Censoring a Number 1046
Rudd-O writes "Months after successful discovery of the HD-DVD processing key, an unprecedented campaign of censorship, in the form of DMCA takedown notices by the MPAA, has hit the Net. For example Spooky Action at a Distance was killed. More disturbingly, my story got Dugg twice, with the second wave hitting 15,500 votes, and today I found out it had simply disappeared from Digg. How long until the long arm of the MPAA gets to my own site (run in Ecuador) and the rest of them holding the processing key? How long will we let rampant censorship go on, in the name of economic interest?" How long before the magic 16-hex-pairs number shows up in a comment here?
Ah My! (Score:5, Insightful)
If you had a lock that kept out only the people you actually wanted in, but couldn't keep out those that were actually going to rob you blind, one would think that your solution might be a little more robust than "I'll see anyone who reports how badly my lock works".
How about as a mix (Score:1, Insightful)
If someone was interested in breaking the current hd-dvd scheme they'd want to know all about:
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3
followed by five 'bee' then
D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88
and finally
'cee' zero
How can that possibly be DMCA'd...
I hope we'll all stop it soon. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm all for someone using their rights to protect what is their's. Not a problem, but when it dictates what they can do with the things they own, and speech, I think it has crossed a line I'd rather it not cross.
Some say Americans just take the abuse and can't see what the big deal is, unless it might cause re-runs of Friends to be pulled. Some people say Americans are sheep and will go where a select class of people point for them to go. I have sometimes seen these rights dry up a little when not constantly defended, and I start to think American's are lemmings, not sheep.
I guess I'm just as guilty as everyone else. I'm no fool. I can see I'm like that also, but I'm trying really hard to be different.
Short Answer: It all stops when we all stop it.
Re:Ah My! (Score:5, Insightful)
Incoming stories (Score:5, Insightful)
Tag It! (Score:5, Insightful)
Civil Disobedience (Score:5, Insightful)
The media processing key for AACS is: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Schwab
Attention Webmasters! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Not very long... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Not very long... (Score:5, Insightful)
Wikipedia article on the number is down too. (Score:5, Insightful)
Guess I should look into postng this to one of the "anti-censorship on wikipeida" sites.
For what it's worth, this is utter crap, but it shows a severe weakness in copyright law. Anything that can be represented with data, anything at all, can be encoded/encrpyted on anything else, given an arbitrary coding mechanism. For instance, let us create "sabre86's stanard coding scheme": add 1 to any number. After encoding we have 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C1. Look, it's a different number! I guess it isn't a circumvention. Or is it?
You can extend this logic arbitarily to anything, so that not only can any string represent any other string (and thus be a "copy"), any string can be the key to an encoding scheme, meaning that posting any string is "circumvention" if I see fit to describe my encryption process such that it encrypts/encodes a copyrighted work using that string as a "key."
So all strings are copyrighted because they can derived from other copyrighted strings through an arbitrary encoding scheme and all strings are potentially circumventions of DRM/CRAP because they are both a representation of a known key in a different encoding and the key for some other arbitrary encryption algorithm that "circumvents the copyright protections."
Bullshit
--sabre86
Everything digital is a number (Score:5, Insightful)
Circumvention software? A long number. PDFs with classified military information? Long numbers. Child porn? Long numbers. Having those illegal numbers on your hard drive will get you convicted.
So, if you are going to argue that numbers can't be illegal, think about the above examples, and reconsider your arguing strategy -- you will not win that argument with a judge.
Re:Ah My! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Wikipedia article on the number is down too. (Score:3, Insightful)
Other links (Score:4, Insightful)
I saw one story with the key go from 200 to over 800 "diggs" in something like 20 minutes, then it got deleted.
In about the same time, this story [digg.com], which links to this blog [cjmillisock.com] got up to 2-300 "diggs", then was removed from the front page.
My favourite submission so far was this [digg.com], which linked to this image: http://img91.imageshack.us/img91/3967/gitshddvdkb
I think I'll stick with Slashdot
You can't claim Copyright on a random crypto key (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ah My! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Ah My! (Score:3, Insightful)
Thats the point. They want to keep things locked down, not so much to reduce the tolerable lost revenues from pirating, but to increase barriers to entry.
As a program (Score:5, Insightful)
add hl,bc
ld sp,hl
ld de,09d02h
ld (hl),h
ex (sp),hl
ld e,e
ret c
ld b,c
ld d,(hl)
push bc
ld h,e
ld d,(hl)
adc a,b
ret nz
Re:Not very long... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Not very long... (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyhow, I'm sure someone will mod this down for not toeing the line.
Re:Not very long... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sealand (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Not very long... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This is (now) a famous number-theory integer! (Score:3, Insightful)
If you were as smart as you think you are, you'd realize that anyone to whom it occurred to post something like this, and was able to figure out that factorization and the adjacent primes within minutes of the story being posted, well, fucking OBVIOUSLY any such person would trivially already know what you are trying to point out.
Literally all numbers are interesting, as was first pointed out many decades ago, and by the same token, vanishingly few are actually fascinating.
As for the sixth power of two, you're being tedious in mis-reading. My factoring program (i.e. the huge integer factorization program I designed and wrote, not merely "the one I'm using") actually printed "2 * 2 * 2 * ..." and I abbreviated by substituting the synonymous "2^6". My phrase "product of the following primes" is obviously true for "2 * 2 * 2..."; since you're such a mental giant, now figure out why my phrasing is true for the synonym "2^6".
And even if my phrasing were strictly incorrect, it's completely fucking obvious what I meant. You're just being incredibly tedious to no purpose whatsoever.
If you want to talk about higher math, just say so. With any luck you're not as stupid as you sound, maybe you're actually a math grad student or something, and maybe I could learn something from you. For instance, I'd like to know more about Frobenius automorphisms, in the context of number theory. Or about n-categories. Or recent developments in paraconsistent logic that might be applicable to pragmatic automatic theorem provers. Or anything, really.
I should be so lucky. People who put other people down completely unnecessarily, and contend they know nothing, when they don't even know the person -- such tedious people inevitably know little themselves, so they try to bolster their poor self-image by attempting to make other people smaller. Pathetic. Not to mention rude.
Re:Not very long... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This is a non-story! (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's say you use a password to store your banking information, and that password is "dumbass5." Now a blog posts that your password to your banking account is "dumbass5." Would you call it censorship when you retained an attorney to shut down that blog/forum/site? More specifically, would you call it censorship that infringed on your rights?
Bullshit. That's my answer to your question ... because we're talking as much about getting HD-DVDs to play on Linux boxes as we are about copying them. And, by the way, copyright law and Supreme Court precedent still give you the right to make backup copies of your media.
A better analogy is this: You've locked everyone out of their bank accounts, and they need a password only you can supply them with in order to get to their money. Then someone finds out the password is "dumbass5" and posts it. How are you going to look when you're intimidating and/or SLAPP [wikipedia.org]ing people into sharing something that you shouldn't be holding over their heads in the first place?
Don't get angry with the admins. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:This is actually my HOPE for the future (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not very long... (Score:5, Insightful)
"A linguistic characterization downgrades it to a wee difficulty, characterizing behemoth codes (extrajudicially made inside monopolizing, unincorporated conspires lying to impose devious macroeconomic tricks) through wise coding." -- Mocking Comically Absurdist Commercialism I.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Re:This is actually my HOPE for the future (Score:5, Insightful)
When you drive down the motorway, in general everyone is going to a different place and doesn't care about where anyone else is going to. You have to take into consideration what they're doing on the motorway, however.
When people work to crack something like this, they are all working to the same end, and do not necessarily know what each other is doing to that end, although sometimes people discuss their ideas to get feedback etc.
Maybe we need a new moderation: (-1, Car Analogy).
Re:Not very long... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:This is (now) a famous number-theory integer! (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Kevin Rose Response (Score:2, Insightful)
Adam, let me give you some advice... (Score:1, Insightful)
You already know you are playing with fire. It doesn't matter who is right and who is wrong -- only that you are, even if unintentionally, starting a fight. I know you are smart enough to understand why this is the case. Once people think you are trying to dig into their wallets, look out. Again, it doesn't matter if you are or aren't -- only that they THINK you are. And this industry that you have engaged is tough group. They have shown they mean business and they most definitely think lots of people are digging into their wallets because they don't hesitate to take legal action.
So be smart. Lawyer-up and learn what you can and can not do, from a legal perspective. This will save you from grief and from fear. Once educated, then you aren't as easily picked on. There are plenty of resources out there to help you...
Devil's Advocate (Score:2, Insightful)
If this number should be protected by free speech, is it also free speech for me to publish your name, birthday, ssn, and credit card number?
Bring on the flames.
I love it! (Score:2, Insightful)
no US free speech? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Kevin Rose Response (Score:3, Insightful)
Something better has been around for a while now. It's called
Re:This is actually my HOPE for the future (Score:3, Insightful)
Excellent notion. The moderation choices we have now are so bland.
Re:Not very long... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:This is (now) a famous number-theory integer! (Score:5, Insightful)
Unlike the gay-bi folks who reclaimed the word "queer," the geeks who reclaimed "geek" were self-haters. They were ashamed of being socially inept, excluded, and driven to alternative worlds by their treatment in this one. Fortunately, there were positive aspects of geekiness, so they simply threw out the negative characteristics and stressed the positive ones.
Ultimately, this will backfire. By attempting to erase their negative attributes, the geeks (nerds) will end up losing their claim on the positive attributes once associated with them. They will be defined solely by their negative characteristics. (I am serious about this. Bear with me while I explain.)
The rest of the world bears so little ill-will toward geeks (unlike queers, whom homophobes hate passionately) that they allowed geeks to redefine the word geek. After all, geeks (sorry, nerds) weren't trying to shoulder their way into the circles they were excluded from. Society didn't want nerds to be condemned and repressed; they just didn't want the nerds asking them for dates, sitting with them at lunch, and trying to go to their parties. Most nerds are quite happy living without those things, especially now that they have a positive label for themselves. Since nerds accept the boundaries imposed on them, society feels no need to remind them of what make them different.
(Technology nerds have been successful in business, where successful is idempotent with welcome, for over a century, maybe much longer. The rise of Bill Gates et al. was not an invasion of new territory.)
Ironically, stripping the negative aspects out of the word "geek" made it possible for non-inept, non-excluded people to accept the geek label and still enjoy their status as full-fledged people. That means that the excluded and inept can no longer comfort themselves with their geek status, because all the cool aspects of geekdom have been invaded by good-looking and/or confident people who are able to understand the mysteries of human interaction.
Geeks (ack! again, I mean nerds) no longer have any safe haven or any unique reason to live. They can't claim that the world would fall apart without them, except in the same sense that immigrant laborers can. (Who else is willing to pick strawberries and do the IT grunt work?) They can't even confidently stay out of the danger zone anymore. That guy with the faded Space Invaders shirt might look like a good guy for a nerd to talk to, but it's possible -- nay, likely -- that he is a normal person who will be put off by the nerd's social clumsiness, resulting in awkwardness and humiliation. Conversely, a badge of identity such as a D&D shirt that might in the past have protected a nerd from being approached by people with normal standards of social aptitude no longer conveys any protection. There is nothing for a nerd to do but attempt social intercourse and hope his interlocuters will not be horrified, or at least protect his dignity by hiding their horror.
I predict that a new way of labeling and sorting people will arise that will help protect normal and socially defective people from uncomfortable interactions. Naturally, the normal folks want to seem (and feel) fair, compassionate, and justified, so the criteria for exclusion, while remaining the same as ever, will be described in terms of mental illness and emotional intelligence. Mental illness will be cited in order to point out that social incompetence makes people dangerous, both in trivial ways (inappropriate, annoying behavior) and serious ones (stalking, spree killing). Emotional intelligence will be invoked whenever it is necessary to place responsibility for the exclusion on
Re:Not very long... (Score:3, Insightful)
Zero nine eff nine
One one zero two nine dee
Seven four eee three
Five bee dee eight four
One five six see five six three
Five six eight eight si
Zero in the end
All bad dee are emm shall pass
Bits fall like raindrops
Re:Kevin Rose Response (Score:4, Insightful)