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Cory Doctorow: Doom9, the forum that made headlines last year by extracting and publishing a "processing key" used to lock HD-DVD discs, has published a new key.

Processing keys can be used to make software that allows users to make unapproved uses of their HD-DVDs, like backing them up, playing them on GNU/Linux systems, and running them on mobile and handheld devices like iPods. The movie studios use the AACS scrambling system to prevent these uses, preferring to ban some of these uses and attach pricetags to others.

The last processing key leak created an Internet firestorm when the AACS licensing authority sent hundreds of legal threats to sites that published the key. The strategy backfired: within days, more than a million pages had published the key, ensuring that more people knew how to break HD-DVD players than owned the devices.

AACS has the capacity to "revoke" a processing key. When they do this, all HD-DVD players are unable to play new discs unless they get an update (woe betide you if your DVD player is on your boat, in your cottage, or at your grandparents' place where there is no Internet access). The big question is whether the AACS can revoke keys faster than hackers can extract them.

It's a race. AACS is losing.

Six days before the revocation of the original processing key, a company in the Caribbean updated its DVD-ripping software with a new key. Apparently, they had broken this key long in advance and held it close to their chest, awaiting a revocation event. The revocation was nullified before it even took effect.

Doom9's new key was released yesterday -- it's unclear whether it's the same key -- and it already appears on more than 244,000 pages. I'm betting that this breaks a million by Friday.

DRM takes years and costs millions to develop. It is generally broken in days, by hobbyists, for free. That's because DRM relies on hiding keys in devices that users own and have unlimited control over, and because every single vendor has to implement its key hiding perfectly in order to keep the secret. All a hacker has to do is find one mistake, the weakest implementation, and it's game over.

The amazing thing is that the entertainment industry keeps on shovelling dollars down the DRM pit. If I were a shareholder at Universal, Fox, Disney, Sony or Warners, I'd fire or repurpose every employee whose job it was to make my products less attractive to customers with magic, nonfunctional anti-copying technology. Link (Thanks, Alex!)

See also:
Blu-Ray AND HD-DVD broken - processing keys extracted
AACS DRM body censors Cory's class blog
Digg users revolt over AACS key
AACS vows to fight people who publish the key
Why AACS keys will leak faster than they can be patched
New AACS crack "can't be revoked"
HD-DVD re-cracked six days *before* it is patched
EFF explains the law on AACS keys

 

Cory Doctorow: The current (?) version of iTunes, 7.1.1 has been cracked by the QTFairUse6 project. Now is the time to uncripple your purchased iTunes tracks (especially those brutally expensive, hard-to-rip audiobooks) before Apple spends more engineering dollars to punish you for wanting to "think different," "switch" and otherwise enjoy the stuff you bought from them. Link (via Digg)

Update: Note that this crack is only for Windows -- Mac users are still punished for buying from Apple.

 

Thirsty? Out of cash? Don't worry, if you're near one of these Japanese MediCafe vending machines, it'll give you a drink for free. Not because you've got a pretty face, because you don't. No, it doles out free drinks as a reward for you watching an advertisement on its built-in video screen.

Now I hate pervasive advertising as much as, if not more than, the next guy, but this is awesome. Its rare that you actually get rewarded for watching an ad, even when it's so very valuable to advertisers. I'll watch all the ads you want, just give me free stuff. I'm not a complicated man. –Adam Frucci

Product Page [via Digital World Tokyo]

 

Top Stories For the Week of February 12 - February 16

Diggbait anyone? The Wall Street Journal surveyed who’s who when it comes to influencing social-networking sites like digg and Reddit, and finds just 30 of 900,000 registered digg users are responsible for a third of stories on its home page, blogs Business 2.0. It’s an odd time to be alive when 12-year-olds influence what is “news,” writes TechCrunch, and Bloggers Blog chimes in with an L.A. Times story showing digg now sends more traffic to news stories than Matt Drudge. Jason Calacanis sees the WSJ story as validation that raters can be paid and not be corrupted, and Blog Herald agrees that while Netscape’s voting system is completely transparent, digg’s negative-rating votes are secret and more vulnerable to manipulation.

Google lost a Belgian copyright case after disgruntled newspapers objected to inclusion in Google’s search index, or having snippets of stories and headlines on Google News. If you think the Belgians are joking, Mountain View was already staring at potential 1 million euro per day in fines for non-compliance, (via Web 2.0). John Battelle goes over the implications for Google News as Mountain View preps to file a second appeal.

Google’s other day in court didn’t exactly rock either—Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim writes that the search giant complied with subpoenas seeking YouTube users who uploaded 24 episodes, and you bet Fox TV is going after them. Those worried about what else Google knows should view Master Plan: About the Power of Google, an almost comically dark look at what Google can do, complete with British-accented narrator and ominous hints about Google research into molecular biology.

Meanwhile, publisher Arthur Sulzberger actually said it out loud: The New York Times will go out of print ... eventually. But Sulzberger also told Israel’s Ha’aretz that the Gray Lady is already thriving online (via Silicon Valley Watcher). Eat the Press reported that Sulzberger spoke to staff on Valentine’s Day speech to smooth any ruffled feathers. While the Times worries about where it will put news, MySpace is using video-fingerprinting technology to keep pirated audio and video files off its site, blogs NewTeeVee. Maybe content-hungry MySpace should call MTV, which will make some of Viacom’s vast programming library available for embedding in blogs and elsewhere—undercutting sites like YouTube.

Pity poor Microsoft, whose Vista launch inspired a collective yawn and now, lively blogosphere pokes at Vista’s security with its first Vista security update (via Silicon Valley Sleuth). Bruce Schneier slags Vista as less secure, less stable, less reliable and full of “features” you don’t want (via BoingBoing). Other Microsoft-watchers are looking forward to PlayReady, Redmond’s mobile-DRM system that will let users access content over multiple devices (via PaidContent.org) so stay tuned.

Elsewhere, eMarketer predicts podcast advertising will climb from $80 million to $400 million by 2011, blogs Micro Persuasion, so better hire an ad-sales rep. Meanwhile, ESPN bought the True Hoop blog and hired author Henry Abbott, who promises continuity and increased travel to games—on ESPN’s dime. Terms of the sale weren’t disclosed, but for $30,000, Blog Herald says you can buy Aaron Brazell’s TechnoSailor blog on eBay.

The First Blog scandal of Campaign 2008 is well underway: Two bloggers resigned from the John Edwards campaign under pressure for allegedly anti-Catholic remarks, writes Taegan Goddard. And then there were the death threats. Sen. Barack Obama had better news, launching a social network called MyBarackObama, even though he’s already doing well on Facebook. Brand Obama already has tons of offline supporters—this will just help them connect, writes Mashable. Fortunately there’s a new tool for following how Edwards, Obama and the other 2008 candidates use the Internet: TechPresident. It covers everything from ads attacking John McCain to which candidate has the most MySpace friends.

Finally in entertainment, an audacious new site from The Pirate Bay: a search-engine for torrents of this year's Oscar nominees, Oscar Torrents (thanks BoingBoing). According to the site: “To those worried about downloading in case they get sued: your chances of getting nailed are way less than your chances of winning the lottery. Don't think twice about it.”

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Top Stories For the Week of March 5 - March 9

The Google bashing continued unabated this week. Microsoft counsel Thomas C. Rubin lashed out at Google at an Association of American Publishers gathering (via Internet Stock Blog), sounding oddly Third Reich in accusing Google of making money solely on the backs of other people’s content, writes Google Blogscoped. Funny thing: The Google execs are getting buck-a-year salaries and living off their stock’s increase, blogs Andy Beal, which sounds a lot like creating value.

Microsoft can afford to play innocent, blogs Download Squad, since it only scans books whose copyright has lapsed or where it has publisher permission. But Google’s goodness or badness rests on what courts think “fair use” is, blogs Next Net.

Let’s hope Google understands copyright better than accounting: Its YouTube division restated revenue for 2006 as about $15 million—roughly a twelfth of its initial report (via TechCrunch). Don’t worry, Google still has mountains of cash, blogs Paid Content—but that doesn’t mean it’s going on an M&A spending spree.

Meanwhile, Google wants to get into the phone business if you believe CNET and many others. Techmeme reports Andy Rubin has 100 people working on the Google Phone project, and they’d better hurry: just the iPhone-related stuff on eBay—t-shirts, domain names, even paper mock-ups—has already fetched $18,000 (via Mobility Guru), and MacNN reports that Samsung may already be shipping the first iPhone flash storage, meaning manufacturing may be getting an early start.

Technically it’s networking but WTF?! was the blogosphere reaction to Cisco’s purchase of the struggling Tribe.net social network for its employees’ use (via Mark Evans); it’s just wrong, says Om Malik. Only brave souls like Marc’s Voice are out on a limb saying Cisco’s move reflects a Vast Hidden Plan.

No reason a router company can’t have a social network; everyone else does nowadays. Paid Content reports there’s a new social network for seniors with a staggering $22 million in funding, while Viral Garden’s ears pricked up on hearing Dale Earnhardt Jr. is behind Infield Parking’s new NASCAR-fan network. That said, USA Today’s Web 2.0 makeover is getting low marks from readers and most blogosphere pundits, according to Valleywag.

Also getting a makeover: the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office may be overhauled per a New York law professor’s plan, blogs Silicon Valley Watcher, but not if Deep Jive Interests has anything to say about it: This is one place where crowdsourcing is clearly inappropriate.

Political bloggers were also busy this week. Lewis “Scooter” Libby: calculated serial liar or innocently forgetful man? asks the NY Times. No matter: He’s guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, writes Gawker.

As is Ann Coulter. The conservative lightning-rod (aka the Britney Spears of the Right) called Dem presidential candidate John Edwards a “faggot” in front of hundreds at the Conservative Political Action Conference (via Huffington Post). Has Coulter finally had her Macaca moment? asks Arianna Huffington. Coulter’s advertisers are running the other way, blogs PerezHilton.com, as are newspapers that syndicate her column—but Coulter herself insists conservatives will stick by her no matter what, reports Buzztracker.com.

Finally in entertainment, Bono’s red campaign raised only $18 million so far on $100 million in marketing costs. Non-profit watchdogs worry about a backlash and AdPulp chronicles the reactions—including a parody of the campaign called buylesscrap.org. Bono meanwhile will guest edit the July issue of Vanity Fair.

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Top Stories For the Week of March 12 - March 16

Call it the $1B YouTube smackdown. Fed up with all those Colbert Report and South Park clips floating around YouTube, Viacom sued the video-sharing giant and its corporate parent, Google, in U.S. District (via Truthdig). Lost Remote quotes scary phrases from Viacom’s filing like “exploiting the devotion of fans ... clearly illegal ... obvious conflict with copyright laws.” Google’s cheerful response, blogs Paid Content.org, is that it’s not only within the law, but that content owners like Warner Music, Sony/BMG, Universal Music, BBC, and the NBA already bask in opportunities to connect with viewers and split online ad revenue with GOOG.

Viacom’s just whining about its antiquated business model, snarks Gizmodo. Young companies innovate, old companies litigate, agrees Om Malik, but Next Net figures Viacom’s suit could just be a new tactic in negotiations. It’s a weak tactic if Business 2.0 is right: the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) says ISPs aren’t responsible for copyrighted content that users put up—only for taking it down when asked. But NewTeeVee notes that YouTube may be a lot more involved than as a simple ISP. In case you’re curious, the top GoogleVideo/YouTube videos are here. And when they disappear, this tip may come in handy: how to download deleted YouTube videos (thanks Inside Google).

Rumors are also flying about potential Google Phone features—3G data, WiFi, 2 megapixel camera, makes ice—but it may be ad-driven (via Blogging Stocks). Maybe all the GOOGphone rumors are an Apple-style buzz campaign that generates hundreds of millions in free publicity, as Blog Herald speculates.

The Wall Street Journal also reports Google is finally testing Google TV on a Concord, Calif. cable-TV system, leading Google Blogoscoped to wonder whether Mountain View’s mission is to organize information and make it accessible—or plaster every last inch of the globe with ads. Google doesn’t add much value to cable unless it can link ads with individuals’ TV viewing, says Paid Content.org, and VentureBeat adds Google may sign a deal with Dish Networks, a good move considering Dish users already use keywords to search for programming and create custom guides to enhance their viewing.

It’s tech conference season and TED 2007’s overload of icons, geniuses and mavericks forced Josh Spear to stop blogging to take in both established names and up-and-comers. Endless Innovation describes it as a U.S. Davos and links to the 10-15 bloggers who were able to continue coverage.

In politics, Carpetbagger wraps up Purgegate, the December 2006 firing of eight U.S. attorneys that turns out to be White House-inspired. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was terribly shocked at this, even invoking Nixon-era “mistakes were made” phrasing, and set up his chief of staff to take the fall, blogs Daily Kos. But MyDD asks how Gonzales’ chief of staff could be conspiring with the White House without Gonzales knowledge. At least this scandal takes the heat off General Peter Pace for denouncing homosexuality as immoral (via Riehl World View).

And finally, time to cool the hype. Hollywood has a thing for Al Gore and his three-alarm film on global warming, but a story in the NY Times reports some climate scientists (and political conservatives) are concerned that Al Gore is overselling global warming as an imminent catastrophe (via Hit and Run). Embracing Momminess, for one, urges readers to see The Great Global Warming Swindle instead. Not everyone agrees: The Times article leaves out some inconvenient truths, says Media Matters for America.

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Top Stories For the Week of April 23 - April 27

Is Apple rotten at the core? Just when it seemed Steve Jobs had ducked the worst fallout from Apple’s option-granting scandal (via Blogging Stocks), former Apple chief financial officer Fred Anderson says Jobs was more involved with backdating—and possibly deceiving Anderson about it—than previously thought (via Engadget). Meanwhile Anderson, who the SEC forced to cough up $3.5 million in ill-gotten gains plus a $150,000 fine, has somehow been hired into another position of trust—at buyout firm Elevation Partners. The scandal also passed entirely over Gen Y’s head; 21–27 year olds call stripped-down, plain-talkin’ companies like Apple, Trader Joe’s, JetBlue and Vitamin Water their most trusted brands, blogs Consumerist.

Meanwhile, if you still think there’s no bubble 2.0, Search Engine Land flags a survey declaring Google the world’s most valuable brand at $66.4 billion, handily beating GE, Coke and Toyota, which actually make stuff. It’s unquestionably the most efficient brand, blogs Valleywag, measuring GOOG’s high brand ranking against its microscopic marketing spend. Privacy groups like EPIC and U.S. PIRG don’t like Google’s purchase of DoubleClick and asked the FTC to investigate (via Mashable!), fretting that GoogleClick will track both searches and Web-site visits (via NewsFactor Network). Meanwhile, Stephen Colbert demonstrated that no matter how hard Mountain View tries, Google-bombing is alive and well. Giant brass balls, anyone?

Back on less speculative ground, Business 2.0 reports that Spanish hotspot company FON and Time Warner Cable will let customers set up and use FON hotspots in the U.S. Om Malik sees this as a straight play against T-Mobile, while Fractals of Change observes that Time Warner has no mobile-phone profits to lose, plus consumers win from cable-telco competition.

Major newspapers continued struggling with sagging first-quarter ad revenue, blogs Forbes.com, including at Tribune Co., which badly needs cash to help pay down debt from its ongoing sale (via washingtonpost.com). Even the past bright spot, online ad revenues, showed slowing growth, blogs PaidContent, although a newspaper consortium’s deal with Yahoo! may provide a boost.

Speaking of which… Yahoo!, the Huffington Post and Slate are combining to produce two online-only presidential debates, one for Republican candidates and another for Democrats, blogs Download Squad. PBS’s Charlie Rose will moderate and field questions from online viewers, and while MyDD wonders whether the debates will be participatory enough, Blogcritics figures online questioners have to be an improvement over hand-picked journalists.

But GOP and Dem candidates aren’t waiting for the general election to mix it up. Drudge caught Rudolph Giuliani warning of a "new 9/11" if Democrats win in 2008, leading Barack Obama to accuse Giuliani of making 9/11 the punchline of another political attack. Also this week, John McCain officially jumped in the presidential race but disappointed NewTeeVee when it didn’t share the video. Of course there’s always McCain’s Bomb Iran clips if you need something in the meantime.

In entertainment, even bigger news than Liberty and Justice’s flash that Jennifer and Vince are back together is the Sheryl Crow/Karl Rove dust-up over who Rove works for: Crow or “the American people” (via Idolator). Too bad both Crow and Rove are confused about the structure of the executive branch, blogs DCist.

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Top Stories For the Week of February 19 - February 23

Anyone who thinks information wants to be free isn’t watching the Viacom/Google tug-of-war. First Viacom had Google’s YouTube division yank 100,000 copyrighted video clips from the site (via Andy Beal). Now, Viacom has stuffed Google by signing a content-distribution deal with Joost, the Skype-sponsored startup that Gizmodo claims has more clips than users. Looks like Google just couldn’t give Viacom the copyright-protection technology it wanted, blogs SiliconBeat. It’s no coincidence that Joost won’t allow user-uploaded videos, blogs franticindustries. The merger should go through writes O’Reilly Radar since the two money-losing satellite radio networks aren't really competing with each other, they’re competing with the iPod and Internet downloads.

It may someday be legal to watch Lonelygirl15 and Lindsay Lohan in the upcoming I Know Who Killed Me (via Bloggers Blog), but interestingly, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi may lead the non-copyrighted charge onto YouTube with her collection of C-SPAN anti-escalation speeches writes BuzzMachine.

In other squabbling, XM and Sirius Satellite Radio will merge in the hope the combined entity will make a profit—but don’t count on it, blogs Mark Evans, because no one wants to pay $15-20/month for commercial-free radio. Even if the monopolistic merger passes FCC muster (via PaidContent), free pervasive wifi will undercut the business model, blogs TechCrunch.

The Microsoft business model is also being undercut—by Chinese and Indian software pirates, if you believe CEO Steve Ballmer, whose attempt to lower Vista sales expectations sucker-punched MSFT’s stock price (via Valleywag). This may be a good product with little consumer attraction, blogs Mark Evans, but /Message wonders if we’ve reached the point where Microsoft finally demonstrates how lost it is.

AOL knows where it’s going: toward OpenID. It instantly created 63 million OpenID users when it embraced the open-source identity standard and, not incidentally, made AOL/AIM names stickier, blogs Read/Write Web. GigaOM reports that digg will also be OpenID-friendly, meaning OpenID is getting awfully big, awfully fast.

In politics, the 2008 presidential campaign gets a celebrity makeover as Sen. Barack Obama has his first-ever Tinseltown fundraisers, including a $46,000-a-plate meet and greet (via Huffington Post). But Obama finance chair David Geffen drew sharp criticism from the Clinton campaign for some anti-Clinton comments, which amounted to calling the New York senator polarizing and ... ambitious, writes Talking Points Memo. On the GOP side, John McCain keeps distancing himself from Iraq War architects, criticizing President Bush for listening to Dick Cheney too much and suggesting Donald Rumsfeld was the worst Defense Secretary ever, blogs Daily Dish. Regardless of who he advised, Vice President Cheney is putting the best face on Britain’s plan to gradually withdraw its Iraq forces, telling ABC News it’s a sign things are going well in British-controlled areas.

In entertainment, control of Britney Spears coverage is also going well, with Gawker focusing on her rehab stint and her newly shaven head, or doing silly man-in-the-streets about whether New Yorkers would rather have Spears or ex Kevin Federline as a parent. Ready for some more highbrow entertainment - like the Oscars? If you’re reading this you’ll probably catch them online - Golden Globes pageviews were nearly double the TV-broadcast audience. Newsstand faves like Vanity Fair, E!, Entertainment Weekly and the Los Angeles Times will all have major online Oscar presences, blogs NewTeeVee.

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Top Stories For the Week of February 26 - March 2

Is the world ready for a million Facebooks? Roll-your-own social networks are back with the Ning relaunch, but Mashable!’s big worry is that VCs might not fund anything built on such a commoditized platform. It’s better than ever says rev2.org. Dead-easy tool set, blogs Valleywag, that have reclaimed the hearts and minds of techbloggers while keeping some of the early triumphs intact like Who Is a Bigger Douche. But GigaOm just frets that Ning’s price structure means they’ll need thousands of paying social networks to turn a profit.

Meanwhile, Quigo is gaining market share vs. Google AdSense by letting advertisers see where their ad dollars go and specify that ads run on certain sites, writes John Battelle. But Google continues to forge ahead on Video AdSense deals with content heavy-hitters like Dow Jones & Co., Condé Nast and Sony BMG Music Entertainment, blogs Paid Content.

Google’s YouTube division is also content-mad this week, inking an NBA deal for select plays and behind-the-scenes video (via Paid Content). The league will also cull uploaded video of users’ best on-court moves for a weekly “NBA Top 10 on YouTube,” and started a social network called FanVoice, blogs Mashable!. Meanwhile the BitTorrent P2P service has gone legit, with downloadable movies from Fox, Paramount, Warners and MGM plus games and music videos (via Paid Content) but Om Malik still thinks it won’t sell since it’s tough for novices to use, ISPs may block default BitTorrent ports, and the (DRM-heavy) content ain’t all that.

Other shorts: Apple TV shipments have been delayed to mid-March, without Apple giving a reason. On the other hand, Apple’s iPhone has an interface so brilliant that Cupertino should just license it, blogs Business 2.0. Blog Herald reports the IRS wants eBay to disclose user earnings to it—a simple compliance trick that could net the feds up to $2 billion a year. And in a Sunday op-ed, Bill Gates continues pushing for better U.S. math and science education and more H-1B visas to fill the tech gap meanwhile, blogs Silicon Valley Watcher.

Does anyone read blogs? Mark Evans got nervous reading Jeff Cole’s remarks about how almost no one reads blogs, wondering whether enthusiasm for blogs outstrips actual blogging. Micro Persuasion piles on with news that maybe the English-language blog wave has peaked. But true believer Mr. Blog responds that most people hit blogs all the time when searching for answers—they’re just not as savvy about it as a small blogging elite.

Elsewhere, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dumped 416 points on Tuesday following a 9 percent plunge in Shanghai’s stock market (via Yahoo News). It’s the worst one-day drop since post-9/11, blogs BoingBoing, and Wonkette was quick to blame Vice President Cheney, whose honorary Taliban suicide bombing at the Bagram airbase may have also rattled investors’ delicate nerves. Big Picture punctures the idea that a tabulating error accelerated the NYSE sell-off; if anything, it made the Dow plunge look more orderly, not less. If you’re looking for blame, forget China and look at decaying U.S. economic fundamentals.

In politics, Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth took home two Oscars (via CNN.com), fueling speculation on another White House bid until Matt Drudge and bloggers like Wonkette pointed out that Gore’s Nashville mansion uses 20 times the average household’s energy. Worse, writes The Anchoress, President Bush’s Crawford, Texas ranch on the other hand, is a model of all-holy greenness.

At least it was just Gore’s inconvenient electric bill that leaked to the media and not, say, yet another important presidential-campaign document. That’s right: The Boston Globe acquired a 77-slide PowerPoint presentation from the Mitt Romney campaign (via Hugh Hewitt). Romney has the predictable problems: his hair, Mormonism, and that Massachusetts thing, blogs Wonkette.

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