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Wikipedia Moves To Delete the Free Speech Flag
decora writes "After a version of the PS3 Free Speech Flag (from the Yale Law & Tech blog) was deleted from Wikipedia, for being a copyright violation, discussion turned to the original Free Speech Flag, from the HD DVD / AACS encryption key controversy. The result is that this flag too (currently in use on six different wikipedias) has now been nominated for deletion."
This is where we are down to, with this copyright/intellectual property shit. i mean, now arrangements of colors are being owned/dominated.
this is ridiculous. someday, someone will be able to claim 'rights' in the arrangement that someone's crap makes when out of their ass.
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This controversy is a metaphor of the beautiful paradox that is the USA.
We have a flag for free speech, yet the flag is legally unavailable unless a contract with the owner of the flag is secured.
Am I missing something or is this really as stupid as it sounds?
I'm afraid it really is this stupid.
Wikipedia has become more of a bureaucracy than an "open" encyclopedia. [citation needed]
Mostly harmless.
This thing looks like it was invented by some self-aggrandizing dweeb who is now trying to get a slashdot flash mob to save his "original research."
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
Don't look to wikipedia to challenge corporations. They won't do it.
Well, that's 2 things they're not good for now:
1. Reliable information.
2. Challenging corporations.
However, they do excel at wasting my time and deleting things. So, it does make up for it in some way, I think.
I find it interesting (and maybe a little disturbing) that Wikipedia, which was supposed to be open for everyone, and always seemed to represent freedom, democracy, etc. now has a "secret police" system. There are a group of editors there who can just make pages... disappear. The logs are hidden from everyone (even the admins).
It's like those pages just never existed.
It makes you wonder what else is going on inside Wikipedia.
The key amounts to a "true name", a label which is identical to the natural essence of that which is named. I'd never considered it anything other than an amusing literary device until now. Calling it "the HD-DVD key" is akin to "He Who Must Not Be Named". To state the true name itself - which is the only way to give an accurate reference thereto - is to reveal the great secret (of a now-defunct format - heh) and incur the wrath of the MPAA. To reference it using a peculiar sequence of colors is playing "I'm not saying it" games, akin to trying to tell someone the secret name without actually saying it. You cannot tell someone not to use that sequence of numbers, a short enough sequence that it could in fact be used by accident, without violating the [potential] copyright.
Upshot: the key amounts to a true name, and you can't assert legal right to a name and then prohibit anyone from ever using it (even in appropriate context). It wasn't copyrighted, it can't be copyrighted (heck, the copyright notice would be longer than what's copyrighted), and to ban use of the "free speech flag" is tantamount to fearing the utterance of "Voldemort" - silly. If there is in fact an issue, it need be fixed by means other than fearing a "true name".
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
It's not the key that lets you sign your own code. It's not the key that lets you decrypt the OS. It's not the key that lets you decrypt games. It doesn't let you do anything interesting. Huh? What? Yes, you heard me.
It's a useless key that is used to authenticate factory service dongles (which will only let you run signed executables anyway, and those signing keys are secure as of the latest firmware and will never be obtained). Its only purpose so far was to perform downgrades (as released in a commercial product using stolen service executables) in order to use another commercial product (by ostensibly the same company) which used an exploit to enable game piracy (using a whole bunch of other methods unrelated to it). All of this predated the 27c3 presentation and geohot's release. It's useless now and has never served any "master" key purpose. It was called the "master key used to generate service dongle keys", then of course the clueless news websites just shortened that to "master key".
The PS3 has tons of keys and you can't "do everything" with one key. You need three or four to run stuff via metldr, that's why geohot released a whole bunch of keys, not just one (none of which are the one that was used here). But if you must pick one "representative" key to obfuscate and post and distribute and make an icon out of, at least pick Da from geohot's keyset (starts with C5). That's the metldr private key, originally stored at some vault at Sony's HQ, calculated thanks to their massive signing screwup, and which can be used to sign code that all existing PS3s will execute, forever (you still need to encrypt it, but signing is ideologically more important). And for fuck's sake, please let go of the "46 DC" dongle key already. Please.
Just in case anyone's wondering what the fuss is about.