Consumers May Get Caught in Piracy War

CONSUMERS MAY GET CAUGHT IN PIRACY WAR
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Keith Winstein]
Movie studios and other companies that control the latest technology for playing home videos have come up with a new strategy for thwarting unauthorized copying -- one that can slow down hackers but has the potential for frustrating consumers innocent of any piracy. The industry's new strategy has so far eschewed lawsuits aimed at the hacker community -- which proved largely ineffective in stopping widespread copying of first-generation DVDs -- in favor of a hard-ball technological approach called "key revocation" that aims to protect newer, high-definition DVDs from piracy. The new strategy has unfolded over recent months as hackers have attacked the protections used in personal computers and laptops that play high-definition discs. The anticopying protection for high-resolution DVDs relies on secret, 128-digit passwords embedded in the hardware or software used to play DVDs. Under its new " key-revocation strategy, Hollywood and its allies in the high-technology industry start with the assumption that enterprising hackers will eventually decipher the passwords, which can then be used to make copies. But once a password is compromised and posted on the Web, the industry answers by changing the way in which its new DVD titles are made. Anyone who pops one of the new discs into their personal computer without installing a software upgrade will find that it destroys the computer's ability to play any high-definition DVD at all. To restore the computer's ability to play them again, the owner is forced to download new software from the Web -- software with a new password that hackers haven't yet discovered. The old password, or key, has been revoked.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118357696486657400.html?mod=todays_us_ma...
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