Targeted Copyright Enforcement: Deterring Many Users with a Few Lawsuits: Via Freedom to Tinker.

One reason the record industry's strategy of suing online infringers ran into trouble is that there are too many infringers to sue. If the industry can only sue a tiny fraction of infringers, then any individual infringer will know that he is very unlikely to be sued, and deterrence will fail.

Or so it might seem -- until you read The Dynamics of Deterrence, a recent paper by Mark Kleiman and Beau Kilmer that explains how to deter a great many violators despite limited enforcement capacity.

Consider the following hypothetical. [ Read more ... ]

AACS Updated, Broken Again: "

[Other posts in this series]

We predicted in past posts that AACS, the encryption system intended to protect HD-DVD and Blu-ray movies, would suffer a gradual meltdown from its inability to respond quickly enough to attacks. Like most DRM, AACS depends on the secrecy of encryption keys built into hardware and software players. An attacker who discovers a player’s keys can defeat the protection on any disc that works with that player. AACS was designed with a defense against such attacks: after a player has been compromised, producers can alter new discs so that they no longer work with the compromised player’s keys. Whether this defense (which we call ‘key blacklisting’) will do much to stop copying depends how much time elapses before each leaked key is blacklisted.

Next week marks three months after the first compromised player key appeared on the Internet (and more than five months after cracks for individual discs began to appear). Discs slated for release on Tuesday will be the first to contain an update to AACS that blacklists the leaked keys. [ Read more ... ]

Online Resource for Identity Document Security Information: "'This library is intended to be a dynamic player in helping keep everyone on the same informational playing field when it comes to identity document security.'"

(Via GT: Security and Privacy.)

Are Xbox Live support staff helping hackers hijack accounts?: "Microsoft today said Xbox Live network account hacks are users' fault, but evidence shows that -- in some cases, at least -- the gaming service's own support staff may be unwittingly helping hackers hijack player identities."

(Via Computerworld Cybercrime/Hacking News.)