demand for a different method of consuming movies/music. But no one wants to satisfy the demand, they just want to tie the consumers hand behind their back and force feed them what suits the corporation. It is only through the complicity of lawmakers (who should be representing the consumer) that they can get away with it. I don't have anything against companies trying to make money, but if they don't provide a good product, they aren't getting my money, regardless of whether or not I can get it for free elsewhere.
@KC: I don't see the analogy. I can sell my car, give it away, loan it to a friend for a day. I don't think the public fails to see lock-in. They just don't like it. When I've bought Bob Marley's 'Legend' on both Cassette and CD, should I have to buy it again on another format? How many times do I need to buy it before I own the right to listen to that music for the rest of my life? The issue here is that the consumer understands well, they just don't like it.
@all: respond to what someone says, don't invent a straw man to attack from the same old platform.
peace
The Question is quite simple: Can we, as consumers, let an enterprise limit the things we do with our goods once we have paid for them? DRM is about not letting us doing what we want with what we have paid. Appart from making copies of a music CD or a HD-DVD movie, which in some countries is ilegal (not in some other countries in Europe), we are limited in our right of listening or viewing our goods the way we like and not the way they want. This is the real question. If you buy a refrigetator that is limited to be used only in your home, and when you move to a new house, you can not take it with you because it has a system to detect that it is not working in the original house, would you accept it? This is what happens when you buy a DVD in China (because, for example, you live there for a while) and you come back to the USA and find you cannot play your chinesse DVDs.
Well, this is what DRM is about.
Piracing is another question. DRM is not about piracy, but about freedom and right over what we have bought. That should be the debate. And that is what hackers are fighting for.
Almost everything I have is pirated. In no way does the fact that I admit it make it better. I could afford a CD certainly, the 700 or so that I have I couldn't. Well, I guess I could have stuck $10,000 into a music collection, but that's a bit extravagant. No, I'd probably just be more selective about which CDs I bought, and in the end I'd miss out on the artists I'd never heard of and actually have work worth being paid for. Here's what I think should happen. Music should be for 'free' on the internet just like playing for free in the streets, set your guitar case out and let people toss in whatever they think you're worth. Except instead of QR 15,000 people in a night you'll see 15 million.
Whether you agree with DRM or DMCA or not, I wonder if you can make a case that DRM -- which we see continues to be regularly circumventable -- adds significant costs to the entire "intellectual property value chain" that inevitably get passed onto the paying customer. One question is, is the value of the "piracy prevention" obtained through DRM (and all its associated hardware, software, legal enforcement, and lobbying costs) outweighed by the increased costs that paying consumers have to foot for DRM? Or can the two even be compared?
I address some of these issues in the following blog post: http://www.ddmcd.com/tax2.html.
Interesting comments, take it easy on Molly she doesn't understand, while the individual who gets his torrent of a movie etc isn't exactly helping the argument for no drm on media , that doesn't mean the argument for no drm is any less valid.
Take my example, i use a Linux based OS and there is no way at present without removing the copy protection on the few HD-Dvd discs that i own that i can actually play the discs.
No i don't own a stand alone player but i was lucky to receive a Hd drive along with a few movies as a gift so without the drm removal i would be stuck with coasters that would not play so i for one am thankful for the hardwork done on removing the drm.
As far as i know for LEGAL encrypted dvd playback on linux there was only one company the folks who make windvd player created lindvd player but that was for only a specific distro of linux and no other company has come forward with dvd playback software for Linux. But we have open source methods such as Videolan and others that are considered illegal by the MPAA and others because it allows playback of encrypted media. I think the samething will happen again for Hd-Dvd and Blu-Ray.
Blah blah blah. "DRM sux because I want it open for fair use", and then the poster(s) also talks about downloading the torrent. Geeze.
They should have been smart and banned PC playback of the discs. You don't make the drive, it kills the casual piracy market.
Pirates could very well have BD+ in place (in fact I'd say it's quite likely, since this is about the time the discs should start showing up), and they can revise that daily if they want to with completely new systems.
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Whoops, sorry about that, keyboards with customized mappings can do some bad stuff in engadget comments sections apparently.
Once agian, let's look at this (not-so) hypothetical situation. I'm not much of a movie freak, but I do enjoy the occasional movie. I buy it. I watch it and then back it up just in case. If I lived in the States (yay Canada!), I would have now broken the law. I've actually had cases where I had my original DVDs scratched up beyond all belief (you'd be amazed what having a little brother can do to your collection), and if I hadn't made those backups, I would've been out 30$. What exactly is so wrong with me backing up my movies? I don't pirate them, I pay for them, so what's wrong with me insuring myself against annoying 4 year olds?
what amazes me is people finding tired Hollywood movies entertaining enough to even download, let alone buy.
I would love a data-only high-capacity drive that doesn't play Blu-Ray and HD-DVD, thanks. Your formats are irrelevant except for my own content to be stored on it, PC-style.
For the rest of the market, DVD is making it very hard for people to be convinced the next-gen formats are worth getting, on the whole.
The DCMA doesn't exist in the UK (which is part of the EU) but that certainly doesn't mean that P2P sharing for personal use is legal. Indeed copying songs you own on CD to your ipod is still technically illegal. I think you're confusing 'personal use' and 'fair use'. The two are, whatever engadget's editors seem to imply at times, worlds apart. Fair use means making one or maybe two copies of copyrighted material THAT YOU ALREADY OWN. So ANYTHING ELSE is illegal.
As for this particular post I would ask engadget to come up with a valid aternative to DRM. Piracy will not magically disappear when it's easier to do it so you just can't have unprotected material going around which anybody can copy whenever they want and expect people to pay for it, human nature simply doesn't work that way.
A good idea, often floated over at theregister.co.uk is something like a flat tax for copyrighted material, say $10 a month paid to the artists whose material is used the most in a similar way to the Nielson ratings pay out advertising revenue. Until you come up with an idea like that or support a scheme similar to it you will always and rightly be called out for being unrealistic or intellectually dishonest.
I feel the whole premise of the DRM debacule is that the MPAA and RIAA believe that everyone (their customers) is a thief; they add DRM to inhibit 'pirates' and to make 'potential pirate' customers be required to purchase replacement DVDs/HD-DVDs (at full retail price) if a disc is damaged/destroyed.
Hopefully the DMCA Fair Use ammendment will work its way through (everyone should write their local Represenative about this one): http://blog.washingtonpost.com/posttech/2007/02/digital_fair_use_bill_introduc.html?nav=rss_blog
There is no 'uncrackable' DRM/code; if you have a company of 1000 people building a DRM scheme, you have 10x (or more) as many people working on breaking the scheme: anything engineered can be reverse-engineered. The question is will it be legal to use this for fair use or not?
The simple truth is that in the United States, DVDs, HD DVDs and I assume Blue Disks are all so affordable that piracy isn't costing manufacturers real consumer dollars. Any economist will tell you that the threat of piracy is based on the fallacy of the false dilemma: A pirate, given no free alternative would have purchased the media legitimately. In actual practice, a pirate, given no free alternative will almost always choose not to have the media in any form. So this crack is really about legit owners deciding how to store, play and archive their own copies of home media...
There is no way DRM will stop piracy. Only people affected by DRM are the customers of these companies -- that is when they buy content that has DRM attached to it. The people responsible for the most piracy -- am not talking about file sharers who download music and video for free but the underground piracy network (there is one for software, music, and movies) but the people responsible for the creation of illegal copies of a copyrighted work and the distribution thereof. A pirate can be an uploader on a file sharing service or a distributor knowingly selling pirated DVDs. A huge source of piracy outside the U.S.A. happens in countries in Asia like India and China. There pirated DVDs are sold of popular movies. The real question here is: Are customers of pirated content also considered pirates? What if you went to such a country like India and there you bought a DVD of the Disney movie Pirates of The Carribbean: The Curse of The Black Pearl on China's black market. If you knowingly bought a pirated copy some responsibility might fall on you but what if you didn't know it was pirated. Or you saw others doing it would that be justification to do so as well? That's part of the moral argument.
Now the purveyor of the DVD -- the seller would if he knowingly sold you a pirated DVD whether or not you knew it was pirated would be in either case more responsible than the buyer -- either way the buyer should partly be responsible -- the buyer should be smart enough to check if its pirated before agreeing to buy -- if he knowingly purchases it that makes the buyer even more responsible.
Buying a pirated copy of a movie means the company that made the movie loses a potential sale and suffers lower profits. Money that should have gone to the company that is legally in charge of making or distributing the movie is never entered into that company's hands. Tracing the pirated movie to the source would also implicate the manufacturer of that disc -- of the pirated copy of the movie. If the disc is pirated and so is the copy of the movie saved on it obviously the maker of that pirated disc -- whoever knowingly commited piracy by making a pirated copy and the seller responsible for selling that version could if caught go to jail.
Hard core pirates have no respect for the law, intellectual property on any level or copyright. If I download music for free using p2p networks and filesharing sites and the music industry claims piracy is the cause for its lower profits -- or its loss of sale to me I still didn't produce the pirated version. The worst form of piracy is when you pay for content that is pirated. Piracy with monetary profit is terrible for the content companies that legally produced said content.
I have bought some music in the past from Apple's iTunes Store choosing frequently to buy singles rather than entire albums --something not available when buying a CD. Later I can burn an audio CD of my purchased tracks to rip out the DRM and make CDs containing my singles -- individual songs I like grouped together on CD at random.
Most often though I prefer to avoid DRM entirely even though I did buy some videos also on iTunes -- I now try to steer clear from buying too many more. I now prefer to avoid purchasing from iTunes entirely unless its DRM free.
Just an update: DRM will as stated no stop piracy but encourage it. Honest hardworking consumers that would otherwise be willing to pay for the content will according to RIAA and MPAA be classified as pirates for getting content free -- but their reason for doing so is it is not offered for sale without DRM. You can get it free without DRM or pay and get DRM included. Copy protection technology will lure more people to p2p networks and become users of free filesharing networks to download and share content freely without DRM limitations. The content companies will lose potential sales -- not literally its not like the physical product was stolen or a copy thereof exactly which still has to be accounted for -- but such users would otherwise pay for the content to acquire it. Acquisition without payment or payment that does not reach the content company is considered a form of piracy. When consumers can access and acquire content for free why pay for the commercially distributed version. Just like free software with open source why pay for commercial software -- of course open source is still legit -- most free music download services and video download services that offer content for free have some legal issues.