[Quote:]

On April 14th, 2005 the Advanced Access Content System License Administrator, LLC (“AACS LA”) released for public review the 0.9 versions of the AACS LA technical specification books for optical media. These specifications were developed through an unprecedented collaboration of leading companies from the CE, IT and entertainment industries. Consistent with its commitment to keep all interested participants apprised of progress, AACS LA is making these completed specifications publicly available to enable third parties to review and evaluate the technology.

Well, “publicly available” means “if you accept our license agreement” to them, apparently. If you don’t want to click “I accept”, click here instead.

This is going to be the standard used to “protect” content on the new HD (high-definition) DVD’s. Most interesting part is that they learned from the CSS debacle, but only a bit. They can now revoke a device’s keys, which means if you own a device whose keys are hacked, your device will stop working. I find it amazing that any company would want to build devices that can be rended useless by another company, but that’s no less amazing than people actually buying them. I wonder how long it will take before, say, Sony is blackmailed. “Gee, nice device you have there. Wouldn’t it be a shame if we released the key to it?”

There’s also a lot of “online enabled” stuff in the spec. As a result, expect your DVD to stop working whenever the company who sold it to you feels like it.

Here’s the list of companies to boycot over this: Intel, IBM, Matsushita, Microsoft, Sony, Toshiba, Walt Disney and Warner Brothers. I wonder if they could be sued under RICO.