Michael S. Malone is a rather patronizing fellow who recently wrote an article banging on about how kids these days don't have any respect for his lawn the authority of Authority. He's especially critical of Digg community members who engaged in an online protest against site moderators. The mods were suppressing an AACS key for reasons of legal liability. Nobody hacked anything, there was no packetstorm or viruses. It was perfectly peaceful civil disobedience in a democratic community, people expressing their values with their votes. To hear Mr Malone tell it, it was freedom-hating commies and anarchists committing crime. (continutes after the jump...)
Reorganized for clarity:
"For those of you who haven't been tracking the story, it went like this: Two days ago someone anonymously posted on Digg the secret code numbers (more precisely, thirteen combinations of letters and numbers) that unlocked the copy protection on HD-DVDs ... the first real ''cyber-riot.'' And like real riots in the real world, Tuesday's explosion on Digg.com over the release of copyright protection codes for HD-DVDs had all of the usual elements of irrationality, illegality, false bravado and cowardice."
Mr Malone refers to the key as 'letters and numbers', which hints that he may not grok hex notation, a very basic technical point. Someone with a lack of technical understanding is at a disadvantage in discussing issues around DRM, it is a highly technical subject. I'm not a brain surgeon, I'd have no idea if it was ethically defensible to perform XYZ procedure in brain surgery, or to release XYZ information about a new brain surgery procedure to the public, I don't know enough to judge. That Mr Malone describes the key as 'copyright protection codes' leads me to believe that he does not fully understand DRM or the reasons why Digg users (who are highly technical) were so stirred up.
AACS keys are large numbers, like 23 or 5 or 191432623643, with a few more digits. Bank account numbers, safe combinations and nuclear launch codes are 'just numbers' too. Digg users would not stand for others posting bank PINs on the site because those are legitimately private, as is a moderators home address. Some n00b called Iowahawk posted personal information in the form of a moderators home address, showing questionable taste on his part and illustrating the distinction between private and public domain data (correction: seems Iowahawk posted *fake* personal info). The key is legitimately public domain, like a country dialing code or the Hubble constant, it is a number useful to interacting with the world, not personal information, such as an account password or the name of your kids school.
If Kevin Rose had deleted a story and banned a user because someone had posted a credit card number very few Digg users would object, there would be no cry of 'censorship'. The key isn't for locking the public out of private property, like a bank PIN is, it's for locking people out of their own property, and limiting their freedom to use what they have legally purchased.
The publication of these keys is part of a much larger struggle to place the reigns of global culture and communication channels into the hands of the public. AACS is an ugly system of control and censorship, undermining private ownership of media and devices as well as offering de-facto censorship and restriction on global markets. The list or reasons to oppose DRM is too long to fit here, Lawrence Lessig's blog is a good place to follow this thread.
Technical and ideological points aside, consider this: AACS is designed so that corporate bosses can revoke access to a version of a film that they disapprove of (pirate, say) or to prevent a movie from playing in the future, or whenever they feel like revoking it for any reason. Imagine if AACS were applied to books rather than movies. The key revocation structure can also block players. If this were books, those in power could retroactively censor anything, books would never be owned in the sense that we think of owning objects and those in power could decide who was allowed the privilege of literacy. Sound like a world you want? Films are not quite equivalent to books, but it isn't a big stretch to compare them; they're still valuable creative expression and an important part of our modern global culture. Allowing capricious, profit driven entities as much control as AACS would give them over movies would be a mistake. Society should - and has - prevented that.
Thanks to brave, conscientious and brilliant citizens such as muslix64, the keys are now public.
"All information is not equal in value. Some of it was created with considerable investment in time and money that needs to be paid back. Other information is the product of creative minds that deserve to be rewarded for their contributions to humanity. And still more is vitally important to the ongoing employment of thousands of people and the families they support."
This is a non-argument. Drug lords and mob bosses also work hard, employ people and feed their families. That media giants invested stupid amounts of money in a doomed system to control and bilk the public does not create an obligation to them. I hope they lose an assload of money. Hell, I hope Warner, Sony, Viacom et al lose so much money they lose all agency, go out of business and darken the world no longer.
"But the biggest problem with Digg is not the business itself, which is an impressive creation, but its community ... an army of post-adolescents with too much education and too much free time ... and holds the anarchistic view that all information should be, in fact, ''wants to be,'' free. "Nothing wrong with that. Indeed, been there, done that. But now, in my gray-haired middle-age I've come to realize that if you are going to create a venue for children to play, someone has to be the grown-up. And that is where Digg blew it."
Children? Pompous blustering dumbass. The Digg mods are not a patrician elite. They are service providers and themselves members of the community they host. If the mods didn't want the key on their site then it wasn't out of a headmasterly desire to keep their charges in line with the wishes of corporate media. They just didn't want their site disrupted by legal action. Even if - and I doubt - the owners of Digg wanted the key to remain hidden, time for that has passed. The key has been in the public domain since muslix64 put it there.
It is generally not possible to unrelease information that has been put online, copying is too fast and too prevalent. Automatons - spiders, scrapers and a thousand other kinds - constantly suck up information to hoard in search databases or to spit out as the padding on spam, and who knows what humans are squirreling away. That information wants to be free is an observation of memetics, useful information has a selective advantage and the AACS key is both useful and has an uncompeted niche. This is why the 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 meme is blooming like a red tide right now. Any suggestion that this could be prevented reveals a lack of understanding of how information moves on the net.
"When you let millions of anonymous users design your product, you also let them determine your fate. And Digg has put itself in the hands of ... the age cohort that gets its news from "The Colbert Report".
I think that's meant to be a criticism of the youth for being liberal. Digg is a news site, so it would seem to me that Digg is where Digg users get much of their news, so this bit does not make much sense... back to the story:
"both Digg and Google, having received a cease and desist order from the consortium, quickly moved to block all postings of the secret code. At Digg, the hard-core Diggers howled in betrayal. Some even had the nerve -- especially in light of their consistent censorship of political viewpoints different from their own -- to wrap themselves in the mantle of the First Amendment. Within a few hours, the number of postings complaining about Digg's censorship approached that of the code-breakers."
Digg removes spam and porn, the community decides what stories it wants to read, that's the point of the site, that the users do not advance the rantings of right wing nuts is their perogative. Mr M is an American journalist criticizing American Diggers for standing by the US constitution and thats straight-up crazy. The First Amendment is the only reason Americans can practice journalism.
Mr M goes on to make some crazy disjointed argument likening the Digg mods not to schoolmasters but jailers, and how they've failed in their 'responsibility' to rule with a totalitarian iron fist. I think what he's really upset about is change. He expects reasonable people in positions of responsibility to agree with his dated, authoritarian views and is upset when they do not. The world has moved on.
When people pirate movies and mp3s the copyright holders are not paid (and the creators may or may not be paid, a distracting sideline). Business models collapse. Money is lost. Companies cannot do business, jobs and fortunes are lot. And that's fine. Really it is. These corporate giants are middlemen, they add nothing and take from both the creatives and the public, we're better off without them. Mankind has been singing songs and performing stories for one another since before civilization, Britney Spears movie 'Crossroads' is a recent iteration of these basic behaviors. If that movie could not be made, oh well, sucks for her, mankind will continue to create anyway. There are thousands of bands releasing their music free on Myspace right now which prove this. Many of the best films are independent, we can do without the studios. Talent, equipment and the technology for special effects in movies have never been as plentiful or as cheap. I don't even watch TV any more, I watch YouTube. There's nothing to the chicken little arguments one hears about music and movies disappearing without the patronage of large corporations.
A related story about entrenched business models:
"The first functional sewing machine was invented by the French tailor, Barthelemy Thimonnier, in 1830. Thimonnier's machine used only one thread and a hooked needle that made the same chain stitch used with embroidery. The inventor was almost killed by an enraged group of French tailors who burnt down his garment factory because they feared unemployment as a result of his new invention." - A History of Sewing Machines
The tailors and seamstresses were an entrenched industry who were rapidly disenfranchised - through no fault of their own - by a new technology, but mankind on the whole gained cheap clothing. There will be jobs and opportunities lost to talented, hardworking people in the film industry, they'll have to find new ways of working. Sucks for them, but I'm convinced society as a whole will benefit a great deal more than the few will lose, especially if the media giants fall.
"Can we expect the children of Digg to understand this? No, but they will in time. But what we can expect is that individuals in positions of responsibility -- especially founders/CEOs -- get it."
Children? Those adults and fellow citizens who participate in a political protest to secure democratic ownership of their culture deserve more regard than that. To conclude, as the saying goes: ''Let me see your war face''.
Link: ABC News Article, AACS on Wikipedia, Related on BoingBoing
Created 2007-05-4 00:28:49 by strix and filed under internet
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