[cc-community] Spread this number... the politics of code...

David Berry d.berry at sussex.ac.uk
Tue May 1 18:37:13 EDT 2007


Spread this number

09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0. Wanna know what’s so  
important about it?

The movie industry is threatening Spooky Action at a Distance for  
publishing that number, specifically with copyright infringement.

I had no idea a number could be copyrighted.

Anyhow, what is it? From the site:

It’s the HD-DVD Processing Key for most movies released so far. I was  
not aware that a string of numbers and letters was copyrightable.  
Perhaps its just my ignorance but it seems that someone is abusing  
the DMCA again.

This means the (admittedly long) number is precisely the key you need  
in order to decrypt and watch HD-DVD movies in Linux (oh, okay, maybe  
software is also required). And the fact that it’s out there,  
spreading like wildfire, is killing the types at the movie studios  
right now.

Now, even if this number stopped working (and it will, thanks to the  
revocation procedures in HD-DVD’s encryption scheme) or if it were a  
hoax, the decryption system has already been figured out and is  
implemented in a software program called BackupHDDVD.

We did it with DVDs and DeCSS, and today I can use my trusty MPlayer  
to play any DVD movie. We will eventually (rather soon) view HD-DVDs  
in Linux as well (because the codecs are already there, even if they  
are illegal in some countries).

Let’s show them no amount of DMCA will stop us.

Oh, do you crave for source code? Let the Doom9 forums answer your  
prayers. If you’d like an explanation in news format, WIRED may be  
what you were looking for.


http://rudd-o.com/archives/2007/04/30/spread-this-number/






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