The
MPAA will have serious problems removing the
key from the Internet. Even Google has
received a letter to remove the links from their databases. Somehow, these retards have the idea that you can copyright a number.
As the word spread yesterday the articles started showing up on
Digg.com. Digg.com is a popular website where you can submit 'news', and others may rate it and comment on it. Within minutes the stories about this key got thousands of 'diggs'.
This resulted in the fact that the moderators on Digg removed the posts. Result: Mass uproar.
Kevin Rose (the Digg founder) wrote the following on
his Digg blog:
But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you’ve made it clear. You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be.
If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.
I think that's the right attitude towards this. Hopefully, the MPAA will come to its senses (not likely), and stops harrassing the consumers with their lame-ass copy-protection.
It would even be better to abandon the '
turn every consumer into a criminal' DMCA bill completely, but that's another story....
Just to be sure you got the right key:
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B
D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
As some of you might know, the protection of Blu-Ray, and HD-DVD movies is based on a 'secret' key. You need the key to watch protected movies.
The (software)players for these movies are able to 'decrypt' these keys from the disc containing the movie. So you already have these keys on the disc. They (the movie companies) just try to hide them from the user (security through obscurity).
This is not strange that they use this scheme. It's just the way DRM works on these discs. Due to the lame-ass
DMCA law in the United States, it's ILLEGAL to try to find the key on the disc :???: .
Somehow a
HD-DVD key got discovered (or leaked), and it's going around the great Internet. Several websites have been approached by lawfirms to
take the pages down.
This key is represented by a hexidecimal code. How the hell is it possible to declare a hexidecimal string illegal?? The same string can also be represented by a different format (e.g. BASE64). Is this also illegal?
Since we dont know other hex keys for decrypting copy protected content, every other string of hex codes might also be illegal. Image this; what if the 'next' key might represent the number pi (03 14 15 92 6.....)? Does that mean that all math books need to be burned?
Just another example of the fucked up DMCA law in the US.
B.t.w. wondering what the last part is of the key... just use
Google to search for "09 F9 11 02 9D".... Google knows he rest.
The rumor engines are buzzing with '
news' about a new Wi-Fi iPod. The estimated release would be the holiday season (X-mas). This means an even more expensive X-mas... iPhone, Wi-Fi iPod, OSX Leopard.... all due in the second half of this year.
Better start saving some money :-)
B.t.w. I have some doubts on the delay announcements of Leopard. The announcement was only a small article on their (hot)news page. Apple stock didn't suffer that much with the announcement. What would happen to the apple stock if they will ship it during the
WWDC?
During the WWCD keynote, Steve would tell us about all the great features in Leopard (some of them were kept secret to prevent the copiers at Microsoft :-) ). And at the end of the keynote:
Oh yeah, there is one more thing..... We're shipping Leopard as scheduled starting TODAY! ....
[crowd goes absolutely, and totally berserk]
Together with iLife 2007, and the new iWork....
[crowd goes mental....]
[Steve checks his Apple stock options on his iPhone]
Apple
announced yesterday that they shipped 100 Million iPod since its introduction in November 2001. Leaving the competion far, far behind :-)
EMI has discovered that DRM is hater by most of the consumer market, and therefor will
release their music with the hated DRM.
Now it's waiting for the other big players in the music industry (Sony, and Universal).
Apple's iTunes will be the first to offer these unrestricted downloads. Note that the new downloads are a bit more expensive, but this includes much better quality (256kbps AAC versus 128kbps AAC).
The older versions (with DRM) will still be available, but are also 30 cents cheaper (99 cents versus 1.29). If you have purchased DRM protected songs (released by EMI),you can 'upgrade' them for a lousy 30 cents a song.
Apple has update their public beta of
Boot Camp with support for the 32bit edition of Microsoft Windows Vista. This 'proves' that the rumors about the possible delay of Leopard due to
lack of Vista support are not true.
Boot Camp 1.2 beta includes:
- Support for Windows Vista (32-bit)
- Updated drivers, including but not limited to trackpad, AppleTime (synch), audio, graphics, modem, iSight camera
- Support the Apple Remote (works with iTunes and Windows Media Player)
- A Windows system tray icon for easy access to Boot Camp information and actions
- .....
So a release of Leopard in Spring 2007 is still possible :-)
The Dutch download store
download.nl closes its virtual doors. Reason; Too many complaints about the restrictive DRM. So it doesn't just limit the average consumer in playing their favorite tunes, but it also puts people out of a job......
The dutch site isn't the only online music download store. The German
musicload.de reveiled that most of their
complaints (75%) are about the restrictive DRM.
Will the music industry ever learn?
Most internet traffic for browsing is using ports 80 (http) and 443 (https). The wise governor (Huntsman) of Utah has
suggested to ban pornsites from these default ports. This way it should be easier to block traffic to these sites (just block the porn-port).
So I guess that the following ports will be used in the future of Internet browsing:
- 69 - porn related websites
- 666 - websites about satanisme
- 1337 - TechTalk
- etc.
Thankfully, the world is bigger than Utah, but I do feel sorry for those who live there......
Researchers at the
Stanford University believe that the current Internet isn't fit for the future. They believe that a fundamental redesign is necessary to accommodate future usage.
We believe that the current Internet has significant deficiencies that need to be solved before it can become a unified global communication infrastructure. Further, we believe the Internet's shortcomings will not be resolved by the conventional incremental and 'backward-compatible' style of academic and industrial networking research.
Well, I think they have a point. BUT, starting over from scratch means that you throw everything out and start with absolutely nothing. Will the 'old' Internet still be there during the migration? Are we (the consumers) gonna have two Internet connections (one plain-old-Internet, and a new-and-improved Internet)? That's not gonna happen....
So migrating means that 'both' Internets are active at the same time, and accessible over the same 'wire'. There has to be some sort gateway between the two. This introduces backdoors etc. The new network is bound to fail if your not able to access info on the plain-old-Internet.
A long time ago, we had a separate 'Internet' in Holland called 'HetNet' (TheNet). That didn't last long, because there was no (official) gateway between the two. So that meant that you had to switch between the two... I guess it's pointless to say that HetNet didn't last that long (HetNet is a dutch ISP atm).
So I guess that I'm more than curious how they're gonna solve this.
And yet another dumb-ass politician with no clue whatsoever is starting a campaign against Apple. Again the iTunes Music Store (ITMS) is the victim in this crusade. A certain Meglena Kuneva is
complaining about the fact that music bought at the ITMS can only be played on the iPod.
Well, Meglena Kuneva, I got some considerations for you:
- Music bought in the ITMS can be played on Windows and Apple platforms (iTunes, which is free).
- 5 platforms can be authorized to play these songs. This means that you can buy 1 song and play it legally on your work, at home, on your laptop, on your wife's PC etc.
- Music bought in music stores selling the MS flavor (PlayForSure) can ONLY be played on Windows platforms.
- ITMS music can be burned on CD's by default, lot's of MS flavors won't allow that. There are some limitations on burning when you're burning playlists.
- Music burned to CD can be ripped to MP3, and can be played on ANY mp3 player.
- Music protected with PlayForSure solution, can't even be played on their own Zune media player, so you have to buy the song(s) multiple times.
The biggest advance is that there are no different flavors of FairPlay. The MS DRM can be different on each song. Sometimes you're not allowed to do anything but listen to it on you're PC, while other implementations allow you to do more with the music. This is nice, but when you have plenty of songs, how do you keep the limitations apart?
An accurate list with the Apple FairPlay DRM limitations can be found
here.
