May turns out to be a disastrous month for AACS: first AnyDVD HD manages to decrypt the first discs using new keys before the discs are even officially released, and now the new processing key has been found - actually it was discovered only a day after the official release date of the first discs using the new keys.

TSremux 0.0.9 fixes even more issues and hopefully will pave the way for some exiting new features.

PgcEdit 8.2.1 fixes the broken trace mode in v8.2.

This has to sting: Finland, along with every other EU member state had to implement the Euro DMCA when the entertainment industry managed to trick our elected representatives into signing off a law that drastically shifts the balance in copyright law towards the content owners. However, what is an effective copy protection mechanism as defined in the DMCA? The Finnish government thinks CSS is included and sued the people operating a site that contained information on how to back up your own DVDs despite CSS - and lost in the first instance. The court rules that CSS cannot be considered an effective access control mechanism and providing tools and information on how to bypass is, is therefore not prohibited by the Euro DMCA.

PgcEdit 0.82 can select non hidden button/BOV by default, tries to open the BUP file if the IFO file cannot be found, tries to load the backup menubuttons.but file if it exists, resets file permissions when writing to a write protected file fails, has buttons for to select the previous/next cell in the cell selector and fixes a few bugs.

AACSTree is a program to help you visualize how the subset difference technique used in AACS works. It helps you understand how the AACS revocation mechanism works.

TSremux 0.0.8 fixes two major bugs that could cause content corruption.

DVDFab HD decrypter 3.1.2.5 beta support more ProtectDVD titles and contains an improved protection removal engine.

First it was HD DVD with problem titles like Planet Earth and Children of Men, now Blu-ray standalone owners are in for a firmware upgrade - the two Pirates of the Caribbean titles just released this week make use of more BD-J than most standalone players can chew.

The EU snooping directive is seen as a welcome source of information to go after P2P users by the copyright cartels in Austria.

AC3Filter 1.35b defaults to stereo output, has a new tab with all SPDIF options, supports themes and fixes a few bugs.

After the massive losses of its game division, lacking sale number of their flagship console, Sony is now facing even more problems that directly track back to Blu-ray: they've been sued for violating a patent on certain materials contained in Blu-ray discs. Given that the patent was granted over a year ago, I have to ask: why not file before the format hit the marketplace?

You may have read the buzz somewhere already: Managed Copy. Mandatory on HD DVD, optional on Blu-ray, and it remains a mystery and even a year after HD DVD has launched, there's no way to make a managed copy. Now the AACS LA claims they're about to close the deal and finalize the specs. I believe it when I see it, and apparently I'm not alone in that boat. Digital audio recorders do have something like managed copy - called SCMS - that is built into every consumer electronic recorder and prevents you from making copies from a copy, but you don't have to ask anybody permission or even pay extra to make a copy, and the clearinghouse idea eerily reminds me of DIVX.

After lawmakers started getting involved, the RIAA front SoundExchange has started to rethink the royalties hike for online radios - at least for smaller ones. However, the proposal still leaves to be desired so the online radio industry is still hoping that their allies on Capitol Hill come through.

FAVC 0.95 supports MP4, OGM and MKV files, allows you to edit script and batch files before encoding and comes with up-to-date versions of MediaInfo and BatchMux.

DGAVCDec 1.0.0 Alpha 5 can save BMPs and create AVS templates and it fixes a bunch of bugs.

The massive increase in royalties for online broadcasters were only the first step in the RIAA's campaign to squeeze out more money from radio stations: now they've set their sights on traditional radio stations and want to get rid of the royalty exemption (so far radio stations don't have to pay record labels anything to play music - they only pay composers and publishers). If consumers are less enthusiastic to foot the S-class, somebody else has to step up, right?

And along the lines of that, the industry has found a proponent for the mother of all copyright duration extensions: The NY Times ran an opinion piece last weekend which asks for perpetual copyright protection. But all the points raised have summarily been smashed to pieces on multiple occasions. Perhaps we ought to give up on the term intellectual property (mostly industry used anyway) and find something that better befits the reason copyright law was enacted - to encourage the creation of new works (and not a perpetual revenue stream!).

And speaking of encouragement, the same reasoning was used to create patent law - which has also been perverted to competition prevention and R&D people getting into patent litigation because it offers a better payday than to innovate.

VirtualDub 1.6.18 is better at handling AVI files written in capture more or the sector alignment option and no longer crashes when selecting Cancel after removing certain filters from the filter chain.

TSremux 0.0.7 fixes a few bugs.

Last but not least, IEEE Spectrum has a portrait of the founder of the P2P network Limewire - currently under attack by the RIAA.

EVOdemux 0.626 contains a completed TrueHD parser.

eac3to is a tool to convert E-AC3 and TrueHD audio tracks to AC3 or FLAC.

TSremux 0.0.6 contains preliminary support for adding subtitles and fixes a few bugs.

This one might be interesting for owners of the new nVidia middle class GFX cards: PowerDVD 7.3 build 2911 supports hardware acceleration on the Geforce 8500 and 8600 series. You can download either the patch for an existing installation or a full version (you still need a valid serial of course)

What is an active party of the anime community - fansubbing - can get you in really hot waters in Poland: Apparently they have a law that prohibits unauthorized translations and now a bunch of people have been arrested by posting Polish subtitles for movies for which no subtitles are currently available.

Better warn your elected representatives about the latest MPAA/RIAA lobby group - the Copyright Alliance. Their goals, why, rewrite copyright law to rid it of any consumer friendly provision of course (do we even have to ask?). It's a good thing I already had lunch as otherwise I'd risk choking on BS like 'enrich our culture through incentives to create and disseminate new and innovative creative works'. That is what copyright law was originally about - it wasn't about a license to print money by selling us one copy for the living room, one for the bedroom, one for the children's room, one for the iPod, and another one for each CD/DVD our children scratch beyond recognition.

BDedit is a new tool that allows you to edit various elements of Blu-ray discs.

After MySpace and YouTube, social networking site Imeem is the next target in the RIAA's crosshairs: Warner has just filed suit against them for copyright infringement.

If you're studying at Stanford and are using P2P tools, better don't let anyone catch you: the university will cut off your Interent access if they receive a complaint by the industry and you'll have to shell out a reconnection fee ranging from $100 for the first offense up to $1000 for the third offense (or rather.. complaint.. anybody with a reasonable technical background can easily discard the RIAA's way of collecting "evidence").

DVDx 2.9 now shows an estimated size for AVI output, properly displays the first and second pass settings for DivX and XviD output, enforces the selection of a compatible codec when multipass encoding has been activated and it uses the latest Microsoft codecs which should improve VC-1 / WMA performance at low bitrates.

AnyDVD HD 6.1.5.1 beta can handle the first HD titles to use the new AACS keys issued on April 23rd. So round two goes to the paying customer as well :)

And let's stick to HD for a minute: To ensure that HD DVD players still retail significantly cheaper than their Blu-ray counterparts, Toshiba is offering a $100 instant rebate for the HD-A2 player for one month - bringing the list price down to $299. In the last week of the rebate period, the rebate will also apply to any Toshiba HD model - and you can combine this with the already existing promotion to get 5 free titles. Seeing that Panasonic also offers free title for their cheapest Blu-ray player yet, I can't help but think Toshiba is beginning to step up on PR. By the way, the HD-A2 can already be had for as little as $277.88 at Amazon - so a $199 pricetag for the upcoming Chinese HD DVD players suddenly looks rather realistic.

While we're talking Amazon, their upcoming online music store will be MP3 only and DRM free. Amazon's still unnamed store will carry songs from thousands of record labels - the only question remaining is whether that number includes any other major than EMI.

Disney is taking the lead in TV streaming again: starting in July, they'll beta test 720p streaming from their website. Now they'll only need to offer up the streaming to non US residents...

Get ready for the Intellectual Property Protection Act of 2007. While the Bush administration is pushing the bill, looking through the provisions contained therein make it unmistakably clear who is really behind it: First of all we get a new crime: attempting to infringe copyright - it'll get you just as much prison time as actually committing the infringement. Then we have wiretaps for investigations into people who are attempting to infringe copyright, increased penalties for DMCA violations, penalties for intended copyright crimes and last but not least the Department of Homeland Security giving the RIAA a heads-up when somebody tries to import CDs containing unauthorized recordings of live musical performances.

Panasonic beats Sony to the punch with a $599 Blu-ray standalone player - the DMP-BD10A is now available.

While iTunes is making Disney a good buck, Forrester predicts that the video part of iTunes has no long term future.

In yet another DMCA takedown saga, Universal Music has been caught trying to squash content with yet another fraudulent invocation of a DMCA takedown notice.

When the band itself considers the pricing of their album so high that it encourages piracy, you have to wonder whether it's really "all about the artists".

DVDFab HD Decrypter 3.1.1.2 supports new varieties of ProtectDVD and ARccOS, contains updated language files and fixes a few bugs.

ExtremeTech has the first review of LG's upcoming dual format HD drive for PCs - the GGW-H10N.

DGMPGDec 1.4.9 final has been released. It adds an AviSynth template to generate audio delay and of course contains all the changes from previous betas and release candidates.

FAVC 0.94 comes with the latest versions of ImgBurn, Mediainfo, Aften, Muxman, HC and SubtitleCreator, allows you to select a maximum bitrate, has audio normalization options, is available for 64bit operating systems and the whole package has been trimmed down.

It didn't take long: both Engadet and The Digital Bits have received statements from Universal indicating that there'll be no Blu-ray titles.

And while we're at it - Disney appears to have been close to going format neutral in the past but due to current disc sales numbers (fueled mostly by the PS3), HD DVD no longer seems an option. I wonder how a big HD DVD hardware deal (like the one WalMart was considering) would influence this strategy..

It's amazing what kind of twisted logic the copyright industry is coming up - knowing very well that DRM only has one goal: create a perpetual revenue stream by selling the same people the same thing over and over again by stripping away the possibility to turn legitimately purchased content into another format that would play on another player - here's their latest PR move to fool the consumer: rename DRM to DCE: Digital Consumer Enablement. Of course, big business fails to make a case for the "enablement" portion that would actually make sense to the consumer. You don't need DRM for download to burn or VOD - they work perfectly fine without and traditional pre DMCA copyright as well as contract law affords protection against those that violate the terms of such services.

And while we're on the subject, here's one even better: Two companies - Media Rights Technologies and BlueBeat - have sent cease and desist letters to Microsoft, Apple, Adobe and Real for not using MRT/BlueBeat's DRM. The "logic" behind the C&D: failure to use an available DRM solution violates the DMCA. Now here's a case for mandatory drug testing before such letters even be sent out.

And here's one for our German readers: the IFPI and Udo Jürgens are trying to pressure German chancellor Angela Merkel into further limiting the rights to make private copies (recall that the Euro DMCA basically killed the private copy already.. but why not stab it in the back while it's already down?) and to extent copyright from 50 to 95 years (recall that economic arguments actually favor a reduction of the protection period). On top of that they want ISPs to cut off your Internet access if you upload something that violates copyright law (I'm sure the cutoff would be before a court actually finds you guilty).

And last but not least, adding to the long number of independent (RIAA sponsored studies curiously always find the opposite) studies that confirm that P2P filesharing has little direct effect on sales of music. The study entitled "Share, Steal or Buy? A Social Cognitive Perspective of Music Downloading" focuses mostly on the psychology of file sharing.

In the latest attempt to get legislation to outlaw recording a film in movie theaters, Warner Brothers has canceled all promotional screenings of their movies in Canada. According to Warner, 70% of all camcorded movie releases were taped in Canada. Dare I ask how a shitty CAM release would really be considered an equivalent to watching the movie on the big screen (or even from a DVD at home) by anyone?

The WIPO - I'm looking for a catchy phrase here to point out that they have mostly represented industry interests for at least over a decade - is still trying to push through the broadcast treaty in a form that only benefits the copyright industry and leaves the rest in the dust. The opposition to this approach is broad: it contains the computing industry, the consumer electronic industry, library associations and of course consumer groups, but will it be enough?

Disney has just reported their annual numbers - they're down a little but Disney seems quite pleased with how their online business (selling content via iTunes) is doing - and doesn't seem to want to budge on the HD format front: it's BD only for the foreseeable future.

Meanwhile, the first "more DRM is great" parties have undoubtedly broken out by Pioneer's putting Universal in the neutral camp in the HD format war. Me, I'm just waiting for an official statement that is highly likely to be a bit different - and those that fear a BD+ infested future will be able to breath a little easier for the time being.

After HD DVD subtitles, Blu-ray is next: It is now possible to demux and process Blu-ray subtitles using the latest releases of xport and Supread. And SubtitleCreator 2.2.2 can import HD-SUP subtitles.

The latest version of TsRemux can handle program stream to transport stream remuxing, thus enabling you to convert VOBs and EVOs to M2TS format.

DGMPGDec 1.4.9 RC2 can demux LPCM audio for M2TS files.

Is Apple abandoning the 'one price fits all' mantra for iTunes? Naturally, the higher priced DRM-free songs opened the door and it seems Apple is willing to be more flexible on pricing, but only if songs are being sold without DRM. Now the ball is in the DRM lover's court ;)

Will we soon see the end of second hand CD shops? I honestly have never even contemplated buying CDs second hand (I'm way too anal about keeping things scratch free where most people just throw around discs until they are scratched beyond recognition), but second hand legislation in Florida and Utah make you think: you need a permit to buy and sell second hand CDs, need to make a copy of a state issues photo ID of the seller and take a fingerprint, need to keep items you bought for 30 days before reselling, and as a seller you'd only get store credit. And all that for a piece of plastic that didn't even cost 20 bucks to begin with? Come on..

ProgDVB 5.08 supports DVB tuners from Tongshi and contains updated modules for TechnoTrend and DVBWorld cards.

Muxman 0.15R fixes a few bugs.

TsRemux is a transport stream remuxer that supports transport stream from Blu-ray, Satellite and terrestrial TV broadcasts.

VobBlanker 2.1.3.0 controls the minimum windows size, can split menus at up to 32 split points, can split a cell in the menu domain, checks for PTS discontinuities when extending cells, allows up to 32 split points per cell, shows the GOP type and cell elapsed time in the preview, disables overlay if needed in Windows Vista, and there's a bunch of smaller changes and bugfixes. And as a sideeffect from the lawsuits against RipIt4Me, VobBlanker now refuses to run when AnyDVD, DVD43 or DVDRegionFree are running.

Not having learnt the lesson that once the genie is out of the bottle, it cannot be put back in, the AACS LA is dead set to go down the same path as the DVD CCA did once upon a time when dodsrip and DeCSS were the tools to back up DVDs: get more lawyers involved. How about this subject for a thesis in business: the economics of the movie industry in absence of DRM. After all, it's simple economics when people turn away from legitimate purchases and get their movies elsewhere - and even some studio execs believe there's a way to compete with free, but nobody tries to go for it all the way.

And following the industry's long line of slapping DRM on everything instead of selling the product for a reasonable price that discourages piracy, the little known HD VMD format boasts yet another system to "protect" legitimate buyers from making backup copies.

The RIAA/MPAA friends in Congress have begun quizzing US universities on what they do to curb piracy on college campuses - and threaten to take action if the answers are not satisfactory (satisfactory to the industry obviously - who cares about students anyway). Meanwhile, at Harvard, they think that universities should not become the RIAA's henchmen and instead defend targeted students and ask Congress to roll back the copyright laws introduced within the last decade that only benefit the industry.

Almost a year after the raid on the Pirate Bay raid in Sweden (under pressure from US officials who in term were pressured by the RIAA and MPAA), the state is dead set on pressing charges - even if they don't know what those charges will be yet. One has to wonder whether this is just a PR move to appease the aforementioned 4 letter organizations as the time to press charges is running out quickly (charges have to be filed by June 1st).

You might want to hold off a bit until the news item reappears in my news forum - but here's the gist about DivX 6.6: it brings faster decoding, faster encoding in insane mode, better compression in the fastest mode and it contains experimental SSE4 optimizations for intel's upcoming CPU generation.

While HD DVD already has a hook into the PC market with the Xbox 360 add-on, the first affordable Blu-ray reader is Pioneer's BDC-2202, a $299 model. The $100 over the HD DVD model gets you access to tripe DRM infected Blu-ray discs and also acts as a DVD burner.

Once again, the population outside the US gets the boot from a useful online service: while TV stations never opened up their streaming to non US audiences, we now have online radio stations beginning to shut out non US listeners - mainly because of the upcoming massive hike of royalties that the RIAA cannot wait to get their hands on. And less than two weeks before the new loyalties were due, they've been delayed until July 15th - just enough time to ask your elected representatives to go for for HR-2006 - the Internet Radio Equality Act.

HC 0.21 has SSSE3 support, contains some new functions, speeds up encoding for the best profile and contains some bugfixes as well. Sadly, there's still no SMP optimizations :(

Last night, the forum's all time record number of users was broken again - and not by small margin: we went up from almost 3000 to almost 5000 simultaneous users. Fortunately the server didn't overheat under the intense pressure :) And we owe it all to the AACS LA: their half month old DMCA takedown notices started gaining some interest around the web - notably it went up on slashdot and digg. But only the removal of all related material from digg really made things interesting - people started complaining in numbers that couldn't be ignored, so the links were reinstated. And that just kept fueling things with stories appearing on BBC, Forbes, and even CNN. The funny thing is: discs manufactured after April 23rd can no longer be decrypted with the processing key that was discovered back in February - so while all current 4xx titles are affected, the bulk of titles to come out will require keys that are yet to be found to be decrypted.

They so barely missed the top ten of alleged "worst copyright offenders" that the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA - anybody come up with what sinister motives those letters really stand for?) is ganging up on the US government to include Canada in the top ten list of copyright offenders. Those not swayed by industry propaganda tend to see Canada's copyright laws in a much more favorable light. And I'm quite convinced that if the majority of voters knew the side effects of DMCA style legislation, no such law would ever be passed in any country not run by a dictator.

Now I'm really getting curious: After the removal of RipIt4Me and the related forums and guides, the subsequent removal of FixVTS, the whole decryption forum has disappeared from Digital Digest. Since there's no info available as usual, it might be prudent to check for any ongoing litigation against the parent company of Digital Digest in Australia.. you never know what you might find.

DGMPGDec 1.4.9 RC1 fixes a few bugs.

France's proposed implementation of the EU snooping directive should make your hair stand up: we're not only talking about keeping records on your online activity for 3 years (3 times as long as the proposed minimum and a year beyond the maximum of the EU directive), but also login and password information - I'm sure a lot of people would love to get their hands on those pieces of information :) In light of that, Le Monde is asking if the state wants to kill the Internet.

While the RIAA and MPAA would like to see nothing more than for Pirate Bay to be shut down, some artists are uploading torrents to that same site.

It appears Apple has taken one step towards a DRM free iTunes: Until this date, except for the EMI deal noone could sell music on iTunes without DRM - now Apple is offering this possibility to all its partners.

And in an example just what you can expect from the ongoing WIPO negotiations on the broadcast treaty - take a look at the restrictions imposed on the reuse of broadcasts of the US Presidential debates.

Last month's news can be found here.