DVDs are encrypted with something known as CSS - the Content Scrambling System. Fortunately or unfortunately (depending on your point of view), this was an incredibly lame content-encryption scheme and was easily cracked.

So the various content-holding giants (Disney, Sony, IBM, WB, etc.) came up with AACS as a replacement for CSS. And apparently that has now been cracked too, within only eight days.

There are several problems here:

(1) Because these content distributers are lame-oids who can't generate a decent encryption scheme, they then ask the government to make laws which would make it illegal to read and interpret bytes of data on a piece of media you have purchased and own. Idiotic.

People who think corporations are all "right wing" (i.e. interested in small government) are mistaken. Big corporations love big, powerful government: centralized power is easiest to influence. In this case, Bill Clinton was very happy to oblige, and made reading bytes and passing them through algorithms a felony, punishable with the full weight of the US Justice system.

As if we didn't have more pressing problems.

(2) I'm against piracy, but laws like these don't curb wide-scale piracy, since they don't stop prevent the discs themselves from being copied. They apparently just want to make sure you have to pay some third corporation (who makes the DVD codecs) for the right to watch a movie you've already purchased.

They also want to make sure that people can't make alternate platforms (like Linux) where you could view content. The goal here is to control the manufacture and distribution of the readers, not just the content, probably to prevent future content competition.

(3) The point of copyright wasn't to benefit some large corporation or protect their assets. The ultimate point of copyright was to increase the total amount of high-quality free material available to the public. That principle has been lost.

(4) The founders were very concerned with "fair use", by which individuals could copy or use small portions of media for discussion. That principle has also been largely ignored in the courts and legislatures.