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 [...]

Thousands of Library of Congress Photos Now Available on Flickr

Photoshoppers rejoice!
Offering historical photograph collections through Flickr gives the Library of Congress a welcome opportunity to share some of our most popular images with a new visual community.
We invite you to tag and comment on the photos, and we also welcome identifying information—many of these old photos came to us with scanty descriptions!
To view the [...]

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 [...]

Heroes of the Writers Strike

So you are a Hollywood writer, and you find yourself on strike.
What will you do?

LA Times has more
hattip: LGF

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 [...]

The iZune!

Thanks Charles

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 [...]

Net Neutrality

save the internet

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 [...]

Vista Not Playing Nice With FPS Games

Via SlashDot

Vista not playing nice with gamers

Some XP favorites crashing or crawling; fix wait could be lengthy

Windows Vista’s powerful new graphics engine may be one of its hallmark features, but it’s engendering complaints from a key segment of potential early adopters: hardcore gamers.

A small but significant number of games written for Windows XP either crash [...]

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 [...]

Add Dailymotion Video to Your WordPress.com Blog

There was a petition for WordPress.com to add DailyMotion support, and here it is.
video of a Stirling cycle model engine …

Embedding instructions are here, you can also post to your WordPress.com blog directly from the DailyMotion player by using their “blog this video” feature.
Very Nice

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 [...]

Masterful Web 2.0 Social Engineering

How to Sign Up for GoogleTV Beta

UPDATE: GoogleTV Beta
Fun Stuff

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 [...]

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 [...]

Video: Digital Waterfalls

This is really a cool display.

Hattip: BoingBoing

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 [...]

“Think Big” How would you fix Xbox live?

1up has some interesting news regarding XBox Live…

How Would You Fix XBL?
Microsoft soliciting ideas, feedback for future updates.

You don’t often hear corporations asking their consumers for suggestions, but Microsoft’s done it once before with Xbox Live and they’re doing it again. Andre Vrignaud of the Xbox Live Platform Strategy team is asking Xbox users to [...]

UNIQLO MIXPLAY

Click here to make your own UNIQLO MIXPLAY dance mix!

High Def DVD Alphabet Soup (Dual Formats) Announced

This took a little longer than expected, but in less than a year, here we are … High Definition DVD alphabet soup for optical hardware, with an added bonus of dual format High Def optical media!

Warner, LG embrace dual-format DVD technology

An electronics company and a movie studio independently rolled out plans on [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]