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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."
All credit to the song, its quite good actually, I am gonna set it as my ringtone I think.
Who'd have thought, they would use all that Web 2.0 wisdom of the crowds stuff to hide the fact they censor everything.
kdawson, and the old Taco himself, we salute you.
My little Linux and tech blog
Today it's different for some reason. One of the managers posted a justification on the official blog:
Funny stuff.
Notwithstanding the fact that most articles are either innacurate or stupid, they will IP ban anyone who says anything bad about their site. Digg is one step up from "myspace"
Also, you can get a perm ban from digg if you use the star of david as your "digg icon"... no kidding!
Digg actually posted a reply to the community on their blog here.
What I'm honestly curious about is this: Is this numeric string code copyrighted? Where is the copyright filed, if so? Or is it a trade secret? Do trade secrets need to be filed or declared somehow? Is a trade secret intellectual property that must be removed when a theatening (maybe DMCA) notice is sent?
I'm nowhere near understanding the complexities of the current intellectual property legal codes in the USA, let alone how they actually apply in this situation. All I see is hysteria.
This statement is solely an opinion. Kindly take it as such in all cases.
Wikipedia has chosen to speedy-delete the article and all similarly titled articles based on the hexadecimal number. I found the deletion review at this link. It seems like the only way left to get the article undeleted is to present good arguments there. I, for my part, have been blocked by another admin for posting my undelete comment. It looks like censorship is in season.
Somebody created a free speech flag: http://www.badmouth.net/free-speech-flag/
"It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." -- Prof. Dumbledore
As I said numerous times,
People don't seem to understand that this goes beyond a silly little hex key. The key has been out for months. A new one will come and it will also be broken. This is not about that. This is about consumers finally standing up against the bullshit being fed to them by media giants. They crossed the line today when they forced digg to censor user generated content, not only articles but also comments and somewhat related content.
As a consumer i am sick and tired of getting fabricated excuses as to why i can't play what I've bought wherever the hell i want. NO, i don't care if you keep making up the story that DRM is to protect yourself from piracy. I don't buy it. DRM will be broken no matter what. DRM is there to ensure your revenue stream by controlling where I can play the content. Now you go and censor my news source giving a bullshit excuse that a randomly generated hex number is some how your IP? You install rootkits in my computer, You stop me from using my content I bought the way I want? pretend to own _MY_ hardware? Enough of that bullshit.
This is a revolt against the greediness and blatant disrespect for the consumer that comes from the mpaa/riaa.
SAVE THE NUMBERS, SAVE THE WORLD. REMEMBER The 1st of MAY.
[alk]
At any rate, this is a parody of Allan Sherman's tirade against all-digit dialing, "The Let's All Call Up AT&T And Protest To The President March". By staggering coincidence, the original was inspired by someone posting it in on USENET in the .mp3.comedy group. Weren't me, although my parents turned me onto Mr. Sherman's parodies by giving me their vinyl original that they'd owned since before I was born.
By even more coincidence, you can sing it as either: "Let's all post the Processing Key and fuck AACSLA" March, for rather obvious reasons, or the "Let's all post To D-I-G-G and say 'fark you' to Kevin Rose" March, (on account of every single story on digg.com's front page, as the original poster already linked to in TFA)
By utterly unsurprising coincidence, and like every filk I write here, this parody is in the public domain, and you can sing it however you like, although in this case it'll probably be funnier if you keep the numbers the way they was written.
AACS VERSION:
It's the "Let's all post the processing key and fuck AACSLA!" march!
Watch their lawyers worry and fidget,
Cease and DE-sisting sixteen hex digits!
So let's all post the processing key and fuck AACSLA, march!
So protest! (so protest!)
Do your best! (do your best!)
Let us show them that we post in unity.
If they won't (if they won't!),
Change the rules (change the rules!),
Let's buy our movies from another monopoly!
Let's all post the processing key and fuck AACSLA march.
Let us wake their landsharks from slumber,
Get a pencil, I'll give you their number.
It's Nine, Eff-nine, One-one, Two, Nine-D,
SevenTY-four, Eee-three, Five-B... (dash!)
Dee-eight, four-one, five-six, Cee-five,
Sixty-three, fifty-six, eight-eight... (hyphen!)
And now that you're on the right road,
Don't forget to end with Cee-0h!
Here's to freedom and fair use! 09F9! 1102s!
Watch your HD-DVD! 9D74! E35B!
Let's keep that 16-byte key alive!
D841! 56C5! AACS is totally broke! 6356! 88C0! Hooray!
To arnezami's mental fiber,
We'll erect a triumphal arch!
For the "let's all post the processing key and fuck AACSLA!" march.
And since we're long (about 2 and a half months!) past the point that a parody of the AACS key wouldn't be complete without the
DIGG VERSION:
It's the "Let's all post To D-I-G-G and say 'fark you' to Kevin Rose" march!
Watch him worry, watch as he fidgets,
As his users post sixteen hex digits!
So let's all post to D-I-G-G and say 'fuck you' to Kevin Rose march.
So protest! (so protest!)
Do your best! (do your best!)
Let us show him that we digg in unity.
If he won't (if he won't!),
Change the rules (change the rules!),
Let's take our pageviews to Slashdot's company!
Let's all post to D-I-G-G and say 'fuck you' to Kevin Rose march.
Let us wake him up in his slumber.
Get a pencil, I'll give you his number.
It's Nine, Eff-nine, One-one, Two, Nine-D,
SevenTY-four, Eee-three, Five-B... (dash!)
Dee-eight, four-one, five-six, Cee-five,
Sixty-three, fifty-six, eight-eight... (hyphen!)
And now that you're on the right road,
Don't forget to end with Cee-0h!
Here's to freedom and fair use! 09F9! 1102s!
Watch your HD-DVD! 9D74! E35B!
Let's keep that 16-byte key alive! D841! 56C5!
AACS is totally broke! 6356! 88C0! Hooray!
To arnezami's mental fiber,
We'll erect a triumphal arch!
For the let's all post to D-I-G-G and say 'fuck you' to Kevin Rose march.
And don't make me deal with this "Your comment has too few characters per line (currently 35.7)", because it's a long pair of
Something that nobody's explained, since this story broke:
Whose bright idea was it to use the same 128-bit symmetric key for every DVD ??
NB. Please don't mod this off-topic just because I said it wasn't.
I'll agree the Digg community took a hit today, but only because it shows the mentality of its users. These are the same people that believe internet petitions actually do something.
Fark is actively censoring as well... recent headlines on redlit discussions: Don't bother submitting the HD-DVD passcode. It's against the FarQ, isn't going to be greenlit, and is against the law. Don't like it? Vote and OMG Admins just DELETED a post on Fark that contained a blatent violation of the FarQ and could have legal ramifications for a privately owned website. CENSORSHIP NDIT LGT GIS for "Whiny biatch"
A cheerful little bird is sitting here singing.
Yet as the grandparent post shows, there are those determined to believe only governments can censor, and there have been many cases where people have attempted to sue companies over first amendment rights. Censorship can happen between any two or more individuals, and you ONLY have rights when it comes to the Government.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Informative? You are mistakenly thinking the DMCA can only be used to send takedowns for copyrighted material--most people at the time of the DeCSS hubub had no problem with that provision. The problem most people had, and have, with it is that the DMCA also says that notices may also be sent to take down things whose primary purpose is to circumvent digital copyright protection schemes (the DeCSS program was the first high profile thing to be taken down-- *it* wasn't copyrighted by the people taking it down, just like this number isn't). The argument under the law will not be whether this key is copyrighted, it will be whether posting it is posting a circumventing device.
--
WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
It may come down to how much /. wants to challenge any possible action by the HD-DVD association. Clearly, it's not copyrightable, so the only question is whether a pure number can fall under the anti-circumvention clauses of the the DMCA. Using your quote above, it's not "technology", it's not a device. Does it qualify? Probably it will take a trial to determine that.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
One of the things I like about Slashdot is how they handled the Cult of Scientology thing. Slashdot complied with style. Cowards, by contrast, have no style.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Nope, sorry, the results tantrum over the troll post is still in place. I know because I don't get mod points.
Merchandise!
http://www.cafepress.com/09f9
Digg is officialy offline, the revolt suceeded!!
Did they put hard work and intellectual value into a randomly generated hexadecimal string? I don't think so either.
I think the point I'm making is valid -- if they want to claim copyright on a NUMBER, I should be able to claim copyright on my NAME (and trust me, my name is pretty unique). I'm tired of other people buying and selling my NAME. My NAME is my property. And since my parents are dead, that property is mine by proxy.
Either that, or I'll run out right now and copyright the number 12. And then issue DMCA takedown notices to every website, piece of software, TV show, and building elevator that uses the number which is my property.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
"Update: 05/02 05:44 GMT by J : New blog post from Kevin Rose of Digg to its users: "We hear you.""
From the post:
"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."
fuckin 'ey, Kevin!
110100 1101000 1101000 1100110 0 1101111 1101000 1100011 1
it's late and i might be saying something really obvious... but i've convinced myself that slashdot is better because it has been around for so long. the user base has mostly been around for very long and is familiar with the system as well as what possibilities exist to exploit and troll it. ie, it is stable and i always know what i'm getting.
i don't think digg will forever be a forum for immature posts, but it is still young and what we see now may not be its equilibrium state. though, i sure wouldn't mind if its homepage were always as hilarious as it is right now.
Slashdot has better overall content but that is largely because it has been taken over by a different class of trolls. Anyone who reads through Slashdot comments can tell you that there are no if's about it, there are definitely corporate paid propaganda posters from large tech companies.
Anytime you have negative PR coming to a large tech company (particularly software companies and the larger the more prevelent the problem) there are dozens of posts defending the company in the comments here that could have come right off an official press release.
If you have ever attended the sales seminars and meetings from these companies you will recognize their material being used both defensively and offensively all over Slashdot. The biggest companies respond to highly moderated negative posts about them even if the story isn't about them. It's pretty clear these companies have full time Slashdotters.
I once put an intentional grammar error in my sig to catch grammar trolls and forced them into ACdom. Maybe now I should do a similar hunt for corporate shills and list the ones I've found in my journal.
I started a page for this, here. It contains ribbons that use 5 colors. The 5 colors are comprised of the "secret" hex code that is being suppressed. Interested parties are free to use these ribbons on their own sites. If you would like to link your ribbon to an explanatory page, I provide one here.
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
I more or less agree with you. I don't like being called a corporate shill though. It is more of a fact that people grow up, and gain experience, when they realize when they are working at Adobe, Apple, Amazon, IBM, Google, Microsoft, etc. The realize they are not going to meeting after meeting on how to kill Linux. At best they will go we are competing with Linux they say their strong points are this our week points are this how can we fix that. I myself work for a small firm who does work for a lot of large corporations, but still after working there for 5 years I have learned to tolerate Windows, Embrace Apple, See Problems in Linux, and find OSS isn't all the it is cracked up to be. It happens to most people unless they stay in somewhat isolated sectors such as Government, Education, or Non-Profit (GEN) . But otherwise we can usually tell the kids from the pros by just listening to them, They can still be democrats or liberal, but their views are not as sharp and one sided as it use to be is become more of a normal curve vs. a Uniform block. They in time learn to pick their battles, and over time the slow subtile approach usually wins.
Over time people realize that the Republican/Consertive view does have merit too, but by working with people with these different views and understanding that they are not the devil and their views are quite rational. Right now GEN are mostly populated with people with the same views so it serves to reinforce their beliefs so you don't get the other side from people you can trust and thus you stay on your side. I actually grew up in a conservative family and over time I have become more liberal, on many things, Computer Liberalism did peak in college but sense calmed down. But in general I am more of a liberal person then I use to be.
Microsoft doesn't need to me me or anyone to post on a board that their product isn't really that bad anymore, or hey they actually did that part correctly now. or to say I think RMS is too radical for OSS, and disconnected from reality. These are my views from me, I have made them with information I have gained over time, Linking with the values that were taught to me then moderated and manipulated over years of experience, and combining them with Logic to help predict possible. Nor corporate money all the time.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The encryption keeps people from making backups of their movies.
HD movies are a replacement for DVD movies. There is a propoganda site explaining copy protection on movies. They claim there is no need for back-up copies as with reasonable care DVD's will last forever.
www.copyprotected.com
Reasonable care and children never mixed.
In both sofware and movies, it's the high usage childrens content that is either broken, missing, or otherwise unplayable. The industry in all their wisdom do not have an exchange program for maltreated shiny discs. With kids, backups and working copies are essential.
Other than the dream of perfectly locked down content with HD, the industry on the other side of their face are admiting that users want to put their purchased movies on their cell phone, media server, PDA, iPod, Zen Vision, etc. just like they want to do with their music.
The major fear of course is the nth copy of the first copy is exactly the same down to the last bit. With video tape and analog cassette copies, each generation of a copy of a copy degrades adding all the defects of noise, dropouts, loss of fideliety, AGC compression, etc so they tolorated LP's copied onto tape to use in your walkman and car stereo.
With the advent of perfect copies of copies, they are desprate to lock down the ability to make the first copyable digital copy. This of course is anti-consumer who is used to making back-up copies of valuable data to prevent loss. To get back-up copies, working copies are naturaly shared.
Notice how nobody bothers making a tape to tape copy of a $5.00 VHS movie? (disregarding Macrovision) When the same moves were $65 and blank VHS tapes were $20 each, piracy was a big problem. (admiting my age, these were a large part of my library) Video stabelizers were the norm to bypass Magnaguard and early Macrovision. The industry needs to get a clue. Nobody takes the time to photocopy a 35 cent daily newspaper to back it up. A $30 movie on the other hand is considered worth backing up.
SONY recently adding more copy protection to their recent DVD's has put me on the ex-consumer list. Until they permanently change their ways, they have lost me.
To their credit, they are sending me a replacement for my DRM'ed copy of Open Season. Hopefully I will be able to install it on my media server for the kids. Acidrip wouldn't even recognise the disk.
If all HD moves were released with retail prices under $6 each, piracy wouldn't be much of a problem. It's less hasle to just go out and pick up a copy.
Here is a clue to increase sales;
1 DROP DRM
2 DROP PRICES
3 RAISE VALUE
4 Enjoy increased volume.
Since they have all of the first 3 wrong, 4 is going the wrong way. Raising quality is only part of raising value. Making it unplayable on many of my systems including media server is a reduction in value. They are walking a tightrope. The RIAA is keeping volume down by dropping DRM and offsetting the potential to raise volume by raising prices. Just how stupid is that? Are they trying to keep volume down?
Hint Cluestick time. Want to increase volume at current prices? DROP DRM, raise quality. Leave the price alone or lower it.
I think the RIAA has enough money. If they didn't, they would do someting that made economic sense instead of trying to game the system.
The truth shall set you free!
it's late and i might be saying something really obvious... but i've convinced myself that slashdot is better because it has been around for so long. the user base has mostly been around for very long and is familiar with the system as well as what possibilities exist to exploit and troll it. ie, it is stable and i always know what i'm getting.
i don't think digg will forever be a forum for immature posts, but it is still young and what we see now may not be its equilibrium state. though, i sure wouldn't mind if its homepage were always as hilarious as it is right now.
Slashdot was great before the idiot hordes of brainless 15 year olds found it (as opposed to the intelligent 15 year old geeks who belong here). Then it sucked while the morons were around. Now it's great again since they've left for digg.
I think your premise is correct, that slashdot established enough of a culture and history of people who know what they're talking about that there was something to revert to after it was (thankfully) no longer the flavor of the month. I don't think digg has that. I think once the kiddies roll over to the next big thing, digg doesn't have enough of an essence to sustain it. What is digg without the kiddies? Just the ability to vote on stories? Idol worship of that Kevin guy? Doesn't seem enough to sustain it. Digg was headed down, but it really jumped the shark when it opened itself to non-tech stories.
I think slashdot owes digg a substantial debt, in that digg took a large number of the morons and made it more than likely that highly moderated posts on slashdot are actually insightful as opposed to insipid.
This is an excellent point in favor of legalizing drugs. How often is there contaminantion of a batch of Jim Beam that makes people sick or kills them? Has there been any since Prohibition ended? But moonshine during Prohibition was often dangerous - homemade stills were much more likely to leech lead into the final product. Much like the 'but people steal to buy drugs', it's not a good arguement for keeping it illegal.
Now, the driving/walking under the influence arguement is different - I would believe that more people would die that way. But if other recreational drugs were illegal, would alcohol remain as popular? I'm not sure, really. (IIRC, results from Amesterdam seemed to indicate no - roughly the same total number of people would be getting stoned or drunk, it just shifted the share about.)
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?