Just a month or so after reports of Blu-ray and HD DVD discs being 'hacked' by cracking open the PC software used to play them, a more serious breach has been reported that could threaten the whole basis of the AACS copy protection found on high definition discs.
According to Engadget (amongst many others reporting this), a DRM hacker by the name of arnezami has hold of the 'processing key' that with decrypt the DRM on all HD DVD and Blu-ray films.
As arnezami points out, "nothing was actually hacked, cracked or even reverse engineered." All he had to do was keep an eye on his memory, watch what changed, and voila... the processing key appeared.
Quite how significant this is, and what impact it has, remains to be seen. These movies are BIG, so the average consumer is not likely to attempt to download movies over their broadband connection. Burning of high definition content is also fairly expensive at present. Piracy is going to happen, but at the end of the day, most consumers will still be happy to buy their movies complete with the extra functionality. At least for now.
In any case, the DRM/piracy war never ends, and it'll just mean ever more advanced and restrictive technology is put in place by the manufacturers and movie studios.
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