Mine! All Mine!

Last week Micheal Ayers of AACS (Advanced Access Content System, an organization that governs the “protection” of the new HD-DVD) gave notice that they intend to shut down, run out of town and generally harass websites that publish a pseudo-random series of characters.¹

09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0

Namely, that series of characters.

AACS states that by doing what just, oops, happened above violates the DMCA by “offering to the public a technology, service, product… blither blather …for the purpose of circumventing… protection measures.” This pseudo-random number, apart from being a rather cool number, can apparently be used to crack the protection on the new HD-DVD discs.

Now this comes down to the simple premise that AACS has decided that by publishing and/or distributing this number constitutes breaking the law. A random, excuse me, pseudo-random number. Breaking the law.

Well, I say bullshit.

But, just in case they happen to be right, I’m hedging my bets. I’m registering my own number that none of you are allowed to use.²

D1 51 8B 58 3F CD 99 A0 F1 D7 BC 5F D4 D7 54 3F

Don’t let me catch you either or I’ll release the hounds.