The Inquirer noted that Slysoft promised it's customers that their software would be able to remove Blu-ray Digital Rights Management (DRM) software by the end of this quarter. It seems that the people at Slysoft have not only done this, but accomplished their goal an entire month ahead of schedule. AnyDVDHD version 6.1.3.0 adds more than just true Blu-ray support. It also promises to run on Windows Vista and XP x64 (along with all the other operating systems it supports). The free upgrade also removes region encoding. Now it seems that the only problem people will have with upgrading their PC's to support high-definition optical drives is affording the drive and Slysoft AnyDVD HD. You can get AnyDVD HD here, and if you already have it, you can patch yourself for Blu-ray support here.

Steve Jobs announced that he really wants to see DRM go away, much like the rest of the music industry. At the Digital Music Forum East conference, Steve Jobs was made to look like a bit of a hypocrite. While he may want DRM free music, every song (and possibly video) featured on iTunes comes with some form of DRM protection. They claimed that if Steve Jobs really wanted DRM-free music, he would have done away with the DRMs in iTunes as soon as he could. They also said that Apple's proprietary version of DRM is giving the rest of the music world a lot of pain. This falls back on the original music industry's agreement that they need to either do away with DRM's, or all use one version of it.

Although both HD-DVD and Blu-ray have already been hacked to get around copy protection measures, a Doom9 forum poster has managed to find the most effective method yet. Until now, each different film has needed its own unique key to decrypt it, but now all you need is a single Processing Key, which works on both high definition formats. The method used by the hacker was to record all the information that was being read from the disk into the memory and therefore managed to find the processing key. This Processing Key will probably stop working soon however - once the Advanced Access Content System Licensing Administrator gets word of it future disks are likely to be updated.

Digital Rights Management, the technology that prevents people who download music from sharing it, is soon going to find its way onto mobiles. PlayReady, as it is known, is a new DRM which allows for subscription, rental, pay-per-view and the mysterious "super-distribution." Although is has been written by Microsoft, it will not only work with Microsoft's own media formations but other standards including AAC and H.264. PlayReady is backwards compatible with Windows Media DRM 10, so it should allow any mobile devices that use it to play music they've already downloaded using services such as Napster. There isn't any information about whether Microsoft intends to license PlayReady to other vendors yet, or whether it will be seen on desktops or not.

It seems like the music industry really is turning away from the highly-criticized DRM (Digital Rights Management) technology. EMI, a record label, has been asking companies for offers of all their music. And this time, instead of offering it as a DRM-infested WMA, EMI is offering it as an unaltered MP3 file. There will be more details if music distributors such as iTunes, Yahoo Music, and Urge decide to buy these clean MP3 files.

Apple Inc.'s CEO, Steve Jobs, has published an open letter on the Apple website giving his views on Digital Rights Management for music - in other words, the copy protection that stops people easily sharing music purchased over the internet. Jobs wrote that the problems caused by DRM are down to restrictions set in place by the music industry, and he would be willing to go along with an abolishment of DRM, saying Apple would "embrace it in a heartbeat." He claims that Apple is not in control of the DRM restrictions used by iTunes, and that the big four record labels are to blame for the inconvenience. If Apple breaks these restrictions, it has just a few weeks to fix the problem before the record labels withdraw their music. His reasoning behind Apple refusing to use the FairPlay DRM technology (which is supported by a number of companies) is that if problems were found with the music, all companies involved would have a huge task to change all software and firmware to support any modifications required to fix the issue.

We can safely say that DRM's, short for Digital Right Management files, have basically failed to do their intended purpose. Instead of thwarting pirates, they have angered users, prompted DRM cracks, and unleashed a rash of other nasty side effects. During the Music 2.0 conference in Los Angeles, the leaders of the music industry concurred that DRM's are a bad way to go. The majority of speakers declared a need to either drop DRM completely, or at least enable interoperability between all legal music download services. Yahoo is already ahead of the competition in this regard, and has been offering DRM free files alongside DRM filled ones for a while with surprising results. Yahoo's success has prompted other music companies to pre-announce the offering of DRM free files alongside DRM filled ones.

It seems that muslix64, the hacker who cracked HD-DVD, has now done the same for Blu-ray. Blu-ray and HD-DVD both use AACS (Advanced Access Content System) to prevent people copying the media, but it looks like both formats may have been defeated. By finding the keys that films use to prevent users copying the content, people can sidestep the protection and then rip the movies into another format, essentially allowing them the freedom to do what they want with the films. BD+, the second type of protection for Blu-ray, is yet to be broken.

Apple may be set to share its closely guarded FairPlay DRM for the first time, with Netgear's EVA8000 Digital Entertainer HD one of the first players. At CES last week Netgear's new media player was shown playing songs which were downloaded via iTunes, which has led to speculation that Apple is finally willing to let other companies use its protection. It is still possible that Netgear actually hacked the iTunes software to let the device play the songs, but Netgear refused to comment saying that its technique came from a "secret source." If Apple shared its protection it would be likely to get more downloads via iTunes, but there is the possibility that sales of iPods could fall if other devices also work with the software.

Apparently we have us a new DVD Jon at Doom9.org. muslix86 made a program to decrypt AACS protected movies. AACS is the protection used by HD-DVD.
When a HD-DVD is played it's protection key is stored in the system memory unprotected, by grabbing the key you can use BackupHDDVD to decrypt a movie and place it on the hard drive.
The catch, however, is that the program does NOT grab these keys, you will have to add your own keys. To get your key collection started, the program does come with keys for five movies.

According to a number of bloggers, the boss of Microsoft himself, Bill Gates, has said that DRM (Digital Rights Management) "Is not where it should be." Microsoft itself uses DRM to protect music, with it being used by online services such as Napster and the Zune Store. His recommendation is to "buy a CD and rip it", which will allow users more freedom in moving their music between computers and MP3 players. Gates is reported to have said this to a group of invited bloggers at Microsoft's headquarters in Seattle.