As it currently stands, copying your HD-DVDs to make backups is a grey legal area. It's legal for you to make the backup, but the HD-DVD disc you're copying is encrypted as a 'security' measure and, thanks to the DMCA it's illegal for you to unencrypt it in anything but an "approved device" and -- surprise of surprises -- no "approved devices" have the ability to write out that backup copy.

That could change. According to Macworld the content companies may be ready to bend just a little, adding a "managed copy" provision to the licensing of AACS -- the HD DVD content protection system -- which would allow for homemade copies, albeit at a higher cost.

"The idea is that the content companies could charge a premium according to how many copies are allowed, Ayers said. It remains a possibility that consumers, if given the chance to make three copies of "Spider-man 2" could give those copies to their neighbors, which technically would qualify as low-volume piracy."

Given the fragility of DRM in general, and growing consumer awareness and dissatisfaction with the limits DRM attempts to impose, this move could be seen in one of two ways. Either the content producers are starting to realize that home consumers are not the source of piracy problems, and probably shouldn't be alienated given that they are the source of revenue driving the industry -- or -- This is simply a stop-gap measure being implemented by an industry who sees the walls are crumbling, but is powerless to truly understand why. Our cynicism tends to push us towards the latter answer but, maybe that's just our skeptical nature?

It's the most circulated number of the week. Sixteen hexadecimal digits that unlock the wonder of most currently released HD-DVD titles from the surly clutches of the AACS revenue content protection system. Sixteen digits that have been posted in so many places -- and in many cases, removed only to be reposted -- that they're hard to avoid.

Cory Doctorow's class blog for his USC course, "Pwned: How everyone on campus is a copyright criminal" was served a DMCA takedown notice and, on the advice of counsel, removed the offending digits. They were posted to Wikipedia, then removed and locked from reposting. Then the diggstorm came. A slew of digg stories containing the forbidden digits have been posted, made the front page and been removed, only to start again.

Witness the modern equivalent of the 95 thesis' Martin Luther nailed to the door of Wittenburg church. We, digital citizens --commonly referred to by the vulgar term of 'consumers' -- have had enough of content lock-in. We've bought and re-bought entertainment media -- repackaged and regurgitated digital vomitus -- until we're blue in the face. We've been told time and time again that DRM is for our own protection, and we're finally and inconsolably fed up.

As Joe Rogan's character on Newsradio once quite accurately quipped, "Dude, you can't take something off the Internet.. that's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool." The content providers have attempted to do exactly that, remove pee from the proverbial swimming pool that is the Internet and, as we've witnessed so many times before, they've failed miserably.

The bottom line remains, we as consumers, want our content free (as in Freedom) and if we don't get it, we'll take our content free (as in beer).

Making backup copies of movies you purchase on HD-DVD and Blu-Ray discs may have just gotten a little easier. Just a few months after members at the Doom9 forums uncovered a way to extract individual volume keys that allow you to decrypt the AACS copy protection for individual movies, it looks like they've found the holy grail: a processing key used on every disc.

In other words, ripping a high definition disc just became almost as easy as ripping a DVD. In the short term, you can probably expect to see an explosion in high definition films torrents available online. In the long run, we can only hope someone will wrap this hack into a nice little GUI and create an easy high-definition disc backup utility that anyone can use.

[via EngadgetHD]

Well, the controversy over whether BackupHDDVD actually does anything like, you know, ripping HD-DVD movies appears to be over. Several movie rips, including Serenity have already made their way to BitTorrent trackers.

The breakthrough came when members of the Doom9 Forum tracked down several unique memory keys that BackupHDDVD needs in order to decrypt HD-DVDs. Apparently the keys for King Kong and 12 Monkeys are also available, although Serenity appears to be the only movie to have made it online so far.

The video file is in EVO format and takes up 19.6GB, meaning it will take a very, very long time for most users to download. At that rate, you might as well just spend the $20 to get a copy from Amazon.

While it was inevitable that hi-def video rips would show up online, I'm much more impressed that we now have evidence that the HD-DVD encryption scheme actually has been cracked, and users who want to make backups of videos they've purchased for home use may be able to use software to do so.