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AACS encryption key controversy

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The AACS encryption key controversy arose in April 2007 when the Motion Picture Association of America and the Advanced Access Content System Licensing Administrator, LLC (AACS LA) began issuing Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) violation notices to websites publishing a 16-byte number in hexadecimal notation, beginning with 09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63, which is one of the cryptographic keys for HD DVDs and Blu-ray Discs. The controversy escalated in early May 2007, when technology news site Digg received a notice and then removed numerous articles on the matter and banned users reposting the information.

Because the encryption key may be used as part of circumvention technology forbidden by the DMCA, its possession and distribution has been viewed by the AACS, as well as some law professors, as illegal. Since it is a 128-bit numerical value, it was dubbed an "illegal number" (compare with illegal prime). Opponents to the expansion of intellectual property rights criticize the idea of making a particular number illegal, which they feel should not and cannot be controlled by a single person or group.

Timeline of AACS cracking

Commercial HD DVDs and Blu-ray Discs integrate copy protection technology specified by the AACS LA. There are several interlocking encryption mechanisms, such that cracking one part of the system does not necessarily crack other parts. Thus, the famous "09 F9" key is only one of many parts that would be needed to play a disc on an unlicensed player.

The AACS system can be used to revoke a specific key after it is known to have been compromised, and this has been invoked for the WinDVD software media player. The compromised players can still be used to view old discs, but not newer releases without encryption keys for the compromised players. If other players are then cracked, further revocation would lead to legitimate users of compromised players being forced to upgrade or replace their player software or firmware in order to view new discs.

2006

On 26 December 2006, a person using the alias muslix64 published a utility named BackupHDDVD and its source code on the DVD decryption forum at the website Doom9.org. BackupHDDVD can be used to decrypt AACS protected content once one knows the encryption key. Muslix64 claimed to have found title and volume keys in main memory while playing HD DVD discs using a software player, and that finding them is not difficult.

2007

On 2 January 2007, muslix64 published a new version of the program, with volume key support. On 12 January 2007, other forum members detailed how to find other title and volume keys, stating they had also found the keys of several movies in RAM while running WinDVD.

On or about 13 January, a title key was posted on pastebin.com in form of a riddle, which was solved by entering terms into the Google search engine. By converting these results to hexadecimal, a correct key could be formed. Later that day, the first cracked HD DVD, Serenity, was uploaded on a private torrent tracker. The AACS LA confirmed on January 26 that the title keys on certain HD DVDs had been published without authorization.

Doom9.org forum user arnezami on doom9.org's forums found and published the "09 F9" AACS processing key on February 11:

Nothing was hacked, cracked or even reverse engineered btw: I only had to watch the "show" in my own memory. No debugger was used, no binaries changed.

This key is not specific to any playback device or DVD title. Doom9.org forum user jx6bpm claimed on March 4 to reveal CyberLink's PowerDVD's key, and that it was the key in use by AnyDVD.

The AACS LA announced on April 16 that it had revoked the decryption keys associated with certain software high-definition DVD players, which will not be able to decrypt AACS encrypted disks mastered after 23 April, without an update of the software.

DMCA notices and Digg

Screenshot of the Digg front page during the user revolt; every story is related to the HD DVD key.

As early as 17 April 2007, AACS LA was issuing DMCA violation notices, sent by Charles S. Sims of Proskauer Rose, in an apparent attempt to suppress the encryption key. Following this, dozens of notices were sent to various websites hosted in the United States.

(Note that this was not a DMCA section 512 OCILLA notice, as used when alleging copyright infringement, but a DMCA section 1201 notice, naming the key as being a circumvention device.)

On 1 May 2007, in response to a DMCA violation notice, technology news site Digg began removing posts containing or alluding to the key and, in some cases, closing accounts which created those posts. The Digg community reacted by creating a flood of posts containing the key, many using creative ways of semi-directly or indirectly inserting the number, such as in song or images (either representing the digits pictorially or directly representing bytes from the key as colors) or on merchandise. At one point, Digg.com's "entire homepage was covered with links to the HD-DVD code or anti-Digg references." Eventually the Digg administrators reversed their position on such submissions, stating:

But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you’ve made it clear. You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be.

Legal opinions

Lawyers and other representatives of the entertainment industry, including Michael Avery, an attorney for Toshiba Corporation, expressed surprise at Digg's decision, but suggested that a suit aimed at Digg might merely spread the information more widely.

If you try to stick up for what you have a legal right to do, and you're somewhat worse off because of it, that's an interesting concept.

The American Bar Association's eReport published a discussion of the controversy, in which Eric Goldman at Santa Clara University's High Tech Law Institue noted that the illegality of putting the code up is questionable (that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act may protect the provider when the material itself is not intellectual property), although continuing to allow posting of the key may be risky, and entertainment lawyer Carole Handler noted that even if the material is illegal, laws such as the DMCA may prove ineffective in a practical sense.

Other websites

In a response to the events occurring on Digg and the call to "Spread this number," the key was rapidly posted to thousands of pages, blogs and wikis across the Internet, including Misplaced Pages. As in the case of the DeCSS controversy, the key has been widely distributed in various forms, including YouTube music videos, doctored photographs, and T-shirts. As of Tuesday afternoon, May 1, 2007, a Google search for the key returned 9,410 results, while the same search the next morning returned nearly 300,000 results. On Friday, the BBC reported that a search on Google shows almost 700,000 pages have published the key. This was despite AACS LA having sent a DMCA notice to Google on April 17 demanding that Google stop returning searches for the key at all.

Impact

Internet users began circulating versions of this image, calling it a Free Speech Flag, in blog posts on dozens of websites and as user avatars on forums such as Digg. The colors encode the key.

The reaction has been likened to the Streisand effect: when attempts to censor the key were made both by the Digg website through article removal and through the internet as a whole through the use of DMCA notices, people reacted with civil disobedience and posted the encryption key en masse. Intellectual property lawyer Douglas J. Sorocco noted, "People are getting creative. It shows the futility of trying to stop this. Once the information is out there, cease-and-desist letters are going to infuriate this community more."

Outside of the blogosphere and the mass media, the key has appeared in or on t-shirts, poetry, songs and music videos, a movie, illustrations and other graphic artworks, tattoos and body art, and comic strips.

Widespread news coverage included speculation on the development of user-driven websites, the legal liability of running a user-driven website, the perception of acceptance of DRM and the harm an industry can cause itself with harshly-perceived legal action.

In an opposing move, Carter Wood of the National Association of Manufacturers said they had removed the "Digg It"-link from their weblog.

Until the Digg community shows as much fervor in attacking intellectual piracy as attacking the companies that are legitimately defending their property, well, we do not want to be promoting the site by using the "Digg It" feature.

Media coverage initially avoided quoting the key itself. However, several US-based news sources have run stories containing the key, quoting its use on Digg, though none are known to have received DMCA notices as a result. Current TV broadcast the key during a Google Current story on the Digg incident at 3:00pm on May 3, displaying it in full on screen for several seconds and placing the story on the station website.

AACS LA reaction

On May 7, the AACS LA posted an item on its website regarding the controversy, stating that it had "requested the removal solely of illegal circumvention tools, including encryption keys, from a number of web sites", and that it had "not requested the removal or deletion of any...discussion or commentary" regarding the issue. The statement continued, "AACS LA is encouraged by the cooperation it has received thus far from the numerous web sites that have chosen to address their legal obligations in a responsible manner". BBC News earlier quoted an AACS executive saying: Bloggers "crossed the line" and it was looking at "legal and technical tools" to confront those who published the key and that the events involving Digg were an "interesting new twist."

References

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  8. Muslix64 (26 December 2006). "BackupHDDVD, a tool to decrypt AACS protected movies". Doom9's Forum. Retrieved 2007-04-09. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
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