Movie Keystroke Cops

The AACS licensing group says it recognizes the difficulty of its position but won't back down. Spokesman Michael Ayers (also an attorney for Toshiba) said the cease-and-desist letters would continue and suggested that even pictorial depictions of the key might not be exempt.

Ayers then expressed hope that the key would fade from the public mind. "It is unfortunate that there has been this . . . temper tantrum," he said in an interview Tuesday. "Hopefully we'll see the public interest in this subside back to a normal and reasonable level."

Thing is, the AACS group has already done everything necessary to stop the damage caused by the hack of its system. In April, it changed the key used on new discs, which Ayers said would protect those movies from being copied using the exposed key.

If this group had merely yanked that key and then shut up about the entire issue, it might have accomplished something. Instead, its clumsy attempts to wipe it off the Web have shoved the key into the headlines-- ensuring that any interested programmer has now discovered this "secret."

Even the MPAA now seems to know better than to waste its time going after Web sites that distribute software, much less raw source code. "The battle is lost on that front," said MPAA Internet anti-piracy director Craig Winter.

Instead, Winter said the MPAA devotes the bulk of its efforts to targeting widespread commercial piracy -- most of which doesn't take place over the Internet, and an overwhelming amount of which happens outside the United States.

At some point, the hardheads behind AACS may realize that they're creating new enemies-- and making a joke out of themselves in the process.

In the meantime, the spectacle of this group flailing away with cease-and-desist letters may wind up entertaining more people than all of the high-definition discs sold so far.

Living with technology, or trying to? E-mail Rob Pegoraro atrobp@washpost.com.