Yesterday marked a very interesting day for online free speech on the internet.
The hexadecimal series "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0", was released yesterday that can be used to unlock the AACS encryption used on HD DVDs. Yes, that's right -- 32 digits can be used to bring down a complex encryption schema. Well once people started getting word of this key, they decided to start posting links to this code on the Web 2.0 site Digg.com, and that's when the fun began. Digg.com recieved a cease-and-desist order to remove posts citing the encryption key, which they adhered to temporarily until the Digg community revolted by posting thousands of comments about the situation. Kevin Rose, founder of Digg, quickly reversed his policy and allowed full access to any and all posts with the number.
What followed was undeniable support for the Rose and Digg, as people began to post the number on their blogs, create photoshop files with the number incorporated, and even created a song or two. As of right now (May 3 @ 8:15 am) there are over 677,000 results when searching Google for "09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0". Brilliant.
So what does this all mean? Does this prove that the Web 2.0 machine is an unstopable force? Are we witnessing the death of Digg.com at the hands of the corporate heavies? Or perhaps is this an indication of the short remaining lifespan of DRM in general?
Hold on for the ride -- this one's getting exciting!