A Dragon in Sheep’s Clothing

Thoughts from a web designer, writer and cat lover.

A Dragon in Sheep’s Clothing header image 1

I own an integer

Posted by Heidi on May 9th, 2007 · View Comments

10 08 42 74 9B B9 EA BA 5E 1C AA 83 F8 07 21 17

My very own Integer. Thank you, Ed Felten!

From Ed Felten’s blog on May 1:

The people who control AACS, the copy protection technology used on HD-DVD and Blu-ray discs, are apparently trying to shut down websites that publish a certain 128-bit integer. The number is apparently a “processing key” used in AACS. Together with a suitable computer program, the key allows the decryption of video content on most existing HD-DVD and Blu-ray discs.

I won’t publish the key here but you can spot it all over the Web. It’s a long string starting with “09 F9″.

The key has been published on a few websites for months, but in recent days the AACS “Licensing Authority” (AACS LA) has taken to sending out demand letters to websites that publish the key, claiming that the key is a circumvention technology under the DMCA. News of these demand letters, and the subsequent disappearance of content and whole sites from the Net, has triggered an entirely predictable backlash, with thousands of people reposting the key to their own sites.

The key will inevitably remain available, and AACSLA are just making themselves look silly by trying to suppress it. We’ve seen this script before. The key will show up on T-shirts and in song lyrics. It will be chalked on the sidewalk outside the AACS LA office. And so on. 

(See his posts for background on the 128-bit number revolution.)

Tags: Computer · Interesting News · That was Fun

  • http://jeredb.com Jered

    Hey! Did you get this from my blog? and if you did, you didn’t credit me…. grrr! I’m gone less than a day and I’m already taking flak!!

    j/k

  • http://dragonsheep.com Heidi

    My bad! :P

    “I found about about Ed Felten’s integer generator via Jeredb’s totally cool blog at http://jeredb.com.

blog comments powered by Disqus