AACS

In an attempt to cap­ture some of the cur­rent AACS (Advanced Access Content System, copy-​​restriction tech­nol­ogy for new-​​format DVDs) con­tro­versy, here is some back­ground information.

The whole con­tro­versy started when some­one man­aged to fig­ure out what the 16-​​digit hexa­dec­i­mal key is that cur­rently encrypts new-​​format DVDs. Although knowl­edge of this rather sim­ple num­ber doesn’t in-​​itself decrypt DVDs (some soft­ware is needed too), it’s enough that the AACS orga­ni­za­tion began send­ing take-​​down notices to sites post­ing the key, and revoked it. (Meaning, I gather, that it will be use­ful for decrypt­ing newly-​​published movies.)

Free-​​speech and tech­nol­ogy advo­cates revolted in a vari­ety of ways, com­plain­ing essen­tially that a randomly-​​generated 32-​​digit hexa­dec­i­mal num­ber was not deserv­ing of copy­right pro­tec­tion. The more take-​​down notices were issued, the more sites posted the number.

EFF pro­vides good back­ground in their write-​​up about var­i­ous dig­i­tal video copy-​​restriction tech­nolo­gies:
http://​www​.eff​.org/​I​P​/​d​i​g​i​t​a​l​v​i​d​eo/

BoingBoing com­ments:
AACS vows to fight peo­ple who pub­lish the key

Legally it appears AACS may actu­ally be able to enforce the restric­tion on pub­li­ca­tion under cur­rent laws like the DMCA, although it’s unclear how prac­ti­cal that is, or if the courts would uphold the enforce­ment in this spe­cific case… how­ever, given the cur­rent Supreme Court makeup, I sus­pect the Constitutionality would be upheld.