Since the first HD DVD and Blu-ray discs began shipping, hackers had been hard at work figuring out how to break the solid encryption. Soon they managed to get a software key that enables the DRM to be cracked.
By mid April the software key code and the method to crack were floating around the net untill last week when lawyers for the AACS had send notices to various websites like Digg and Google asking them to remove references to several sites which had information on this software key. Google received that letter as it owns the Blogger service hosting number of the sites that linked to the code.
Advanced Access Content System (AACS) is an integrated set of technological protection measures that controls access to and prevents unauthorized copying of copyrighted motion pictures embodied on high definition DVDs.
Following the letter the offending links have since been removed from the four blogs listed in the letter, to comply with the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which forbids the dissemination of DRM hacks. The successful hack resulted in both Blu-ray and HD DVD high-definition movies appearing on peer-to-peer file sharing network and prompted the AACS Licensing Authority (AACS LA) to issue a patch that expires the key.
My point is now that the key is spread so widely is there a point in sending these letters ?