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Digg.com Attempts To Suppress HD-DVD Revolt
fieryprophet writes "An astonishing number of stories related to HD-DVD encryption keys have gone missing in action from digg.com, in many cases along with the account of the diggers who submitted them. Diggers are in open revolt against the moderators and are retaliating in clever and inventive ways. At one point, the entire front page comprised only stories that in one way or another were related to the hex number. Digg users quickly pointed to the HD DVD sponsorship of Diggnation, the Digg podcast show. Search digg for HD-DVD song lyrics, coffee mugs, shirts, and more for a small taste of the rebellion." Search Google for a broader picture; at this writing, about 283,000 pages contain the number with hyphens, and just under 10,000 without hyphens. There's a song. Several domain names including variations of the number have been reserved. Update: 05/02 05:44 GMT by J : New blog post from Kevin Rose of Digg to its users: "We hear you."
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
It's not.
LOAD "SIG",8,1
Figures. The funniest part of that quote is missing! Before Von Neumann uttered that sentence, he first stated that "The generation of random numbers is far too important to leave to chance." :-P
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
"Censorship is a government telling someone what they cannot read, hear, see, or think."
You might want to try that one again chief, the act of censorship isn't only carried out by governments. By your logic media private outlets couldn't censor information.
See the following to get a fucking clue:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship
n. censor 1. A person authorized to examine books, films, or other material and to remove or suppress what is considered morally, politically, or otherwise objectionable.
tr.v. censored, censoring, censors
To examine and expurgate.
If Slashdot gets a DMCA section 512 notice, they can probably safely trash it. The number isn't copyrightable; it's not a creative work. More likely they'll get a C&D accusing them of violating DMCA 1201 (17 USC 1201(a)(2) and 17 USC 1201(b)(1) ). Then it's the 2600 case all over again -- and DVDCCA won that one.
Standard Disclaimer: IANAL -- By United States Copyright law, and I believe the laws of all signees of the Berne Convention (163 nations), a work is "copyrighted" the instant it is recorded in some tangible form. There is no need for it to be registered with any legal body. The United States Copyright Office does offer a registration service, but it's more a matter of convenience than of necessity.
Now, a sixteen digit hexidecimal number almost certainly fails to meet the minimum requirements for novelty and authorship (whatever the hell such qualities are referred to legally) and thus is not under the protection of copyright. However, the distribution of encryption codes undoubtedly falls afoul of the draconion terms of the DMCA, which has basically nothing to do with copyright.
The US Copyright Office runs a fairly informative website that's well worth the 10 or so minutes it takes to skim --> http://www.copyright.gov/
You can't win, Darth. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
Something needs to be common between every DVD, otherwise you couldn't make players that can play every DVD.
The keys are actually different for each DVD, but they are derived from a common secret, and hashed and mixed about etc. The system is actually quite clever, and not a single symmetric key by any means. But no matter how you slice it, there will always need to be a common shared secret which is used to derive the means to unlock the media. That shared secret isn't the key itself, but the "processing key" which is in part used to derive the real key for each disc (to put it in very simple terms).
I.O.U One Sig.
I also gave Digg a try when it first came out, and what ruined it for me was the obvious lack of maturity. For example, right now the front page of Digg is completely full of "OMFGZ!!111! DIGG PWNED" articles.
The lack of maturity also lets a lot of articles that aren't really interesting get to the front page. What's "new" or interesting for a 13 year old isn't usually new or interesting for everyone else.
To make it worse, when I tried it again a few months ago they had modified the comment moderation system a bit, and people who went against the group-think were heavily modded down, regardless of if they were correct. On Digg you can say "The sky is blue", link to pictures, and have a dozen references, and still get modded down if the "group" says the sky is green.
It's like all the bad of Slashdot, but an order of magnitude worse. All for the slight possibility of seeing a rare interesting article before it reaches Slashdot. No thanks.
You infringe nothing, and the copyrightability of the key is irrelevant. Frankly, a discussion about circumvention has nearly nothing to do with copyright; ignore copyrights, and infringements, exceptions and defenses that go with copyrights. Circumvention is basically sui generis.
17 USC 1201(a)(2)-(3) says this:
The key, in this context, is a part of a device which likely falls under 1201(a)(2)(C) if not (A) and (B) as well. Disseminating the key is unlawful, apart from its use. It's not an infringement, but it's still illegal. The particular offense would be called trafficking.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
This is precisely why I dislike people talking about the DMCA, as opposed to the particular portions of Title 17 that happen to be at issue. The DMCA did a lot of unrelated things.
You're describing, not all that accurately, the takedown procedure at 17 USC 512. The thing is, that only applies in cases of copyright infringement. But the current fuss hasn't got a thing to do with copyright infringement. It has to do with trafficking in circumvention devices under 17 USC 1201, which has no connection to 512 whatsoever. There is no 512 safe harbor for trafficking.
I'd say that they have more of a clue than you do.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
http://blog.digg.com/?p=74
Digg This: 09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0
by Kevin Rose at 9pm, May 1st, 2007 in Digg Website
Today was an insane day. And as the founder of Digg, I just wanted to post my thoughts...
In building and shaping the site I've always tried to stay as hands on as possible. We've always given site moderation (digging/burying) power to the community. Occasionally we step in to remove stories that violate our terms of use (eg. linking to pornography, illegal downloads, racial hate sites, etc.). So today was a difficult day for us. We had to decide whether to remove stories containing a single code based on a cease and desist declaration. We had to make a call, and in our desire to avoid a scenario where Digg would be interrupted or shut down, we decided to comply and remove the stories with the code.
But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you've made it clear. You'd rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won't delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be.
If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.
Digg on,
Kevin
Digg is currently down. This was the top of the page right before it went down.
http://blog.digg.com/?p=74 [digg.com]?
Digg This: 09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0
by Kevin Rose at 9pm, May 1st, 2007 in Digg Website
Today was an insane day. And as the founder of Digg, I just wanted to post my thoughts...
In building and shaping the site I've always tried to stay as hands on as possible. We've always given site moderation (digging/burying) power to the community. Occasionally we step in to remove stories that violate our terms of use (eg. linking to pornography, illegal downloads, racial hate sites, etc.). So today was a difficult day for us. We had to decide whether to remove stories containing a single code based on a cease and desist declaration. We had to make a call, and in our desire to avoid a scenario where Digg would be interrupted or shut down, we decided to comply and remove the stories with the code.
But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you've made it clear. You'd rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won't delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be.
If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.
Digg on,
Kevin
Ah, more people who don't read articles or do research.. Google was indeed sent a cease and desist letter and can be found here ( dated April 17, 2007 )
I don't need to test my programs.. I have an error correcting modem.
Someone posted a copyrighted portion of the scientology bible (or whatever they call it). Because it was copyrighted material, and a seemingly serious legal threat was issued, the offending comment was removed.
http://slashdot.org/yro/01/03/16/1256226.shtml
If this is the same editor I'm thinking of, he had a tendancy to add his own malicious commentary, or edit the user submitted part of the article to swing the conversation away from the original intent. This finally caught up with him when he finally crossed the line and he was removed once and for all. This only occured for 2-3 weeks before his termination, so it sounds like there was some stuff going on behind the scenes we'll never know about, and his commentary was just the issue bleeding through on to the front page.
moox. for a new generation.