Recently the HD-DVD copy protection scheme was hacked and a 16-bit decryption key was published on a forum. This is very similar event when the DeCSS code was released that could decrypt the DVD encryption. The code was published on multiple sites within days and eventually ended up being printed on t-shirts and mugs. Now the time has come for the HD-DVD DRM to get hacked and the entertainment industry has gotten busy in trying to censor this key from the internet.

Will it be different this time as in United States the law has changed to prohibit releasing information that helps circumvent DRM? We will find out very soon. The social bookmarking site digg.com has decided to stop removing links to HD-DVD code on their site after their community completely overwhelmed attempts to remove the code from the site. Google currently knows of 57,800 different sites that contain the code ‘09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0′ and that number is growing rapidly by the hour.

The copyright laws are likely to go under pressure and this is bad news for business models that rely on DRM locking access to digital media. Now that troubled EMI has decided to make their content available without it looks as if rest of the music industry might follow. Ty Roberts, CTO of Gracenote recently said in a conference that the music industry was “about to cave in the next six months”.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 2nd, 2007 at 17:54 and is filed under Media, On the web, Technology. . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.