Ebrown's illegal act of the day.

How dare you attempt to use a copyrighted set of hexadecimal characters!

I'll have to report you immediately

Cycloptichorn

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Here is the background story.... an interesting tale of a subversive rebellion in the battle over copyrights...

Boing Boing wrote:

Last night, Digg.com underwent a user rebellion. Digg removed many posts -- and terminated the accounts of some of its users -- for posting a 16-digit hexadecimal number that is used to lock up HD-DVD movies. The number -- a "processing key" -- was discovered by Doom9 message-board poster muslix64, who was frustrated by his inability to play his lawfully purchased HD-DVD movies because of failure in the anti-copying system.

[snip snip...]

Digg's users revolted at this stricture, and saw to it that every single item on the front page of Digg contained the forbidden number. Users accused Digg of taking money from the HD-DVD manufacturers (Digg ran an ad campaign from the company in the late summer of 2006), and complained about the site's deletion of user accounts.

At 9PM last night, Kevin Rose, Digg's founder, posted about this on the Digg blog, and said that he would no longer take material down, even though it could very well cost him the site. It's a brave stance, and it seems to have quieted the Digg users' protests.

Boing Boing article

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ebrown_p wrote:

even though it could very well cost him the site.

Uhhh... that's scary. (I know nothing about this, but are you now endangering THIS site?)

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Yes. We're all going to jail. Thanks alot, ebrown.

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No. (I wouldn't think of doing that)

The DMCA act (IMO one of the worst pieces of legislation ever given as a gift to the rights of corporations against individual citizens) has one saving grace.... it has a rather long way of going after websites.

The only way that A2K can be held liable for what we post is if they receive a cease and desist letter from the people who claim to own this particular number. Then A2K will simply take this post down and perhaps give me a slap on the wrist (which I might even enjoy).

However, the idea of protecting a number is so silly that there are now tens of thousands of websites that contain it (and subversives like me keep spreading it). This broke yesterday... and you can already buy a t-shirt with the number on it.

The risk to A2K is zero... and the risk to me is pret--- [oh who is that at the door?]

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I once ripped off the tag from a pillow and I wasn't the consumer.

Just thought I needed to confess as well.

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My cat killed something in my name today.

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Maybe these folks need to get together with Angelina Jolie to discuss matters:

Quote:

Life & Style is reporting that both Shiloh, 11 months, and mom Angie, 31, have filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to block Hors Lá Monde Corp., a jewelry-design and fragrance company, from giving its latest perfume the name 'Shiloh.

Source

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That number is neither illegal or copyrighted (despite what laypersons on the internet claim). However explaining how to use it to circumvent DRM on HD-DVDs is illegal under U.S. law.

In any case the number is being changed and it will all be moot.

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I think you are missing the point of the larger story Craven.

First, the publication of this key is not everything, but it is a minor coup. Changing the number means that all new DVD's won't work with many old players. This is at least a pain in the butt for manufacturers who don't like having to inconvenience customers.

This is why groups like the AACS take the trouble to have their expensive lawyers try to censor this number.

These stories keep popping up since there is an arms race between the "industry" trying to make DRM enforcing technology and the users who are subverting it.

But the real story here is a revolt against the unreasonably harsh and unenforcable intellectual property rights rules being pushed through Congress and ridiculously enformced by industry groups like the RIAA.

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I've been following the "user revolt" as well as the gradual awakening to DRM's deficiencies both among the general populace as well as among some key proponents (e.g. Bill Gates has made comments about it's deficiencies but still needs to work with it to access content from providers who insist on it) of the technology.

My comment was just my personal opinion on the legality of posting the hexadecimal code, and given that I would be the recipient of takedown notices and lawsuits and suchlike it was solicited by the moderators.

As to the bigger picture I think this is just another flash in the pan. Sony's rootkit should have been a wake up call. It wasn't. When content owners themselves realize the downsides (to themselves) of harsh DRM it will go away, but for the most part they've shown no inclination to respond to user dissatisfaction with the technology by adopting saner business practices.

My prediction is that the content generation industry itself will have to change before DRM does. As the middlemen are cut out by user-generated, internet-based delivery mediums I think IP approaches to music and video will change.

But no matter what the users do, as long as they desire the content (this will never go away) and the content owners' middlemen show no inclination to figure out why their business models are fatally flawed we are stuck with this.

I think it will take next generation social-networks/content delivery mediums (amiestreet.com is an example of the current generation, delivering DRM-free music in a social network for content generation) to effect change. The **AA's don't show any sign that they might get it in the future and I think their flawed business models might actually have to run its course and die before the customers get less restrictive IP licenses.

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Craven de Kere wrote:

That number is neither illegal or copyrighted (despite what laypersons on the internet claim). However explaining how to use it to circumvent DRM on HD-DVDs is illegal under U.S. law.

In any case the number is being changed and it will all be moot.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070415-aacs-cracks-cannot-be-revoked-says-hacker.html

Quote:

New AACS cracks cannot be revoked, says hacker

The encrypters will never win, ever. The hackers will inevitably triumph in any situation.

Cycloptichorn

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Good to see Craven post - too bad under unfortunate circumstances.

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Cycloptichorn wrote:

The encrypters will never win, ever. The hackers will inevitably triumph in any situation.

The encrypters have a much harder job, they need to patch software and release it while the hackers just need to find decryption keys and such.

But when I said it would be moot I'm talking about this particular number and the uproar it has caused.

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This is still an amusing story in a couple of respects.

First of all, the heavy-handed attempts by the ??AA lawyers to stop this number from being published actually contributed to it exploding across the Internet. This is a kind of funny (even given your assertion the number isn't very important anyway).

Second, the existance of a community of rebel tech-nerds who are challenging laws and industries, although it is a recurring theme, is still a pretty cool story line. This is the modern version of social banditry.

Of course the philosophical battle between copyrights and free flow of information is an interesting one in many respects.

I just posted this as an amusing story-- 'tis all.

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ebrown_p wrote:

Second, the existance of a community of rebel tech-nerds who are challenging laws and industries, although it is a recurring theme, is still a pretty cool story line. This is the modern version of social banditry.

This has been going on for more than 30 years, when the first "hackers" were out to "hack" their way into the the telephone companies computers (Ma Bell), so that they could steal long distance time. They wanted to do that because there was no cheap way to log onto bulletin boards, such as they existed at the time.

Banditry is illegal, and with good reason. Bandits are only romantically "cool" to those who don't suffer directly from their depredations. Even then, they suffer and don't realize it. When you made a long distance call in the early 1970s, a part of the cost you paid was for the losses the telephone company believed it was suffering, and to pay for the measures they took to combat the first hackers.

Stealing ain't cool. If the corporations are engaged in "legal theft," that still doesn't justify criminal activity to "right a wrong."

In none of this am i saying that one side is right, and the other is wrong, because i freely admit that i don't know enough about the issue to reasonably judge. But bandits ain't cool, and stealing ain't cool.

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Setanta.

My point with my social banditry comment is that it is a good story... and a good story doesn't have match with reality. There are plenty of bandits in legend who are romanticized- Robin Hood, Blackbeard. The fact that these figures may not have even existed, or if they did weren't really very good after all is irrelevant to the fact that they make a darn amusing story.

I don't have a real dog in this fight- my interest is intellectual and tangential. I neither neither a DVD copyright holder, nor do I pirate DVDs. However, this direction for this discussion seems intersting, so let's procede.

There are many in my industry who feel that the current copyright laws are doomed to fail (and should fail) partially because they are unenforceable.

There are certainly lots of examples of people who have changed society by breaking laws-- sometimes for good reasons, somtimes for less than noble reasons.

Look at prohibition-- another example of a law that criminalized an act that , after many attempts to prosecute violations, it became very clear that the law was unworkable.

I think your statement "stealing ain't cool" is uncharacteristically ill-defined and unsupportable. It isn't clear that breaking copyright protection should be considered stealing... and "cool" is a very ambiguous term that has something to do with social conventions. Napster was certainly "cool" to many people although others considered it stealing.

It is clear that defining the publication of a number as "stealing" and then trying to prevent people from do it is is ridiculously difficult.

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You, E_brown, were the one who introduced the concept of "social banditry" (whatever the hell that is supposed to be) and said that this is "a pretty cool story line:"

Quote:

Second, the existance of a community of rebel tech-nerds who are challenging laws and industries, although it is a recurring theme, is still a pretty cool story line. This is the modern version of social banditry.

Banditry is theft, so it seemed apparent to me that you are saying that theft (stealing, banditry) is cool. If you have a problem with the use of "cool," find a mirror and start an argument.

Blackbeard was real, and he was a pirate. The fact that he usually did not harm his victims, if they offered no resistance, does not alter that he not only countenanced theft and murder, but that that was his business. His log book, captured after his ship was boarded and he was killed, shows that he was concerned to keep his crew supplied with rum and wine, because that was necessary to keep them sufficiently contented that they would not desert or turn on him. Pirates are never, in reality, heroic--they are scurrilous criminals, who either have abandoned a career or a potential career at sea, or never had any real prospects to begin with. There is nothing admirable about them.

Robin Hood likely never existed, or, if he did, the version of the Robin Hood legend peddled by Walter Scott in Ivanhoe is made up from whole cloth. Nevertheless, even that romanticized version is an expression of a prejudiced point of view which equates to all Anglo-Saxons are good, all Normans are bad (except for Richard Lionheart, and Scott carefully fails to mention that Richard was homosexual--nothing wrong with that of course, but it would have offended his Victorian audience--and particularly that Richard was a vicious homicidal egomaniac).

Whether it is a pirate such as Blackbeard, or a cobbled-together legend such as Robin Hood, especially as received from the pen of Walter Scott--the fact remains that it is wooly-headed nonsense to suggest that those who get their living by theft ought ever to be glorified.

My post contained a specific disclaimer about the details of this particular case--i haven't said that anyone involved is stealing. I simply intended to point out that stealing and banditry ain't cool--to use the term you introduced.

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Quote:

I simply intended to point out that stealing and banditry ain't cool--to use the term you introduced.

First, I used this word "cool" to refer to the story that I (and I believe others) find amusing, entertaining or appealing.

Second, let's generalize "stealing" and "banditry" (which have specific meanings that may not apply to this story) to "breaking the law".

I assume that you would agree that there were many "heroic" (and "cool") stories of people who broke the law. People who broke the law have been instrumental in causing social change.

I would also assume that you would agree that stories featuring outlaws portrayed in a heroic sense, are very popular. This implies that to many people they are "cool".

I found this particular story amusing, and I think that other people will too. There are also some that would argue that "unlawful" act in this story is the symptom of a movement that will cause a social change. This, to me, makes it even more interesting.

That is all I am saying.

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Ebrown's illegal act of the day.

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