DVD Encryption will never work. Ever.

(Image used under: Fair Use doctrine)

The companies are trying so hard to make it impossible for people to copy DVDs, but hackers continue to prove that they're wasting their time. Just one day after releasing new keys for their copy protection system, a hacker posted the key on his website.

The AACS LA is not happy about these Processing Keys being released. When previous keys were leaked, the organization vowed that it would remove the keys from the Internet with cease-and-desist orders. Predictably, this only encouraged people to post them more. The whole series of affairs evokes memories of when DVD decryption was all the rage, and the DeCSS code wound up being printed on t-shirts to express the futility of trying to sue anyone who used or even knew about it.

The key thing here is that hackers are working for free and there's a lot of them. I don't think this is a battle that copyright holders will ever win.

Yarr!

(Image is in the Public Domain)

From the "thank gosh the hackers are on our side" department, it appears that the encryption scheme used on HD DVDs has nearly been broken. The copy protection scheme is supposed to prevent pirates from making and distributing copies of movies, but it also prevents normal users from exercising their fair use rights.