AACS encryption key controversy
Encyclopedia
A controversy surrounding the AACS
cryptographic key arose in April 2007 when the Motion Picture Association of America
and the Advanced Access Content System Licensing Administrator, LLC (AACS LA) began issuing demand letter
s to websites publishing a 128-bit
(16-byte
) number, represented in hexadecimal
as 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 (commonly referred to as 09 F9), which is one of the cryptographic
keys
for HD DVD
s and Blu-ray Disc
s. The letters demanded the immediate removal of the key and any links to it, citing the anti-circumvention provisions of the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act
(DMCA).
In response to widespread Internet postings of the key, the AACS LA issued various press statements, praising those websites that complied with their requests as acting in a "responsible manner", warning that "legal and technical tools" were adapting to the situation.
The controversy was further escalated in early May 2007, when aggregate news site Digg
received a DMCA cease and desist
notice and then removed numerous articles on the matter and banned
users reposting the information.
This sparked what some describe as a digital revolt or "cyber-riot", in which users posted and spread the key on Digg, and throughout the Internet en masse, thereby leading to the Streisand effect
. The AACS LA described this situation as an "interesting new twist".
is a base-16 numeral system
used in the fields of computer programming
and mathematics
. The key is an ordinary number most widely known by its hexadecimal representation; in decimal
notation, it is 13,256,278,887,989,457,651,018,865,901,401,704,640.
Because the encryption key may be used as part of circumvention technology forbidden by the DMCA
, its possession and distribution has been viewed as illegal by the AACS
, as well as by some legal professionals. Since it is a 128-bit
numerical
value, it was dubbed an illegal number
. Opponents to the expansion of the scope of copyright
criticize the idea of making a particular number illegal.
Commercial HD DVDs and Blu-ray Discs integrate copy protection technology specified by the AACS LA. There are several interlocking encryption mechanisms, such that cracking one part of the system does not necessarily crack other parts. Therefore, the "09 F9" key is only one of many parts that are needed to play a disc on an unlicensed player.
The AACS system can be used to revoke a key of a specific playback device, after it is known to have been compromised, as it has for WinDVD
. The compromised players can still be used to view old discs, but not newer releases without encryption keys for the compromised players. If other players are then cracked, further revocation would lead to legitimate users of compromised players being forced to upgrade or replace their player software or firmware
in order to view new discs. Each playback device comes with a binary tree
of secret device and processing keys. The processing key in this tree, a requirement to play the AACS encrypted discs, is selected based on the device key and the information on the disc to be played. As such, a processing key such as the "09 F9" key is not revoked, but newly produced discs cause the playback devices to select a different valid processing key to decrypt the discs.
and its source code
on the DVD decryption forum
at the website Doom9
. BackupHDDVD can be used to decrypt AACS protected content once one knows the encryption key. muslix64 claimed to have found title and volume keys in main memory while playing HD DVDs using a software player, and that finding them is not difficult.
.
On or about January 13, a title key was posted on pastebin
.com in the form of a riddle, which was solved by entering terms into the Google
search engine. By converting these results to hexadecimal, a correct key could be formed. Later that day, the first cracked HD DVD, Serenity
, was uploaded on a private torrent tracker. The AACS LA confirmed on January 26 that the title keys on certain HD DVDs had been published without authorization.
Doom9.org forum user arnezami found and published the "09 F9" AACS processing key on February 11:
This key is not specific to any playback device or DVD title. Doom9.org forum user jx6bpm claimed on March 4 to have revealed CyberLink
's PowerDVD
's key, and that it was the key in use by AnyDVD
.
The AACS LA announced on April 16 that it had revoked the decryption keys associated with certain software high-definition DVD players, which will not be able to decrypt AACS encrypted disks mastered after April 23, without an update of the software.
On May 17, one week before any discs with the updated processing key had reached retail, claims were reported of the new keys having been retrieved from a preview disc of The Matrix Trilogy. On May 23, the key 45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2 was posted on Edward Felten
's Freedom to Tinker Blog and confirmed a week later by arnezami on Doom9 as the new processing key (MKB v3).
While individual discs have been decrypted containing media key block version 17, processing keys for versions past 10 have not yet been released to the public.
As early as April 17, 2007, AACS LA had issued DMCA violation notices, sent by Charles S. Sims of Proskauer Rose
. Following this, dozens of notices were sent to various websites hosted in the United States.
On May 1, 2007, in response to a DMCA demand letter, technology news site Digg
began closing accounts and removing posts containing or alluding to the key. The Digg community reacted by creating a flood of posts containing the key, many using creative ways of semi-directly or indirectly inserting the number, such as in song or images (either representing the digits pictorially or directly representing bytes from the key as colors) or on merchandise. At one point, Digg's "entire homepage was covered with links to the HD-DVD code or anti-Digg references." Eventually the Digg administrators reversed their position, with founder Kevin Rose stating:
Corporation, expressed surprise at Digg's decision, but suggested that a suit aimed at Digg might merely spread the information more widely
.
The American Bar Association
's eReport published a discussion of the controversy, in which Eric Goldman at Santa Clara University
's High Tech Law Institute noted that the illegality of putting the code up is questionable (that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act
may protect the provider when the material itself is not copyrighted), although continuing to allow posting of the key may be "risky", and entertainment lawyer Carole Handler noted that even if the material is illegal, laws such as the DMCA may prove ineffective in a practical sense.
and the call to "Spread this number", the key was rapidly posted to thousands of pages, blogs and wiki
s across the Internet. The reaction has been likened to the Streisand effect
; when attempts to censor the key were made by Digg management in response to DMCA notices, people reacted by posting the encryption key en masse.
Intellectual property
lawyer Douglas J. Sorocco noted, "People are getting creative. It shows the futility of trying to stop this. Once the information is out there, cease-and-desist letters are going to infuriate this community more." Outside of the Internet and the mass media
, the key has appeared in or on T-shirts, poetry, songs and music videos, illustrations and other graphic artworks, tattoos and body art, and comic strips.
On Tuesday afternoon, May 1, 2007, a Google
search for the key returned 9,410 results, while the same search the next morning returned nearly 300,000 results. On Friday, the BBC
reported that a search on Google shows almost 700,000 pages have published the key, despite the fact that on April 17, the AACS LA sent a DMCA notice to Google, demanding that Google stop returning any results for searches for the key.
Widespread news coverage included speculation on the development of user-driven websites, the legal liability of running a user-driven website, the perception of acceptance of DRM
, the failure as a business model of "secrecy based businesses ... in every aspect" in the Internet era, and the harm an industry can cause itself with harshly-perceived legal action.
In an opposing move, Carter Wood of the National Association of Manufacturers
said they had removed the "Digg It"-link from their weblog.
Media coverage initially avoided quoting the key itself. However, several US-based news sources have run stories containing the key, quoting its use on Digg,
though none are known to have received DMCA notices as a result. Later reports have discussed this, quoting the key. Current TV
broadcast the key during a Google Current story on the Digg incident on May 3, displaying it in full on screen for several seconds and placing the story on the station website.
Wikipedia, on May 1, 2007, locked out the page named for the number "to prevent the former secret from being posted again. The page on HD DVD is locked, too, to keep out The Number." This action was later reversed.
had earlier quoted an AACS executive saying that blog
gers "crossed the line", that AACS was looking at "legal and technical tools" to confront those who published the key, and that the events involving Digg were an "interesting new twist".
Advanced Access Content System
The Advanced Access Content System is a standard for content distribution and digital rights management, intended to restrict access to and copying of the "next generation" of optical discs and DVDs. The specification was publicly released in April 2005 and the standard has been adopted as the...
cryptographic key arose in April 2007 when the Motion Picture Association of America
Motion Picture Association of America
The Motion Picture Association of America, Inc. , originally the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America , was founded in 1922 and is designed to advance the business interests of its members...
and the Advanced Access Content System Licensing Administrator, LLC (AACS LA) began issuing demand letter
Demand letter
A demand letter, or LOD, ie. a Letter Of Demand , is letter stating a legal claim which makes a demand for restitution or performance of some obligation, owing to the recipients' alleged breach of contract, or for a legal wrong.In the United States, demand letters from a debt collector relating to...
s to websites publishing a 128-bit
Bit
A bit is the basic unit of information in computing and telecommunications; it is the amount of information stored by a digital device or other physical system that exists in one of two possible distinct states...
(16-byte
Byte
The byte is a unit of digital information in computing and telecommunications that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, a byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the basic addressable element in many computer...
) number, represented in hexadecimal
Hexadecimal
In mathematics and computer science, hexadecimal is a positional numeral system with a radix, or base, of 16. It uses sixteen distinct symbols, most often the symbols 0–9 to represent values zero to nine, and A, B, C, D, E, F to represent values ten to fifteen...
as 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 (commonly referred to as 09 F9), which is one of the cryptographic
Cryptography
Cryptography is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of third parties...
keys
Key (cryptography)
In cryptography, a key is a piece of information that determines the functional output of a cryptographic algorithm or cipher. Without a key, the algorithm would produce no useful result. In encryption, a key specifies the particular transformation of plaintext into ciphertext, or vice versa...
for HD DVD
HD DVD
HD DVD is a discontinued high-density optical disc format for storing data and high-definition video.Supported principally by Toshiba, HD DVD was envisioned to be the successor to the standard DVD format...
s and Blu-ray Disc
Blu-ray Disc
Blu-ray Disc is an optical disc storage medium designed to supersede the DVD format. The plastic disc is 120 mm in diameter and 1.2 mm thick, the same size as DVDs and CDs. Blu-ray Discs contain 25 GB per layer, with dual layer discs being the norm for feature-length video discs...
s. The letters demanded the immediate removal of the key and any links to it, citing the anti-circumvention provisions of the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act
Digital Millennium Copyright Act
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act is a United States copyright law that implements two 1996 treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization . It criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or services intended to circumvent measures that control access to...
(DMCA).
In response to widespread Internet postings of the key, the AACS LA issued various press statements, praising those websites that complied with their requests as acting in a "responsible manner", warning that "legal and technical tools" were adapting to the situation.
The controversy was further escalated in early May 2007, when aggregate news site Digg
Digg
Digg is a social news website. Prior to Digg v4, its cornerstone function consisted of letting people vote stories up or down, called digging and burying, respectively. Digg's popularity prompted the creation of copycat social networking sites with story submission and voting systems...
received a DMCA cease and desist
Cease and desist
A cease and desist is an order or request to halt an activity and not to take it up again later or else face legal action. The recipient of the cease-and-desist may be an individual or an organization....
notice and then removed numerous articles on the matter and banned
Banhammer
The term banhammer began as a satirical term for the power wielded by an administrator to ban or block users of internet forums, wikis, online games, or other internet media. The term is often used as a nickname for the actual anti-cheating software in video games that performs the banning action...
users reposting the information.
This sparked what some describe as a digital revolt or "cyber-riot", in which users posted and spread the key on Digg, and throughout the Internet en masse, thereby leading to the Streisand effect
Streisand effect
The Streisand effect is a primarily online phenomenon in which an attempt to hide or remove a piece of information has the unintended consequence of publicizing the information more widely...
. The AACS LA described this situation as an "interesting new twist".
Background
HexadecimalHexadecimal
In mathematics and computer science, hexadecimal is a positional numeral system with a radix, or base, of 16. It uses sixteen distinct symbols, most often the symbols 0–9 to represent values zero to nine, and A, B, C, D, E, F to represent values ten to fifteen...
is a base-16 numeral system
Numeral system
A numeral system is a writing system for expressing numbers, that is a mathematical notation for representing numbers of a given set, using graphemes or symbols in a consistent manner....
used in the fields of computer programming
Computer programming
Computer programming is the process of designing, writing, testing, debugging, and maintaining the source code of computer programs. This source code is written in one or more programming languages. The purpose of programming is to create a program that performs specific operations or exhibits a...
and mathematics
Mathematics
Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...
. The key is an ordinary number most widely known by its hexadecimal representation; in decimal
Decimal
The decimal numeral system has ten as its base. It is the numerical base most widely used by modern civilizations....
notation, it is 13,256,278,887,989,457,651,018,865,901,401,704,640.
Because the encryption key may be used as part of circumvention technology forbidden by the DMCA
Digital Millennium Copyright Act
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act is a United States copyright law that implements two 1996 treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization . It criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or services intended to circumvent measures that control access to...
, its possession and distribution has been viewed as illegal by the AACS
Advanced Access Content System
The Advanced Access Content System is a standard for content distribution and digital rights management, intended to restrict access to and copying of the "next generation" of optical discs and DVDs. The specification was publicly released in April 2005 and the standard has been adopted as the...
, as well as by some legal professionals. Since it is a 128-bit
Bit
A bit is the basic unit of information in computing and telecommunications; it is the amount of information stored by a digital device or other physical system that exists in one of two possible distinct states...
numerical
Number
A number is a mathematical object used to count and measure. In mathematics, the definition of number has been extended over the years to include such numbers as zero, negative numbers, rational numbers, irrational numbers, and complex numbers....
value, it was dubbed an illegal number
Illegal number
An illegal number is a number that represents information which is illegal to possess, utter or propagate. Any information that can be represented in binary format is representable as a number, and therefore if the information itself is illegal in some way, the pure number itself may be...
. Opponents to the expansion of the scope of copyright
Copyright
Copyright is a legal concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it, usually for a limited time...
criticize the idea of making a particular number illegal.
Commercial HD DVDs and Blu-ray Discs integrate copy protection technology specified by the AACS LA. There are several interlocking encryption mechanisms, such that cracking one part of the system does not necessarily crack other parts. Therefore, the "09 F9" key is only one of many parts that are needed to play a disc on an unlicensed player.
The AACS system can be used to revoke a key of a specific playback device, after it is known to have been compromised, as it has for WinDVD
WinDVD
WinDVD is a commercial video player and music player software for Microsoft Windows. It enables the viewing of DVD-Video movies on the user's PC. DVD-Video backups stored on hard disk can also be played...
. The compromised players can still be used to view old discs, but not newer releases without encryption keys for the compromised players. If other players are then cracked, further revocation would lead to legitimate users of compromised players being forced to upgrade or replace their player software or firmware
Firmware
In electronic systems and computing, firmware is a term often used to denote the fixed, usually rather small, programs and/or data structures that internally control various electronic devices...
in order to view new discs. Each playback device comes with a binary tree
Binary tree
In computer science, a binary tree is a tree data structure in which each node has at most two child nodes, usually distinguished as "left" and "right". Nodes with children are parent nodes, and child nodes may contain references to their parents. Outside the tree, there is often a reference to...
of secret device and processing keys. The processing key in this tree, a requirement to play the AACS encrypted discs, is selected based on the device key and the information on the disc to be played. As such, a processing key such as the "09 F9" key is not revoked, but newly produced discs cause the playback devices to select a different valid processing key to decrypt the discs.
2006
On December 26, 2006, a person using the alias muslix64 published a utility named BackupHDDVDBackupHDDVD
BackupHDDVD is a small computer software utility program available in command line and GUI versions which aids in the decryption of commercial HD DVD discs protected by the Advanced Access Content System. It is used to back up discs, often to enable playback on hardware configurations without full...
and its source code
Source code
In computer science, source code is text written using the format and syntax of the programming language that it is being written in. Such a language is specially designed to facilitate the work of computer programmers, who specify the actions to be performed by a computer mostly by writing source...
on the DVD decryption forum
Internet forum
An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are at least temporarily archived...
at the website Doom9
Doom9
Doom9 is a website featuring information on digital audio and video manipulation, mostly video, and digital copyrights. It is also the forum username of the author of the page, an Austrian then college student at the time of the creation of the site...
. BackupHDDVD can be used to decrypt AACS protected content once one knows the encryption key. muslix64 claimed to have found title and volume keys in main memory while playing HD DVDs using a software player, and that finding them is not difficult.
2007
On January 1, 2007, muslix64 published a new version of the program, with volume key support. On January 12, 2007, other forum members detailed how to find other title and volume keys, stating they had also found the keys of several movies in RAM while running WinDVDWinDVD
WinDVD is a commercial video player and music player software for Microsoft Windows. It enables the viewing of DVD-Video movies on the user's PC. DVD-Video backups stored on hard disk can also be played...
.
On or about January 13, a title key was posted on pastebin
Pastebin
A pastebin is a type of web application that allows its users to upload snippets of text, usually samples of source code, for public viewing. It is very popular in IRC channels where pasting large amounts of text is considered bad etiquette. A new trend is that users use Pastebin to post Twitter...
.com in the form of a riddle, which was solved by entering terms into the Google
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
search engine. By converting these results to hexadecimal, a correct key could be formed. Later that day, the first cracked HD DVD, Serenity
Serenity (film)
Serenity is a 2005 space western film written and directed by Joss Whedon. It is a continuation of the short-lived 2002 Fox science fiction television series Firefly, taking place after the events of the final episode. Set in 2518, Serenity is the story of the captain and crew of a cargo ship...
, was uploaded on a private torrent tracker. The AACS LA confirmed on January 26 that the title keys on certain HD DVDs had been published without authorization.
Doom9.org forum user arnezami found and published the "09 F9" AACS processing key on February 11:
This key is not specific to any playback device or DVD title. Doom9.org forum user jx6bpm claimed on March 4 to have revealed CyberLink
CyberLink
CyberLink is a digital entertainment and multimedia products software corporation. CyberLink's 2008 revenue was $140 million with market capitalization of $420 million. Cyberlink's headquarters are based in Taipei, Taiwan with worldwide offices in Fremont, USA; Tokyo, Japan; and the Netherlands...
's PowerDVD
PowerDVD
CyberLink PowerDVD is a media player for Microsoft Windows. Several editions of the software are sold including "Ultra", "Deluxe" and "Standard". All editions support the viewing of DVD and the Ultra edition supports Blu-ray playback, including the playback of Blu-ray 3D content.The product is...
's key, and that it was the key in use by AnyDVD
AnyDVD
AnyDVD is a Microsoft Windows driver allowing decryption of DVDs on-the-fly, as well as targeted removal of copy preventions and user operation prohibitions . With an upgrade, it will also do the same for HD DVD and Blu-ray. The AnyDVD program runs in the background, making discs unrestricted and...
.
The AACS LA announced on April 16 that it had revoked the decryption keys associated with certain software high-definition DVD players, which will not be able to decrypt AACS encrypted disks mastered after April 23, without an update of the software.
On May 17, one week before any discs with the updated processing key had reached retail, claims were reported of the new keys having been retrieved from a preview disc of The Matrix Trilogy. On May 23, the key 45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2 was posted on Edward Felten
Edward Felten
Edward William Felten is a professor of computer science and public affairs at Princeton University. On November 4, 2010 he was named the Chief Technologist for the United States Federal Trade Commission, a position he officially assumed January 3, 2011.Felten has done a variety of computer...
's Freedom to Tinker Blog and confirmed a week later by arnezami on Doom9 as the new processing key (MKB v3).
2008
In August, two new processing keys were posted:- F1 90 A1 E8 17 8D 80 64 34 94 39 4F 80 31 D9 C8, for MKB v4, and
- 7A 5F 8A 09 F8 33 F7 22 1B D4 1F A6 4C 9C 79 33, which appeared to work with MKB v6, MKB v7 and MKB v8 discs.
2009
In March, two additional processing keys were posted:- C8 72 94 CE 84 F9 CC EB 59 84 B5 47 EE C1 8D 66, for MKB v9
- 45 2F 6E 40 3C DF 10 71 4E 41 DF AA 25 7D 31 3F, for MKB v10
While individual discs have been decrypted containing media key block version 17, processing keys for versions past 10 have not yet been released to the public.
DMCA notices and Digg
Proskauer Rose
Proskauer Rose is one of the largest law firms in the United States, with twelve offices in the United States and around the world...
. Following this, dozens of notices were sent to various websites hosted in the United States.
On May 1, 2007, in response to a DMCA demand letter, technology news site Digg
Digg
Digg is a social news website. Prior to Digg v4, its cornerstone function consisted of letting people vote stories up or down, called digging and burying, respectively. Digg's popularity prompted the creation of copycat social networking sites with story submission and voting systems...
began closing accounts and removing posts containing or alluding to the key. The Digg community reacted by creating a flood of posts containing the key, many using creative ways of semi-directly or indirectly inserting the number, such as in song or images (either representing the digits pictorially or directly representing bytes from the key as colors) or on merchandise. At one point, Digg's "entire homepage was covered with links to the HD-DVD code or anti-Digg references." Eventually the Digg administrators reversed their position, with founder Kevin Rose stating:
Legal opinions
Lawyers and other representatives of the entertainment industry, including Michael Avery, an attorney for ToshibaToshiba
is a multinational electronics and electrical equipment corporation headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. It is a diversified manufacturer and marketer of electrical products, spanning information & communications equipment and systems, Internet-based solutions and services, electronic components and...
Corporation, expressed surprise at Digg's decision, but suggested that a suit aimed at Digg might merely spread the information more widely
Streisand effect
The Streisand effect is a primarily online phenomenon in which an attempt to hide or remove a piece of information has the unintended consequence of publicizing the information more widely...
.
The American Bar Association
American Bar Association
The American Bar Association , founded August 21, 1878, is a voluntary bar association of lawyers and law students, which is not specific to any jurisdiction in the United States. The ABA's most important stated activities are the setting of academic standards for law schools, and the formulation...
's eReport published a discussion of the controversy, in which Eric Goldman at Santa Clara University
Santa Clara University
Santa Clara University is a private, not-for-profit, Jesuit-affiliated university located in Santa Clara, California, United States. Chartered by the state of California and accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, it operates in collaboration with the Society of Jesus , whose...
's High Tech Law Institute noted that the illegality of putting the code up is questionable (that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act
Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act
Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 is a landmark piece of Internet legislation in the United States, codified at...
may protect the provider when the material itself is not copyrighted), although continuing to allow posting of the key may be "risky", and entertainment lawyer Carole Handler noted that even if the material is illegal, laws such as the DMCA may prove ineffective in a practical sense.
Impact
In a response to the events occurring on DiggDigg
Digg is a social news website. Prior to Digg v4, its cornerstone function consisted of letting people vote stories up or down, called digging and burying, respectively. Digg's popularity prompted the creation of copycat social networking sites with story submission and voting systems...
and the call to "Spread this number", the key was rapidly posted to thousands of pages, blogs and wiki
Wiki
A wiki is a website that allows the creation and editing of any number of interlinked web pages via a web browser using a simplified markup language or a WYSIWYG text editor. Wikis are typically powered by wiki software and are often used collaboratively by multiple users. Examples include...
s across the Internet. The reaction has been likened to the Streisand effect
Streisand effect
The Streisand effect is a primarily online phenomenon in which an attempt to hide or remove a piece of information has the unintended consequence of publicizing the information more widely...
; when attempts to censor the key were made by Digg management in response to DMCA notices, people reacted by posting the encryption key en masse.
Intellectual property
Intellectual property is a term referring to a number of distinct types of creations of the mind for which a set of exclusive rights are recognized—and the corresponding fields of law...
lawyer Douglas J. Sorocco noted, "People are getting creative. It shows the futility of trying to stop this. Once the information is out there, cease-and-desist letters are going to infuriate this community more." Outside of the Internet and the mass media
Mass media
Mass media refers collectively to all media technologies which are intended to reach a large audience via mass communication. Broadcast media transmit their information electronically and comprise of television, film and radio, movies, CDs, DVDs and some other gadgets like cameras or video consoles...
, the key has appeared in or on T-shirts, poetry, songs and music videos, illustrations and other graphic artworks, tattoos and body art, and comic strips.
On Tuesday afternoon, May 1, 2007, a Google
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
search for the key returned 9,410 results, while the same search the next morning returned nearly 300,000 results. On Friday, the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
reported that a search on Google shows almost 700,000 pages have published the key, despite the fact that on April 17, the AACS LA sent a DMCA notice to Google, demanding that Google stop returning any results for searches for the key.
Widespread news coverage included speculation on the development of user-driven websites, the legal liability of running a user-driven website, the perception of acceptance of DRM
Digital rights management
Digital rights management is a class of access control technologies that are used by hardware manufacturers, publishers, copyright holders and individuals with the intent to limit the use of digital content and devices after sale. DRM is any technology that inhibits uses of digital content that...
, the failure as a business model of "secrecy based businesses ... in every aspect" in the Internet era, and the harm an industry can cause itself with harshly-perceived legal action.
In an opposing move, Carter Wood of the National Association of Manufacturers
National Association of Manufacturers
The National Association of Manufacturers is an advocacy group headquartered in Washington, D.C. with 10 additional offices across the country...
said they had removed the "Digg It"-link from their weblog.
Media coverage initially avoided quoting the key itself. However, several US-based news sources have run stories containing the key, quoting its use on Digg,
though none are known to have received DMCA notices as a result. Later reports have discussed this, quoting the key. Current TV
Current TV
Current TV, or Current, is a media company led by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and businessman Joel Hyatt. Comcast owns a ten percent stake of Current's parent company, Current Media LLC....
broadcast the key during a Google Current story on the Digg incident on May 3, displaying it in full on screen for several seconds and placing the story on the station website.
Wikipedia, on May 1, 2007, locked out the page named for the number "to prevent the former secret from being posted again. The page on HD DVD is locked, too, to keep out The Number." This action was later reversed.
AACS LA reaction
On May 7, 2007, the AACS LA announced on its website that it had "requested the removal solely of illegal circumvention tools, including encryption keys, from a number of web sites", and that it had "not requested the removal or deletion of any ... discussion or commentary". The statement continued, "AACS LA is encouraged by the cooperation it has received thus far from the numerous web sites that have chosen to address their legal obligations in a responsible manner." BBC NewsBBC News
BBC News is the department of the British Broadcasting Corporation responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs. The department is the world's largest broadcast news organisation and generates about 120 hours of radio and television output each day, as well as online...
had earlier quoted an AACS executive saying that blog
Blog
A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
gers "crossed the line", that AACS was looking at "legal and technical tools" to confront those who published the key, and that the events involving Digg were an "interesting new twist".
See also
- Disc wobbleDisc wobbleDisc wobble, also called wobble groove, is a technology developed by Royal Philips Electronics NV. This technology together with digital watermarking could ensure that only authentic discs would be played on the next generation players that will respect these proposed forms of copy protection .This...
- DVD Copy Control AssociationDVD Copy Control AssociationThe DVD Copy Control Association is an organization primarily responsible for the copy protection of Blu-ray Discs and DVDs. The Content Scramble System was devised for this purpose to make copyright infringement difficult, but also presents obstacles to some legitimate uses of the media...
- DeCSSDeCSSDeCSS is a computer program capable of decrypting content on a commercially produced DVD video disc. Before the release of DeCSS, there was no way for computers running a Linux-based operating system to play video DVDs....
- FCKGW (Microsoft WindowsMicrosoft WindowsMicrosoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
) - File sharing and the law
- Streisand effectStreisand effectThe Streisand effect is a primarily online phenomenon in which an attempt to hide or remove a piece of information has the unintended consequence of publicizing the information more widely...
- Texas Instruments signing key controversyTexas Instruments signing key controversyThe Texas Instruments signing key controversy refers to the controversy which resulted from Texas Instruments' response to a project to factorize the 512-bit RSA cryptographic keys needed to write custom firmware to TI devices.-Project:...
- High-bandwidth Digital Content ProtectionHigh-Bandwidth Digital Content ProtectionHigh-bandwidth Digital Content Protection is a form of digital copy protection developed by Intel Corporation to prevent copying of digital audio and video content as it travels across connections...
- George HotzGeorge HotzGeorge Francis Hotz , alias geohot, million75 or simply mil, is an American hacker known for unlocking the iPhone, allowing the phone to be used with other wireless carriers, contrary to AT&T and Apple's intent...
(PlayStation 3PlayStation 3The is the third home video game console produced by Sony Computer Entertainment and the successor to the PlayStation 2 as part of the PlayStation series. The PlayStation 3 competes with Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generation of video game consoles...
jailbreak)
External links
- Doom9's Forum, original focus of the controversy
- 09 f9: A Legal Primer—Electronic Frontier FoundationElectronic Frontier FoundationThe Electronic Frontier Foundation is an international non-profit digital rights advocacy and legal organization based in the United States...
(EFF) - Original images posted Some of the images that accompanied the digg articles on the front page from that fateful day.