SRF Heavy Industries

Tastes like Chicken:

Like popcorn. Like popcorn, I tell you.

I like ’em when they lie real still.

Some right bastard is selling tickets. Charging admission for the ride. I’m willing to bet.

And another thing: 09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0.

This is a description of a large hexadecimal number. Apparently HD-DVD manufacturers use this number described as a “processing key” — basically an encrypting password — to make sure their HD-DVDs play on “approved” machines only — specifically ones that employ a recognized form of protection against copying their disks — or, as it turns out, only on devices for which one of the world’s lamest anti-piracy/anti-copy protections is actually functional.

One particular user bought a player for playing HD-DVDs, bought a few HD-DVDs, and then discovered that they anti-copy crapola in the player was busted and wouldn’t play his legally obtained media. So he took a few pains to discover the processing key so he could make copies of his discs that would play in his player. And then he posted the procedure to the system of tubes we all know and love so that other people who were having the same or similar problems would be able to play their movies on their players, no matter how poorly designed they were, and also to publicize the problem so that potential buyers of the technology and media could be suitably warned.

The manufacturers of the systems involved are now claiming that the number listed above is a “tool” for getting around anti-copy/anti-piracy or other Digital Rights Management measures, which, according to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, is a criminal activity punishable by law to publish and/or provide to others. They will also claim that, by reporting this news about this exciting string of numbers — and please note I have not published the actual number itself but merely the minimum sufficient information describing that number so that it may be identified with 100% certainty in a police line-up of similar numbers, plus some dashes to make it readable and, should you feel inclined, memorizable — I have also violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (although I am convinced I have not or else I would not be posting this) by publishing its description above. Be aware: if you know this number and report about it in a public place, you could also be charged with violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act by people who, if they are willing to set the precedent that information — like a simple string of digits, and I would be hard-pressed to find any kind of usable information that could not also be expressed as a string of digits (you’re soaking in it right now, Marge) — is a tool, could make it a criminal act merely to know a particular item of information, like, but possibly not exactly, 09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0. Maybe in fact your own name could be encoded by some process into this very same string of digits, and then possession and publication of your own name, for instance, could be a criminal act.

In fact, “enforcers” who believe that “publication” of this “tool” is in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act are busy even as I type this trying to send notices to absolutely everyone who is responsible for having posted the number described above, including demands that ISPs pull the plug on hosted services and that those very same service hosters pull the plug on allegedly offending posters, who also get their own copy with a chance to delete their posts — if they beat their hosters to the punch, who may or may not already have been shut down themselves. Last I heard, however, enforcement of Federal- or International Treaty-level criminal code was the purview of the FBI, who I am not sure anyone has heard from. I do hope, however, that the producers of this horribly crappy anti-piracy DRM technology (that hinges on a string of digits that you can query the player hardware to tell you) are not trying to waste the FBI’s time with trying to stop the nearly ubiquitous spread of the description of this innocent number as, by now, it is a literally impossible task and pointless as well. The FBI, I have heard, has much more pressing matters of National Security to attend to, including inappropriately spying on US citizens without a warrant and protecting us from shampoo on airplanes.

I would like one of these notices. I will probably frame the first one, although if I get as many as some people are I could consider wallpapering my study. But if I get one of these notices I will immediately turn around and sue the bejeezus out of the issuers for the attempt to improperly use a piece of questionable legislation to suppress my constitutionally guaranteed right to free speech by way of the mechanisms of frivolous lawsuits, various methods of blackmail and coercion, and malicious prosecution.

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