The anti-DRM revolution
In early May 2007 something amazing happened. Hollywood’s most guarded secret, the key to decrypt HD-DVDs, was found and released on the Internet, via the site digg.com. At first Kevin Rose, the Digg founder, felt pressured by Hollywood lawyers to take down the key, but this made Digg users go completely ballistic, and in the end Kevin posted the code himself saying something to the sort of “this may be the end for us, but at least we went down fighting” (see original post). The key in hex, in case you wonder, is:
09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0
Even the iphone didn’t generate this much attention, the blogsphere was flooded with reactions from the two factions: “digg surrenders to mob” and “the truth will not be silenced”. I’m afraid I, with most techies and new media people, belong with the last group that thinks DRM is the Next Big Evil.
People went out of their way to spread the code, to the point of creating songs. The first song wasn’t really that good, but then Geoff Smith created a song called “Digg the Code” that Cali Lewis of the GeekBrief.tv podcast put video on…. What can I say, it’s awesome:
There are currently more occurences of this “secret code” on the net than there are HD-DVD players in the world.
May 23rd, 2007 at 2:40 pm
just take it as a part of Internet History.
It’s said that the key that encrypts HD-DVD’s was leaked out through a couple of websites before posted to Digg. Yes, Digg do censore their site, but you can’t expect their staff working over 24/7.
btw, i just heard The Google Developer Day 2007 will be held at 新世纪日航 Hotel on May 31 in Beijing. Guido van Rossum, the author of the Python will address at the meeting.
any plans to join it?
I will be there, hopefully.
May 23rd, 2007 at 2:42 pm
and here is the link: http://google.crad.com.cn/index.html