May 01, 2007
“Like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool”
Posted by: lab : Category: general tech, software
This is a crazy story of how a 16 digit hexadecimal number is causing a lot of trouble and a lot of excitement all at the same time. Ever want to burn a DVD, but can’t because of that pesky encryption key? Well the universal encryption key was posted all over the Internet today, and consumers are pumped! The AACS …. not so happy. In fact, posts containing the key have been removed all over the internet, and users have even been blocked from websites such as digg.
As Joe Rogan’s character on Newsradio once quite accurately quipped, "Dude, you can’t take something off the Internet.. that’s like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool." The content providers have attempted to do exactly that, remove pee from the proverbial swimming pool that is the Internet and, as we’ve witnessed so many times before, they’ve failed miserably.
[AACS] has taken action, in cooperation with relevant manufacturers, to expire the encryption keys associated with the specific implementations of AACS-enabled software.
In the meantime, all currently released DVD’s can be unlocked using the key.