AACS key: 09 f9 11 02 9d 74 e3 58d8 41 56 c5 63 56 88 c0

[Lysander]

In typical lawyer fashion, their attempt to stop a small problem has created a large one. Quick rundown: some moron goes and posts this to Dig [it's the security key that allows players to decode HDDVDs; now that it's out people can make software that will rip them], Dig gets a request from the AACS guys to take it down, Dig takes it down, and there is a MASSIVE USER REVOLT~!1!111!1! My freedom of speech is being violated! Those evil corporate taskmasters are abridging my right to destroy the effectiveness of their products and Iiii dooon't liiike yoooou! So eventually they decide that, wait, no, we are going to allow them to post this after all. Because it's juust a series of numbers and letters! I'm far from a Republican, but every time I see someone on somebody's website complaining about his free speech rights being violated, or anyone in a school, or place of business complaining about their freedom of speech being violated, I want to give them a papercut in the eye with the first amendment. It does not apply to private entities. It applies to the government only. Businesses and indeviduals can let you say or not say anything they fucking want you to. It strikes me that all of the people who went bolistic and started putting the key everywhere they could think of--seriously, it's on teeshirts now, I think some guys even got it tattooed on their skin. I would ask how they're going to explain that one to their grandkids but then I remember that these are geeks and thus will never get laid. But anyway, I think that those people went into a kind of "kneejerk revenge" mode; "some website doesn't want something posted? Fuck you! I'll post it everywhere! Take that, man! Up yours!" So Dig, faced with this user riot, chose to pander to the audience and hope that the lawyers will just sort of give them a free pass, which they have absolutely no reason to do. I guess I can see where Dig is coming from; the way the website works, if all the users--or even just the "top diggers"--decide to pack up and go home, then the website is done anyway, so it may not really matter that much to them. But that still doesn't make their public reasoning for it any less ridiculous. Right, it's a "series of numbers and letters"--like how that word Robb sensored is a series of letters. I mean, come on--Dig chooses to censor hate speech all the time but someone posts a software crack and it's all a sudden a free speech issue? You can't pick and choose what you don't want to censor and then pretend like you're just humble content presenters, either leave it all or censor everything that's against the law. While I'm no fan of DRM, I don't see how posting the AACS key is any different than posting a key to Vista or Dreamweaver or discwelder Chrome or [insert name of ludicrously-expensive software package here]. Not to mention, I don't know anyone who would even want to rip HDDVDs to the hard drive--that's, what, 20 gigabytes per movie? That said, though, it's not the actual ripping of DVDs that is illegal, but the breaking of the copy protection to do so; that moon logic always struck me as somewhat silly. "STOP! You are under arrest for breaking protection meant to stop you from not committing a crime!" Anyway, no amount of copy protection will stop the Mafia kingpins that operate huge enormous "pirate ships" off the coast of China or Meilasia or Russia--people that make this illegal distribution their business model, the real "hardcore" criminals that are the ones who are doing the real piracy damage. And the MPAA never goes after those guys; probably because lawyers don't have assault rifles. Then again maybe they dont' mind so much because the illegal form of distribution is far more effective at getting the movies into the hands of consumers than their own overseas channels, who knows. But now, DVD copy protection is being used by the industry to make bundles they otherwise wouldn't get out of concepts like Amazon unbox and iTunes video. I don't mind the online stores for music--I don't use them, I would use Musicgiants if it was a little less expensive but other than that I don't like any of them for various reasons. However, since you can rip CDs to your hard drive, these stores are a convenience and nothing more. With movies, though, you have two choices: either buy the DVD to watch at home, then buy it again off of iTunes to put on your iPod video, then buy another copy from Sony Connect to put on your PSP, then (I assume) get it from God knows where to put on your DS, then buy yet another copy from Amazon Unbox to watch on your other computers or xbox/xbox360/PS3/HUGE GIANT WASTE OF MONEY media center, or just for backup purposes (a practice explicitly recommended by, at least, software manufacturers back in the 3.5-inch diskette days) or... become a criminal. Well fuck that noise. If Glicman wants to call me a criminal because I won't roll over for this retarded notion of paying half a dozen times for the same movie, then a criminal I am. And calling people criminals and trying to get them arrested or forced to pay out huge fines or settle out of court for all the money in their savings accounts just because they had the audacity to only want to pay for one product once does not make them eager to buy that product at all.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Yes, paragraph breaks, then.