The bigger they are, the harder they fall: A couple of years ago, a group of companies with big positions (or big dreams) in the media content business got together to promote the be-all and end-all of copy-protection standards for high-definition video content. Guess what. It's been hacked. Are you shocked and surprised? Neither am I. The problem isn't hackers. The problem is DRM.

The companies were Disney, Intel, Microsoft, Sony, Warner Brothers, Toshiba, Panasonic, and IBM. What they were pushing a digital-rights management system called Advanced Access Content System (AACS), a content-encryption system intended to protect HD DVD and Blu-ray discs in particular. It was going to be just like the Content Scrambling System (CSS) used to protect standard DVDs, only better, because it would allow more flexible use of content, like loading movies onto home media servers, or burning downloaded videos to disk, while making sure the content owner's rights (and profits) were safeguarded. (If you care to, you can read up on all this at http://www.aacsla.com.)

HD disks are just beginning to find their way into the marketplace, but already AACS has proved to be just like CSS in one important respect: It's been broken.

A hacker calling himself (or, to be sure, herself) Muslix64 has posted his software, called BackupHDDVD, to the Doom 9 forum. The post warns the code is still buggy, and requires separate volume and title keys to decrypt disks, but it's a proof of concept. (The post includes the volume and title keys to decrypt "Full Metal Jacket," "Van Helsing," and some other HD DVD titles, according to a report on Gizmodo, with, naturally, a supporting video.

Oops, I guess there's another way to allow more flexible use of content -- one that many customers seem to prefer.

AACS was bound to fail -- and not just because it was the product of a committee. No DRM scheme will stay "unbreakable" for long. The record companies and movie studios should learn that lesson and accept it, and technology companies like Microsoft, Toshiba, and Panasonic and IBM should quit trying to sell Hollywood a nonexistent technical fix like tailors selling the emperor new clothes. The big dreamers should stop creating nightmares for consumers and instead create a fair universal licensing plan that lets people use media without being forced to become felons.

Anything less simply means that Hollywood will disappear, because it is insisting on a commercial and legal environment that prohibits the use of its products rather than encourages it.