Digg losing control of their site (HD-DVD encryption keys were posted)

InfoWorld ^ | May 1, 2007 | Kevin Railsback

[HAL9000]

Excerpt -

The folks at Digg.com have let the social news genie out of the bottle, and now they can't control it. Since the HD-DVD encryption code was discovered and published, readers at Digg have been repeatedly submitting stories with the 16 digit hex code in the titles and bodies. Just as quickly as these posts crawl up the Digg charts, admins seem to be deleting them.

Just search Google for 09 F9 and you'll find the key. Will AACS send a Cease and Desist to InfoWorld because I posted the text "09 F9"? If so, we might as well give up on this whole Internet thing right here and now.

Can a simple, short string of numbers and letters (the full key) really be copyrighted? And is Digg.com receiving a proper takedown notice for each case, or are they taking things into their own hands and deleting posts willy-nilly?

The same sort of thing happened when the DeCSS code came out - I even have a t-shirt with the code printed on it. This just goes to show how useless the DMCA is, and how information cannot be controlled, and that DRM will never truly work.

~ snip ~

[BlazingArizona]

I love seeing Hollywood fiddle while innumerable pirate CDs are burned.

Our totally broken intellectual property system is melting down as we watch. Good riddance.

[budman_2001]

Another oddity. Diggers are now posting images from flicker with their messages.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/223/480843632_9bde6adc20_o.jpg

Soon, they will be posting to get around any censor filters I betcha.

[B-Chan]

I agree — and I make my living with intellectual property. My competitors freely copy my merchandise — and I welcome their piracy. It pushes me to constantly come up with new, different, and more profitable ideas.

[HiTech RedNeck]

They'll order their K Street lobbyists to contact every Senator and Congressman tomorrow, demanding harsher penalties for copyright laws.

Aren't Democrats less friendly to that than Republicans? There could be a silver lining in the Congressional cloud.

[derllak]

Wow. Searching for “09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0” now generates 283,000 hits on Google. Up 13K in just a few minutes.

[catbertz]

I’ve read that there are already a whole gaggle of HD DVD torrents available

[Star Traveler]

You said — “Oh Nine, Eff Nine”

—

Cool..., that reminded me of the “pi song” — for whatever it’s worth. I think it could be a hit song.. LOL...

http://pi.ytmnd.com/

I really kinda like it...

[MediaMole]

He really doesn’t have anything more than the salary he is getting from Digg/Revision 3. The company is still in the “burn VC money” mode. The $60 million is from a BS Businessweek story from a few months ago.

It figured that Digg could be sold for $240 million, so Rose would see $60 million for his 25%.

[Chinito]

Hey...it works!

[HAL9000]

Both parties have been involved in DRM legislation - Hatch, Tauzin, Dingell, Feinstein, Hollings, etc.

[Dr.Zoidberg]

Well that certainly changes things.

That is QUITE unfortunate for Mr. Rose.

Better luck next time...

[Star Traveler]

You said — This isn’t even a hunk of programming that offers functionality, like decss was ruled to be. I wouldn’t be able to decode a DVD without also writing a program that uses this infamous code, and wouldn’t that part be protected by patent?”

—

See Post #15 —

Proof of concept code for the process key hack is here: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=953484#post953484

Implementation for Windows: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=953496#post953496

Implementation for OSX: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=953516#post953516

[FreedomCalls]

If so, that concept is bordering on “thought control” and makes us a lot closer to the “1984” story....

Actually it reminds me more of the movie "Z" from 1969. It's all about the military dictatorship in Greece. At the end of the movie the narrator says:

Concurrently, the military banned long hair on males; mini-skirts; Sophocles; Tolstoy; Euripedes; smashing glasses after drinking toasts; labor strikes; Aristophanes; Ionesco; Sartre; Albee; Pinter; freedom of the press; sociology; Beckett; Dostoyevsky; modern music; popular music; the new mathematics; and the letter "Z", which in ancient Greek means "He is alive!"

Back then we were all appalled that a letter could be banned. Now in 2007, we have a number being banned.

[Star Traveler]

You said — “Back then we were all appalled that a letter could be banned. Now in 2007, we have a number being banned.”

—

Never did see that, but, yes, it is appalling... The system is crazy. They should have never passed that DCMA...

[burzum]

I don’t know why the MPAA tries this DRM crap. All they are doing is breeding generation after generation of super-hackers. No matter what kind of encryption code they implement, the media has to be decoded to be played... and if it can be decoded, it can be cracked.

"Anyone attempting to generate random numbers by deterministic means is, of course, living in a state of sin." -- John Von Neumann

[budman_2001]

For those who might not be able to get in yet, at 11:23pm PDT, here's whats showng. Sort of gives you the idea.

[B-Chan]

lol

[HiTech RedNeck]

well the doom9 folks sure musta dug(g) in. their stuff sure ain’t gone.

[B-Chan]

Every intellectual property lawyer in Hollywood is racing to to the office right now. Meanwhile, the owners of doom9 are frantically buying Krugerrands and booking tickets to South America under assumed names even as we speak.

[HiTech RedNeck]

Well this cow done left the barn and had about a million calves.

In the tech wars, I can’t see any way around this than to decode it all from digital to analog in a trusted dongle, encased in some impervious material that would require the resources of a CIA to bust into without destroying the electronics. Most of the revenue would come from selling the dongles.