A small clarification
Laura Blankenship May 4th, 2007
A small clarification about my last post. In talking to a certain computer scientist I know, I learned that I misspoke just a bit in terms of what the key released via the Internet actually does. As I understand it (and a more technical person than myself should feel free to correct me), the key circulating around the Internet over the last week or so is a key that allows hardware, coupled with appropriate software to play on machines not officially “authorized” to play hd-dvd’s. When one plays a dvd or hd-dvd, the machine one plays it one actually decrypts it as it plays. It’s a complex system, explained fairly well in this wikipedia article. The way we usually make clips is to play a dvd in a dvd player that is connected via firewire to a computer. In theory, a player could be made so that the signal gets scrambled and therefore wouldn’t be copyable on the computer. Or, the software used to make the copies could be made to refuse to play dvds that are encrypted.
At a lower level, dvds can be copied whole hog, that is simply duplicated and the bit level (the 1s and 0s). There are some measures in place to prevent even this from happening, but those are more difficult to make unhackable. Generally speaking, pirates are making duplicates of dvds and reselling them. The protections that the powers that be have been trying to put in place are an attempt to prevent this kind of copying and the kind of copying described above (playing and recording), but it’s at two different layers. Most of the protections so far have not made it harder for pirates to do what they do and may possibly make it harder for us to do what we do.