BBC is reporting on the latest (and largest) flare-up of THE CODE, a magical 32-digit Hexadecimal number which can be used to defeat the encoding on every DVD manufactured to date. I won't reprint the number here, but check out

this myspace page for a clue

OF course the AACS was more than just disappointed that some basement hacker defeated their code on his winter break, and tried to get websites like digg.com to delete posts or content containing "THE CODE". Of course, the blogosphere reacted violently, reposting the code as fast as webmasters could delete the posts, and eventually digg.com crashed.

Its too late now, the code is leaked, and for those who know what to do with it, all DVDs manufactured before 3 May 2007 are now unprotected.

It will be interesting to see how this gets resolved, because the question to be answered is "How public should public knowledge be?" Or possibly, "Can or Should some public knowledge be removed from the internet?" For example, if someone figures out the administrator username and password for a government online database, or some local financial institution, and pops the username/password on the internet, there is simply no stopping the spread of information. How can the entire blogosphere and all internet users be held accountable for such actions?

The answer you are looking for is: They can't.

It seems right (to me anyways) that some uber-internet-administrator-person should be able to delete all references to such info in the interest of national security, but as we learned from Spider Man, 'With great power comes great responsibility' and we have also learned, Americans love to abuse power. So those with the power need to be monitored, but "Who watches the watchers?"

It also seems right (to me anyways) that freedom of speech be maintained. Somewhere between these beliefs is a line that has to be drawn, and it's the kind of line that gets drawn in all the touchy topics like abortion and gun control and such. People endlessly bicker about where the line gets drawn, and mistake their opinions as facts.

Like I said; interesting to see how this pans out.

Blog on,
-CZ

Labels: Culture, DRM Sucks