HD-DVD key fiasco is an example of 21st century digital revolt

Filed under: Internet, Security, News, P2P

HD-DVD key fiasco is an example of 21st century digital revolt

by Grant Robertson May 1st 2007

It's the most circulated number of the week. Sixteen hexadecimal digits that unlock the wonder of most currently released HD-DVD titles from the surly clutches of the AACS ~~revenue~~ content protection system. Sixteen digits that have been posted in so many places -- and in many cases, removed only to be reposted -- that they're hard to avoid.

Cory Doctorow's class blog for his USC course, "Pwned: How everyone on campus is a copyright criminal" was served a DMCA takedown notice and, on the advice of counsel, removed the offending digits. They were posted to Wikipedia, then removed and locked from reposting. Then the diggstorm came. A slew of digg stories containing the forbidden digits have been posted, made the front page and been removed, only to start again.

Witness the modern equivalent of the 95 thesis' Martin Luther nailed to the door of Wittenburg church. We, digital citizens --commonly referred to by the vulgar term of 'consumers' -- have had enough of content lock-in. We've bought and re-bought entertainment media -- repackaged and regurgitated digital vomitus -- until we're blue in the face. We've been told time and time again that DRM is for our own protection, and we're finally and inconsolably fed up.

As Joe Rogan's character on Newsradio once quite accurately quipped, "Dude, you can't take something off the Internet.. that's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool." The content providers have attempted to do exactly that, remove pee from the proverbial swimming pool that is the Internet and, as we've witnessed so many times before, they've failed miserably.

The bottom line remains, we as consumers, want our content free (as in Freedom) and if we don't get it, we'll take our content free (as in beer).

Tags: aacs, content protection, ContentProtection, drm, hd dvd, HdDvd

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)

Danny said 5:08PM on 5-01-2007

"The bottom line remains, we as consumers, want our content free (as in Freedom) and if we don't get it, we'll take our content free (as in beer)"

Hahhahhaa! Wonderful!

Sam said 6:23PM on 5-01-2007

I even got deleted and blocked from digg just because I posted a story about digg deleting the HD DVD key story!

Read the full story here http://mirror.sam-network.com

HexCode said 6:57PM on 5-01-2007

eCard of the Number (3rd ecard on the page)
http://www.brainwrench.com/ecards/categories/protest.php

DeMarko said 7:39PM on 5-01-2007

it's true, and bonus points for NewsRadio reference

Nigel Stewart said 7:59PM on 5-01-2007

I was banned from digg as well. What is going on with our once great online culture?

Original post here:http://www.nigelstewart.org/archives/2007/05/digg_has_messed.html

Joe Metzger said 9:30PM on 5-01-2007

Amazing. Digg exists because of the users on the site. You would think they would take care and not get themselves in this situation.

If one day the users were to up and leave to somewhere that respects and appreciates them, well, Digg would only have themselves to blame.

Lee said 10:22PM on 5-01-2007

Message #2 is precisely the reason why I am angry with digg. This is NOT the first time they have done this to users where they ban anyone that questions their authority and lack of judgment. They had pulled this crap time and time again and it totally went under the radar because not enough people cared. This time it bit them in the ass, and they were LONG OVERDUE for this. I hope the site never recovers from this. Digg is a farce.

Mrfreezie said 10:39PM on 5-01-2007

I cannot believe you mentioned news radio. I was watching a season of that today, and I heard that "that's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool." I was laughing pretty hard at that. But then to see it again is weird.

Great, great, great article. This man deserves a raise.

Adam Jacob Muller said 10:57PM on 5-01-2007

0x09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0

ap said 2:09AM on 5-02-2007

Anyone read the digg blog lately? :D

http://blog.digg.com/?p=74

The community has spoken.

k.r said 9:24AM on 5-02-2007

I think stuff like this has been happening increasingly more since the transfer of ownership of youtube to google. I can't believe how many sites out there are now streaming movies and television shows.... I think people are starting to spit in the face of corporations and basically saying, we don't want your format we want media digitally delivered to us.

Racetrack-Owner said 10:45AM on 5-02-2007

The slashdot posting on this topic made an extremely interesting (and unusually salient) point: they're essentially trying to censor a number. It's pretty amazing when you consider it in those terms. Here is the article:

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/01/1935250

Some of the commentary was quite good too. Many people are posting other numbers that can be used to derive the key. Are these also DMCA violations?

Aside: Technically Martin Luther never actually nailed anything to the church door. In those days monks and other scholarly types posted their arguments on a public bulletin board, signifying their preparedness to defend their position. This is where Luther posted his condemnation of the Papacy. A very entertaining book on general medieval history is "A World Lit Only By Fire." Highly recommended even if you're not normally into history.

agot said 12:11PM on 5-02-2007

The revolt worked - and it looks like you can commemorate the uprising with a t-shirt, LOL. Isn't there a tech conference coming up we should all wear this to? http://www.cafepress.com/saggingsquirrel

agot said 12:17PM on 5-02-2007

Voodish said 1:48PM on 5-02-2007

Love the Artwork

Will DIGG get DUGG as a result of all this?
http://www.voodish.co.uk/articles/is-digg-going-to-be-dugg/

James said 1:52PM on 5-02-2007

Heh. Excellent. This is perhaps the most concise summary of the reason DRM cannot and will not ever work -- 16 bytes. Can anybody beat that?

Somebody needs to team up with one of those start-ups that turns email into snail-mail free/ad-sponsored, and get people sending thousands upon thousands of postcards with just these numbers on them to the upper-ups of the RIAA. It should be like that scene in the first Harry Potter movie. Man, that would be awesome.

Voodish said 2:33PM on 5-02-2007

^^^
I posted that yesterday, but it didn't arrive here until today, doesn't really have any relevance today, this article is more up to date:

http://www.voodish.co.uk/articles/what-does-the-future-hold-for-digg/

Even that is a bit old now too, sorry

Cheers
Dan.

Chris Carey said 3:33PM on 5-02-2007

Can the Digg mob stop the War in Iraq?

With the Digg mob standing up to the DCMA it made me think...If hundreds of thousands of people can see when something is wrong and stand up for our rights in regards to freedoms of speech when it comes to HD-DVD backup & archive why couldn ’t that same power of the people be harnessed to send a clear message to congress on the War in Iraq?

http://www.digg.com/world_news/Can_the_Digg_mob_stop_the_War_in_Iraq#c6473676

Andrew said 4:49PM on 5-02-2007

http://09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0.net/
http://09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0.org/
http://09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0.info/

psyberone said 5:51PM on 5-02-2007

http://img244.imageshack.us/my.php?image=magicnumbervh5.png

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