Slashdot are reporting that for one title at least, the new AACS HD-DVD copy protection technology has been cracked and the special keys that protect the high-definition content for Serenity have been leaked.

Also, apparently, a decryption utility is available which will strip the encryption and bundled DRM from the high-definition video.

In the battle for content producers to ‘win the war’ against piracy, and to further restrict consumers in what they can do with their purchased content (or at least give themselves the ability to do this) they built the new AACS standard, which will feature on both HD-DVD and Blu-ray movie discs. Apparently, though, they didn’t build it well enough and these early cracks seem to be echoing what happened in the early days of the DVD when its Content Scrambling System was cracked.

I think the question here is have the content industry gone too far? Ever since the home taping days, the big media giants have been obsessed with protecting their content with technical measures. The new AACS includes technology that can ‘blacklist’ devices that have been compromised (they’ve had their encryption keys published, for example) which means that should the media giants so decide, they can blacklist that whole model of player with the release of new HD-DVD/Blu-ray titles.

Will the public accept this? Do people even know and understand and is the ever-increasing restriction of DRM becoming too much for consumers?