From /. is a link to an article from Spectrum describing a DRM mechanism to prevent copying of the HD-DVDs. One of /.'s readers posted this comment, which hits the nail on the head: "This has the same flaws as all of them. The authorized user and the attacker are one and the same. You can't protect against that, not with cryptography."

The standards body must not understand cryptography at all. For example, if I encrypt an email with your public key (in an asymmetric key cryptosystem) and send it to you, there's nothing to stop you from decrypting the message and resending its contents. (Of course, no other readers would be certain the message really came from me, since my signature would be on the outside of the encrypted data.) The same thing is true with entertainment media: in order to partake in the materials legally obtained, the user must be authorized, and anything that they see or hear can be captured. People who download pirated media, which is compressed in relatively poor quality, probably don't care if the signal has passed into the analog domain and back, or if it's re-coded at a much lower bit rate.

There's only one way for the industry to prosper, and that's to innovate. I mean, come up with cool new stuff, fairly priced, that people are willing to pay for. That and accept a limited amount of piracy—that can generate sales on might not have otherwise had (a free trial or free advertising, in other words). Someone's always going to be ready to pirate rather than buy. On the other hand, if it's too easy to copy, most everyone would do it rather than pay; so perhaps some middle-ground could be reached. The world is not ideal, after all.