AACS HD copy protection cracked, bypassed and broken

As a populist that tends to root for the little guy, as well as a person critical of big corporation buffoonery in all it’s flavors, I have been highly amused by the HD copy protection schemes on HD-DVD and BlueRay. The biggest corporations spent mucho dollars on the schemes to prevent you from copying these disks or even playing them on hardware such as Linux boxes that do not keep the data stream encrypted the entire way to the screen. It is rumored that “perfecting” the copy protection on BlueRay drives is what delayed the Sony Playstation game console, not that anyone wants one once they have seen a Nintendo Wii.

My first amusement was just after Christmas 2006, when the Doom9 forum, a community where savvy computer lovers discuss DVD issues, hosted a post by Muslix64. He stated that he had done a plain text attack on the software player and found the keys for several HD-DVD disks. It took him an afternoon to crack the standard that was launched by 10,000 PowerPoint presentations. So then some of the posters to the group posited a conspiracy and that the success of Muslix64 could only be fostered by some big evil corporation and that must be the BlueRay people trying to destroy HD-DVD. A week later Muslix64 posted the program to crack the keys for BlueRay. He must be a young kid since he needed the help of someone who could actually afford to buy that expensive $800 BlueRay drive, but once they got together the BlueRay copy protection was toast.

Muslix64 was very humble and insisted his plain-text attack on the software players was not a real crack of the encryption such as done by Jon Johansen, the wily Norwegian that actually cracked the CSS system used on non-HD DVDs and published as DeCSS. Muslix64 insisted his was just one step in the overall understanding of the AACS, the copy protection scheme used on HD content disks.

If you want a nice overview of the state of HD copy protection cracking, my friend Dave Ruigh just sent me a link to a nice thread on Doom9. In addition Dave found a nice article about a crack that uses an Xbox360 Toshiba drive to get the volume ID from any HD content. This may mean the only way out is for the AACS people to revoke the keys for all the Toshiba drives, meaning they would no longer play HD content. The legal implications of this are staggering and depict one of the problems I have with the AACS system—that it implements conditional property rights. You own the disk or the drive, as long as you don’t get uppity. It is like someone selling you a house but having a clause in the contract that you cannot resell it to a Catholic. Conditional property is dangerous stuff and its adoption encourages a police state to implement it. If the AACS people revoke the keys for the Xbox players then they may have to pay to have newer firmware put into the players. Odds are they will just post the firmware and pray the American Trial Lawyers Association is not feeling too frisky.

When muslix64 posted the program, he also posted a video on youtube to show how his program worked and to show you a few of the volume keys for popular new HD-DVDs. The clip had a short section of the Warner Brothers logo as well as a tiny clip from Full Metal Jacket. Warner Brothers has filled a complaint with Youtube and made them take this down. This is almost certainly illegal since the muslix64 clip is guarantied to fall under fair use. Warner’s have just cut off the head off a hydra that grows seven back. Typing muslix64 into youtube’s search engine resulted in this copy of muslix64 original post. This copy pixilated and kills the sound of the Warner clip, and adds a little ad for the poster’s cracking site at the end. Way to go Warner’s, that worked really well. Warner’s will have a very hard time taking this one down, although they will no doubt try.

Warner had better watch their step. A very pertinent case is that of EFF lawyer Wendy Seltzer. To show her class your copyright claims are abused she posted to youtube a video clip of the warning from an NFL game about how the game was copyrighted. She didn’t post the game, or the big touchdown play or anything of real interest, just the warning. Sure enough, the NFL told Youtube to take it down. Now, in the much-abused Digital Millennium Copyright ACT (DMCA) they are allowed to do this. What the drooling pigs at the NFL legal department may have not realized is that the DMCA also allows the original poster to make a counter claim and have youtube put it back up, which Wendy promptly did. Then the NFL ordered Youtube to take it down again. This violates the DMCA, which says that if the original poster insists the clip is fair use and has it put up again, it is against the law for the NFL to have it taken down. Now this has to go to court where a jury or judge will decide if the post is fair use. The NFL clip was certainly fair use. See here and here.

muslix64 will not challenge Warner’s and have youtube put the clip up because that will identify him and then Warner’s will bring a swarm of lawyers down on him the way the DVD content people tried to do with Jon Johansen, the DVD decryption hacker. He was ultimately reprieved in court but it could have bankrupted him except for the help he got from the community. Now muslix64 might not challenge the clip but I think anyone else might be able to post it and then challenge Warner’s when it is taken down. That person has nothing to fear about the original AACS cracking. Sorry, Warner’s you can’t stultify fair use, parody and mash-ups.

For a graphic representation of what is happening, see the cave scenes in Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 when the heroine, Stretch, is taped into the skeleton chair and the cannibals are trying to get grandpa to stun her with the big hammer like when he worked in the slaughterhouse decades ago. No, Grandpa was too old and week to kill Stretch and the Warner Brothers legal department is to old and weak to kill fair use and HD-DVD cracking.