HD DVD’s copy protection cracked open like a watermelon with a sledgehammer

There has not yet been invented the copy protection system that dedicated hackers cannot break. The major reason for this, of course, is that you need to be able to decode the content to watch the video, and to do that you need the key. If you have the key, you can decode the content. It’s that simple.

So it really shouldn’t come as a surprise to anybody that the Advanced Access Content System (AACS) of HD DVD and Blu-Ray has already been cracked. AACS was supposed to be far tougher than CSS, the system used on conventional DVDs (the cracking code for which was once famously printed on a t-shirt).

A tool called BackupHDDVD has been released which ought to allow you to pull content off an HDDVD (for your own personal use, of course). Engadget is testing it out, and though they haven’t gotten it to work yet, that’s largely a restriction of the DVD playing software. I fully expect this to be GUIfied and perfected within a couple of weeks.