While this is not the most informative anti-DRM article I’ve seen Canadian activist and BoingBoing editor Cory Doctorow write, it is interesting to see him lay out the process of muslix64’s hack of the HD-DVD and Blu-Ray player keys in as few as 2 sentences. muslix64’s fame came after the hacker purchased an Xbox 360 HD-DVD player over the holidays and was annoyed to discover he couldn’t watch his HD-DVD movies because the disks’ Advanced Access Content System (AACS) security requires that users own a graphics card, compliant drivers and a display to support High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP). HDCP is of course one DRM method employed by the mainstream movie industry to defeat pirating.

THE NUMERICAL MEME

It took eight days for muslix64 to effectively bypass AACS-encryption and it will take a lifetime for the makers of HD-DVD to get the processing key or hex key off of thousands upon thousands of sites. It’s a little like trying to maintain sovereignty over the vast and oil-rich Arctic with only 8 boats.

AACS was seen by many as a direct and unnecessary attack on consumers, and online communities answered with everything they could to circumvent it and promote the key. By creating an atmosphere of fear with their legal notices, the makers of HD-DVD essentially manufactured a world where evolution of the hex processing key was necessary for its survival. While it is only Sept. and this may be a bit premature, I am declaring the processing key as the defining and most effective meme of 2007. (And it was cracked as of Jan 2) It was in blog articles, on shirts, inked onto arms as tattoos, incorporated into dramatic shorts (above), and Digg founder Kevin Rose reversed company policy to quell the onslaught of user protest to takedowns . Security is and has always been a hot issue. It’s right above food and water in Maslow’s hierarchy. However, unlike food and water, true security (personal, national and internet) is and probably will always be, an empty approximation.