• zzx@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                Tldr: DVDs can not easily be played unless using authorized hardware (or software in the case of WinDVD)

                Once the key was leaked, this was no longer the case, and now DVDs can be played by anyone with the key (enabling piracy)

              • Chobbes@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                It’s the password to unlock the content on the DVD (well, HD DVD / Blu-Ray) so you can just copy the video from it for redistribution.

                  • Chobbes@lemmy.world
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                    1 year ago

                    More technically, the data on the disk is encrypted with that “password”, so there’s not really a password prompt. It’s more like your DVD player will have this encryption key stored on it somewhere (possibly on a separate chip where it’s hard for somebody to extract it and distribute it on the internet lol), and then it will automatically run the decryption algorithm with this key on the disk contents transparently.

              • solrize@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                Blue ray movies are encrypted to prevent unauthorized copying. Someone figured out and published the decryption key making copying possible. The movie companies went nuts and tried to suppress dissemination of the key, but it was out of the bag. That 09f9 number is the key that was formerly a big secret. Now that you know it, you can copy blue ray discs.

                • radix@lemm.ee
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                  1 year ago

                  Why didn’t they just change it? Set a new encryption key for every disc?

                  • CoggyMcFee@lemmy.world
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                    1 year ago

                    Any Blu-ray player has to know the key in order to play a disc. So they’d have to have some way to update every single player. There would be no feasible way to do that.