The idiocy of corporations and associations who hold copyrights never ceases to amaze me. This week, the hex code that allows for copying of HD-DVD’s was posted on Digg, and soon after that post was taken down due to a cease-and-desist letter from the company who manages AACS.
That rash decision to try to stop the spread of this number (which had actually been discovered a few months ago) only cause it to become the biggest online story of the week, with users so furious at censorship on Digg that they overloaded the servers with news of this code. Do I blame Digg? No, not really, although I think they were a bit too scared of a cease-and-desist letter.
It’s the company who manages the AACS who was at fault, and apparently decided to pursue this problem similar to how the RIAA does. I wonder what they thought this would accomplish. One of the laughable things about this whole ordeal is that it’s not like you can just copy and paste this code and voila, you can copy your HD-DVD’s. Of course, it’s almost just as easy as doing a Google search for “HD-DVD Copy” and downloading a program to do it for you.
