HD DVD Processing Key Cracked
May 2nd, 2007 by Bobosan
Talk about a shit storm over at Digg.com! EVERY story on the home page contains the Master Processing Key for HD DVD disks. Evidently, Digg started deleting stories that contained the hex code, so what did people do? They upload tons of stories with the code! There’s not a single non-HD DVD story to be seen there at all.
People are hiding the code in domain names, pictures, bumper stickers at Cafe Express, and even ascii art. This is amazing to watch. There’s a social rebellion at one of my favorite social news site, and people are standing up against the censorship.
Diggnation, the Digg podcast, is sponsored by HD DVD, which explains why all the stories were erased. As far as I know, you can’t claim a number as a DMCA violation. It’s only when you use said number to decode encryption is it illegal. I’m glad people are standing up against this, and saying in a loud voice, fuck the MPAA!
So what does this mean? Well the code allows people using Linux to watch movies. But it also allows people who do a little extra leg work to find out the Volume Key’s for their HD DVD’s to strip the encryption from them. It’s DeCSS all over again!
The best part is this. They could revoke the code thats all over the internet, but the HD DVD players that use that code, wouldn’t be able to play any new movies encoded with it. So they either junk 90% of the HD DVD players sold, or tolerate the public’s ability to strip DRM have free and open media.
I don’t see them revoking the key, and screwing over all the consumers because of 32 numbers. I can’t even begin to fathom the cost of it. But the consequnces of this are grand indeed. For piracy on HD DVD is now greenlit, and the movie studios have a grave decision to make: screw the consumer, or embrace the pirate.
Arrrgh!