HD-DVD cracked … or not.

Recently, if you care, a key for HD-DVD was accidentally leaked to the internet. This usually isn’t a huge deal, but it has caused quite a furor in many user generated blogs and other sites, including Digg and Reddit.
Many of these sites are taking actions, at the behest of the AACS consortium, to take this code down. Most are willingly doing so, but many users are completely outraged.
If you didn’t know, the new HD-DVDs are protected from copyright infringement by the use of a key system. This key system allows the producers of the content to allow or disallow certain players based on their key. In this instance, a key was leaked that allowed anything to play the content, including the popular operating system Linux. This was previously impossible. Now that this key is “in the wild” it is feasible to allow even non-allowed systems to play back HD-DVDs.
It seems that this breach of the key, however, isn’t going unnoticed by the owners of the content. Many websites hosting the key (a simple hex number) have been contacted and been notified via a cease and desist order. Most are complying, but not without voicing their discontent.
Here is where I may differ from most folks. I know that locking down content is a hassle for the end user, and I know that not being able to do whatever you want with your HD content is crappy. I just don’t understand all of the outcry over this key.
If I have it right, this key is only good for any HD-DVDs that have already been produced. All the content makers have to do is revoke that key, and any content produced after that date will no longer play in systems previously hacked with the leaked key. So, for instance, if I were to use the key to play some HD-DVD on my Linux system, any HD-DVD I bought tomorrow (or whenever the key is revoked) wouldn’t work, because the key in THAT disk would not jive with they key I was trying to use. (If you want to read more about it, “Página do jqr” blogs about it in technical detail.)
If I have this wrong, please let me know, but it seems just that simple to me.
SO, ya ya ya, down with the man and all of that, but by law, these guys have to ACTIVELY pursue any copyright infringements or they lose their copyright. This means that if they didn’t try and shut down these infringements, then it would become public domain and they would lose the rights to it. THAT is why, even though it isn’t that big of a deal to us, they will still pursue it.
So what does all of this really mean?
Not much, I’m afraid. The key wasn’t really hacked, it was leaked on accident, so it can’t be readily reproduced in future. The key will become useless, so users will soon be out of luck if they are trying to hack the players to play protected content.
All in all, much ado about nothing.