Jon "DVD Jon" Johansen, notorious for cracking the CSS system protecting DVDs, releasing a DeCSS software on the internet, has committed to launching a tool to crack the Advanced Access Content System (AACS) used in next-generation DVD formats.

In a blog posting earlier this month, Johansen announced that he had registered the Deaacs.com site, which cites a "winter 2006/2007" release date for the software.

"AACS, like CSS, will be a success," Johansen wrote. "Not at preventing piracy. That's not the primary objective of any DRM system. Anyone who has read the CSS license agreement knows that the primary objective is to control the market for players. Don't you just love when your DVD player tells you 'This operation is prohibited' when you try to skip the intro?"

Johansen wrote and released "DeCSS," a tool for stripping the Content Scrambling System protections written into DVDs. In 2003, entertainment lobbyists tried to argue that Johansen, a Norwegian, had contributed to copyright piracy by releasing the tool on the Internet. Johansen argued that stripping the copy protection was necessary to view movies using a Linux-based movie player.

Story filed 22.01.06