A hacker appears to have broken a new encryption system for high definition DVD's (yahoo link here) to allow copying protected movies. I use the word appears, because the hacker has yet to publish the full hack but says he will on January 2. He has, however, published a video suggesting he has done it (youtube link here) and participated in a fascinating discussion thread (forum link here) in which he talks about what he has done, more or less step by step.

The New York Times reports the story but sees the issue mainly as affecting which of the two leading encryption systems will be used by the movie industry (NY Times link here). It conjectures that the system not yet broken now has an advantage and points out that it can be reprogrammed on future production even if broken. The Times also notes that the decrypted system might have a competitive advantage among DVD buyers who want to copy (it seems unlikely that studios would make this choice).

With a lot of luck, this will mark the beginning of the end of the whole encryption system, as there are people who are capable of breaking this form of monopoly in which a buyer's rights to his purchase, the DVD, are severely restricted-–he can't copy it and he can't play it on the device of his choice, much less sell additional copies where competition would drive down the price to no more than the cost of production.

The forum has a link to source code for the hack. I haven't tested it, but it looks legitimate.

(off-topic) I don't remember reading in your book "Against Intellectual Monopoly" about this example of comparative experience between patent (UK) and non-patent (France) for the beginning of photography, here in french.

Part of the story in english "A State Pension for L. J. M. Daguerre for the secret of his daguerreotype technique"

Hope this helps,

Laurent

Fascinating reading.

With a format war developing between Blu-ray and HD-DVD one has to wonder if, perhaps, the HD-DVD developers used a less than robust encryption scheme. It is easy to imagine that people will be more willing to go with the machine where they can copy their friends or Blockbuster's movies.

It is partially broken. Ed Felten - who knows about this kind of stuff - has a post.