For my next program I'm going to make the serial number the word "the" and then mail out millions of cease and desist orders to the whole internet, for publicly releasing my serial number and violating the DCMA

I know you are just pointing out the absurdity of copyrighting a number, but you would not be able to do this under the DCMA as the word "the" is already present on the internet. The issue is not really in the number itself, so much as the fact that the only use of the number is to break AACS encryption. Not saying I agree with the AACS, just giving an their point of view.

Also anyone who is familiar with stealing satellite TV, numbers of this length(and format) are on the internet weekly as they change them, Dish Network,nor Bell does much if anything to have websites remove these numbers, I'm kind of surprised that they haven't tried before, so there may be some precedents set in US law regarding this issue, which might mean trouble for AACS.

DMCA = Digital Millennium Copyright Act

So to say it has nothing to do with copyright is a bit odd. Also the take down notice that sites where get claimed they where hosting itegletical proptety that belong to AACSS.

Also the DMCA only applys to the U.S.A so yay Canada!

There realy is no reason why you should not be able to watch your own HD DVD movies you bought legealy in linux.

I guess my point is that it is absurd to claim that a number is only used for one purpose, a program I wrote uses md5 hashes to store ones password (something that is very common), as most know a md5 hash is in a similar format, and therefor there is some string that when md5'd will result in this 'number', so its retarded to think that this number is there's and by limiting which numbers can be on the internet. also I find it difficult to believe that this number has never been used before somewhere on the internet, which paul claimed would invalidate it from being subject to the DCMA.

I guess my point is that it is absurd to claim that a number is only used for one purpose, a program I wrote uses md5 hashes to store ones password (something that is very common), as most know a md5 hash is in a similar format, and therefor there is some string that when md5'd will result in this 'number', so its retarded to think that this number is there's and by limiting which numbers can be on the internet.

also I find it difficult to believe that this number has never been used before somewhere on the internet...

--side note: just looked up md5 reverse tables, and apparently they're pretty good now, so I should probally rewrite my password hashing code to make it more secure, if someone accessed my database grabbed a md5, they can look it up on the web and find the string that produces that md5 value.

I know you are just pointing out the absurdity of copyrighting a number...

I don't know much about the DCMA, but I know that prior art is an important part of copyright - my understanding is that you can't copyright something that has been created before by someone else. Since this is a DCMA issue, it could be that they are able to send a C&D without copyrighting the number. I don't know much about law, I'm just speculating. I doubt this number was used for anything prior, because typing even 8 random hex digits into google is enough to come up with no results.

as long as companies will try to make more and more complex encryption algorithms, there is a higher and higher chance that a flaw will be made, which would allow exploitation,


anyone else seem to agree?