It's time to begin pheering the leetness of DRM-mongers, inclined as they now are to start disabling players using the key-revocation system embedded in the next-get format standards. The first application to "expire," which is to say will not work with future releases, is Corel's InterVideo WinDVD 8, whose key was posted to the internet by Atari Vampire.
Corel will issue an update for licensed users of the software. Device keys are used to help overcome AACS, one level of the encryption system deployed on HD-DVD and Blu-Ray disks.
This is, I think the first time that a DRM authority has waded in to preemptively cut off every copy of a program, an act made possible only by a key system that end-runs end-user propriety, because they don't have to fiddle with the player itself. Here, with software, it can all be smoothed over with free updates and whatnot, but how long until a hardware player gets the same treatment?
