Information Technology Reference
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program Johansen developed to decrypt DVDs could be used for both legal and illegal
purposes [60].
IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Panasonic, Sony, Toshiba, the Walt Disney Company, and Warner
Brothers cofounded an organization that created the Advanced Access Content System
(AACS) for encrypting high-definition DVDs (HD-DVDs). The purpose of the AACS is
to prevent the unauthorized copying and viewing of HD-DVDs.
In January 2007, this 32-character AACS encryption key was posted on Digg.com,
a social news Web site:
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
In theory, consumers could use this key to play HD-DVDs on their Linux computers or
rip movies to their computer hard drives, although the post did not link to a program
that could actually do either of these things. The AACS parent organization immediately
contacted Digg, claiming the post violated its intellectual property rights and ordering
Digg to purge the key from its site. Tiny Digg, with only a few employees, deleted the
offending story and closed the account of the person who submitted it. Some other
Digg users had reproduced the story or mentioned the key in comments. Digg closed
the accounts of these users and deleted their posts, too. Digg CEO Jay Adelson explained
the company's decision this way: “Whether you agree or disagree with the policies of the
intellectual property holders and consortiums, in order for Digg to survive, it must abide
by the law” [62].
The reaction of “diggers”—regular Digg users—to these actions was swift and un-
ambiguous. In the words of some bloggers, “an Internet riot” ensued. Thousands of
diggers reposted the key in a variety of imaginative ways and “dugg” each other's sto-
ries. Soon every front-page story had the encryption key in its headline. At the end of
the day, the Digg administrators backed down. Digg's founder and chief architect said,
“You've made it clear. You'd rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger
company. If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying” [62].
In response to the release on the Web of this key, the AACS organization expired the
compromised key, requiring owners of HD-DVD and Blu-ray players to go online and
fetch a replacement key [63]. A month later a story revealing the new “secret” processing
key was posted on Digg [64].
The introduction of DRM technologies has been controversial. Here are some criticisms
that have been raised against DRM.
Many experts suggest that any technological “fix” to the problem of copyright abuse
is bound to fail. As we have seen in the previous examples, all prior attempts to create
encryption or anticopying schemes have been abandoned or circumvented.
Others argue that DRM undermines the well-established principle of fair use. Under
DRM, a consumer may not be able to make a private copy of a DRM-protected work
