Blu-ray BD+ Cracked as Expected

In July 2007, Richard Doherty of the Envisioneering Group (BD+ Standards Board) claimed that ‘BD+, won’t likely be breached for 10 years.

BD+ Unbreakable for 10 Years says Richard Doherty of Envisioneering Group
Richard Doherty a Media analyist with Envisioneering Group says ” BD +, Unlike AACS, Which suffered a partial Hack Last Year, Won’t likely be [...]

Wall-Mart Puts the Muscle on Warner and BMG to Ditch DRM

You all know those stories we hear about the E-v-i-l Wal-Mart muscling the poor manufacturers and distributors to lower prices. Well this time Wally World is using its power for the forces of Good!

A Tipping Point For MP3s
(waaaay down the article we find this little nugget of good news)
… mass merchant Wal-Mart [is] alerting [...]

Amusing: Windows XP Outshines Vista in Benchmarking Test

This made me chuckle, (I may have even chortled)

Windows XP outshines Vista in benchmarking test
New tests have revealed that Windows XP with the beta Service Pack 3 has twice the performance of Vista, even with its long-awaited Service Pack 1.
Vista’s first service pack, to be released early next year, is intended to boost the operating [...]

LG DVD Drive: 8X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 4X DVD+R DL 8X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 12X DVD-ROM 16X CD-R 16X CD-RW 32X CD-ROM CD, DVD: 2MB BD, HD: 4MB Cache SATA Super Multi Blue BD Burner and HD DVD Reader

Really! Thats the name of the LG Model GGW-H10NI DVD Burner.

What an absolute joke. Not the LG Product, (it’s a nice drive although a little pricey) but this whole Optical Media standards war that has been ongoing for the last ten years or so.
Which technology can use this alphabet soup idiocy to actually win [...]

iPhone Magic

Via: The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs

iPhone Dissected: They did it, so you don’t have to

From anandtech:
We have only had the phone for a few hours but we needed to get inside its casing, what follows is our dissection of the Apple iPhone. Please note that we’re doing this so you are not tempted to on your recent $500/$600 expenditure, while it is quite possible to take apart using easy [...]

Finnish court rules CSS protection used in DVDs “ineffective”

Via Oikeuden edessä and slashdot:

Finnish court rules CSS protection used in DVDs “ineffective”
In an unanimous decision released today, Helsinki District Court ruled that Content Scrambling System (CSS) used in DVD movies is “ineffective”. The decision is the first in Europe to interpret new copyright law amendments that ban the circumvention of “effective technological measures”. [...]

09 f9: A Legal Primer … or … What is the AACS-LA’s Legal argument?

The AACS-LA made some news yesterday. Read about some of it here, here, and here, as well as the following from the EFF Deep Links section:
What is the AACS-LA’s argument? In its takedown letters, the AACS-LA claims that hosting the key violates the DMCA’s ban on trafficking in circumvention devices. The DMCA provides that:
No person [...]

FTC official: Let’s imprison spyware distributors

FTC official (William Kovacic) says “Let’s imprison spyware distributors”
Steep fines are nice, but one of the best weapons against spyware purveyors is locking them up, a federal regulator told senators on Tuesday.
At a morning Senate Commerce Committee hearing here, Federal Trade Commissioner William Kovacic said most wrongdoers [...]

Net Neutrality

save the internet

Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License Launched

The latest version of the Creative Commons licenses — Version 3.0 — are now available. Read more here. Via: /. & BoingBoing.

Professor Lawrence “RW” Lessig’s “The Withering of the Net”

Professor Lawrence “RW” Lessig’s “The Withering of the Net”

On June 16, 2006, Professor Lawrence Lessig gave a talk at the Center for American Progress entitled “The Withering of the Net: How DC Pathologies are Undermining the Growth and Wealth of the Net.” This talk was the second in a series of three. The first talk [...]

Exposed: HD DVD and Blu-ray Processiong Keys for All HD Titles

I was following this discussion on Doom9 yesterday, where arnezami claims to have found the “processing key” used to decrypt the DRM on all HD DVD and Blu-Ray Disc films.
It looks like this is the real McCoy and the news is starting to get around…
arnezami claims to have found it by simply watching his [...]

RIAA declares war on Rap mixes - UPDATE

From analoghole

I do not think that law means what you think it means

One thing that is apparent from both the affidavit and the quotes from Chief Baker is that the police investigating the case seem quite sure that it is a violation of Georgia law to sell CDs that are not labeled with the “true [...]

RIAA Lawsuits: Boy Bites Dog

New York teen sues record industry

A New York teen, dubbed a pirate by the Record Industry, is counter suing them for defamation, violating anti-trust laws, conspiring to defraud the courts and making extortionate threats.

Robert Santangelo, who was 11 when he is supposed to have downloaded music, has come out fighting. He denies sharing music using [...]

Vista DRM Already Cracked?

Alex Ionescu claims to have successfully bypassed the much discussed DRM protection in Windows Vista, called ‘Protected Media Path’ (PMP), which is designed to seriously degrade the playback quality of any video and audio running on systems with hardware components not explicitly approved by Microsoft. The bypass of the DRM protection was in turn performed [...]

Canada Responsible for 50% of Movie Piracy

50% movie piracy from Canada: Hollywood
As much as 50 per cent of the world’s pirated movies come from Canada, prompting the film industry to threaten to delay the release of new titles in this country.
According to an investigation by Twentieth Century Fox, most of the illegal recording, or “camcording,” is taking place in Montreal movie [...]

Wii hacked to play backups

Already! Here is a link to the Inquirer article…
If this isn’t a fake I will keep posting updates here, instead of a bunch of separate posts. (Not a fake Wiinja ModChip is now available).
UPDATE:
WiinJa ModChip website
USA Preorder here
Details:
Wiinja Drivechip Mod
$55.00
Features:
Non Swap / Direct Boot
Boots Own Region WII Backups Directly
Boots Own Region WII Backups [...]

AACS Confirms HD-DVD and Blu-Ray Cracked

AACS hack blamed on bad player implementation

A month after the first signs appeared online that AACS—the content protection scheme shared by HD DVD and Blu-ray—had been circumvented, the AACS Licensing Authority has verified the hack. According to a statement from the AACS LA, AACS has not been seriously compromised. Instead, the statement said, the attack [...]

Blu-Ray DRM Cracked

Blu-Ray DRM Cracked
The plaintext exploit used to partially crack HD-DVD a couple of weeks ago was brought to bear on Blu-Ray by the same gents this weekend—and it worked a treat.
“We need to kick DRM in the butt!” declares the sigfile of Doom9 forum poster Janvitos, launching his inspection of the format.
Doom9 forum [...]

Microsoft Confirms DRM Driver Crippling in VISTA

I got some feedback from some DRM doubters at the beginning of the year when I talked about The Perils of Windows Vista and Built-in DRM. I wish that I was wrong, but no such luck. From the horses mouth comes confirmation of every horrible charge leveled at Vista by Gutmann

Windows Vista Content Protection - [...]

Music companies consider ditching DRM

Interesting article in on the International Herald Tribune website…

Record labels rethink digital rights management at Midem

Now that even digital music revenue growth is faltering amid rampant file-sharing by consumers, the major record labels are closer than ever to releasing music on the Internet with no copying restrictions — a step they once vowed never to [...]

RIAA declares war on Rap mixes

The RIAA and the Atlanta Police don’t seem to understand the difference between promotional mixtapes which are sanctioned by the artists and actual counterfeit CDs.
You know that the RIAA, MPAA, et al. have gone much too far and have been granted much too much political clout when you see government sanctioned violence committed against a [...]

The Perils of Windows Vista and Built-in DRM

Why Use Windows Vista?

From January 30th, all new PCs will come pre-installed with Windows Vista. There are several good reasons not to use it.

If that article’s a bit long and technical for you, read on…

Vista is all about ‘premium content’. This is music or video that’s copyrighted by one of the major music or movie [...]

Piracy, the better choice for consumers.

Excellent opinion piece from the INQUIRER
HD disk format wars are over

By Charlie Demerjian

THE NEXT GENERATION disk format has been settled once and for all. Thanks to the due diligence, hard work and unprecedented cooperation between the media companies, the hardware vendors and the OS vendor, we finally have a solution. It is quite easy, Piracy, [...]

HD-DVD copy protection defeated … for now

BoingBoing reader Gunther says,
On the doom9 forums there is news of a new tool to decrypt HDDVD’s. How you get the key is not yet clear but there is a promise to have a tool to get the needed key later. (check the #9 post in the thread): Link, and related coverage at the [...]

And so it begins: YouTube nukes 30,000 videos

YouTube has removed nearly 30,000 videos after being contacted by the Japan Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers.

And so it begins: YouTube nukes 30,000 videos
Long before Google swooped in to buy up YouTube there were questions about the video sharing site’s future. In particular, concerns relating to copyright infringement have persisted: can YouTube [...]

Fight DRM: Ten things you can do today

“If consumers even know there’s a DRM, what it is, and how it works, we’ve already failed” - Disney Executive.

Defeating DRM is all about awareness.

The direct actions that we have taken are all about this. Today we are asking you to let the people around you know that DRM is bad for our society. [...]

DefectiveByDesign.org Takes Another Bite at the Apple

Taking another bite at the Apple

With 100,000 DRM warning labels now distributed, it’s time to start the action. Join one. Start one.

Join us in New York and London.

On Saturday, September 30th, hazmat suited DefectiveByDesign members will gather at the flagship Apple stores in New York and London, These high profile events will kick-off awareness for [...]

New technology could nip High Def DVD format war in the bud

If the Optical Drive manufacturers won’t (or can’t because of DRM) ship multi-format readers, the media manufacturers seem to have come up with a solution.

New technology could nip DVD format war in the bud

The format war around next generation DVDs may be over before it has begun, thanks to a breakthrough from a British media [...]