00110000 00111001 00100000 01000110 00111001 00100000 00110001 00110001 00100000 00110000 00110010 00100000 00111001 01000100 00100000 00110111 00110100 00100000 01000101 00110011 00100000 00110101 01000010 00100000 01000100 00111000 00100000 00110100 00110001 00100000 00110101 00110110 00100000 01000011 00110101 00100000 00110110 00110011 00100000 00110101 00110110 00100000 00111000 00111000 00100000 01000011 00110000
It’s been said that there are six kinds of people in this world: those who can read binary, and those who can’t.
If you’re in the second group, copy and paste the above here. Select the ‘Binary to ASCII’ option, and you’ll get a string of hex. Seems innocuous enough, right?
Wrong. That simple string is the “processing key” that cracks the AACS DRM encryption on HD-DVD and Blu-Ray discs. It’s certainly more succinct than the DeCSS code for vanilla DVD’s.
I’m leery of posting it verbatim, given that reaction on the part of AACS was swift and unfriendly, to say the least. The DMCA was invoked and swung around like a crude cudgel, and ridiculous as the whole situation seems, the implications are quite chilling.
If you voted for Clinton, pat yourself on the back. His administration, including Al “I invented the internet” Gore (and his horrible wife), did more to restrict intellectual freedoms and the dissemination of information than any in American history. The DMCA is a blatant abuse of the spirit of copyrights that only serves to line the pockets of lawyers and corporate monopolies, and here we see it at the height of folly.
They claim that a simple string of hex is “intellectual property,” and therefore irreproducible upon pain of financial ruin. What’s next? We’re not talking about a block of executable code here, just a string of numbers. Exactly what qualifies as “intellectual property,” and where do we draw the line?
Oh, and don’t worry. The republicans are just as supportive of this crap. There used to be a doctrine of fair use in US copyright law, but the DMCA steamrollers right over it. The RIAA has been fighting for this for years, and soon we’ll start to see noticeable stagnation in the creation of new information in any medium.