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More hits from the stupid parade!
June 27th, 2007 07:46 pmThis number:
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
is a hexadecimal integer. This particular number is supposedly owned by a company called AACS, or so they claim. Basically, someone who knew how could use this number to decrypt Blue Ray disks. Apparently AACS came up with the encryption algorithms, and are saying that they own this number as part of their efforts to encrypt their material. Ergo, they claim to own this number. This integer, plus hundreds of others that no one knows, are supposedly copyrighted by them.
That's like saying "I own the number 124" and anyone caught using the number 124 must pay me a usage fee. Usage fees run around $100 for personal use, a thousand or more if it is used commercially. Naturally this number got posted to a bunch of websites, and the company sent cease & desist letters and has taken many of them to court. Some blogging sites (not this one) such as Dig, began pulling entries where this number was posted.
There are some people who are expressing outrage, but it seems to me to be totally silly. Come on, people. There may, I suppose, be serious ramification of this as precedent in copyright law which I am not seeing, but either way it begs for widespread poking at. In order to facilitate such poking, there is a wave to post this number to every single website, forum, blog, email, and where ever you can. The idea is that when the people who got sued go to court, they can claim that this "copyrighted" information is in public use and then get out of the lawsuit. I don't know whether that will work per se, but it also serves nicely to point put the utter ridiculousness of the whole thing.
"Neener, neener, I'm posting your integer! Pbtpbtpbtpbt! "
So, some enterprising folks took it a step further, and took to randomly generating integers for people to copyright. Get yours here. Here's my own, legally owned integer:
04 52 62 9D 53 69 BC 9E 2D 26 C8 98 58 C7 B0 50
I better not catch anyone using this. I'll sue....
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
is a hexadecimal integer. This particular number is supposedly owned by a company called AACS, or so they claim. Basically, someone who knew how could use this number to decrypt Blue Ray disks. Apparently AACS came up with the encryption algorithms, and are saying that they own this number as part of their efforts to encrypt their material. Ergo, they claim to own this number. This integer, plus hundreds of others that no one knows, are supposedly copyrighted by them.
That's like saying "I own the number 124" and anyone caught using the number 124 must pay me a usage fee. Usage fees run around $100 for personal use, a thousand or more if it is used commercially. Naturally this number got posted to a bunch of websites, and the company sent cease & desist letters and has taken many of them to court. Some blogging sites (not this one) such as Dig, began pulling entries where this number was posted.
There are some people who are expressing outrage, but it seems to me to be totally silly. Come on, people. There may, I suppose, be serious ramification of this as precedent in copyright law which I am not seeing, but either way it begs for widespread poking at. In order to facilitate such poking, there is a wave to post this number to every single website, forum, blog, email, and where ever you can. The idea is that when the people who got sued go to court, they can claim that this "copyrighted" information is in public use and then get out of the lawsuit. I don't know whether that will work per se, but it also serves nicely to point put the utter ridiculousness of the whole thing.
"Neener, neener, I'm posting your integer! Pbtpbtpbtpbt! "
So, some enterprising folks took it a step further, and took to randomly generating integers for people to copyright. Get yours here. Here's my own, legally owned integer:
04 52 62 9D 53 69 BC 9E 2D 26 C8 98 58 C7 B0 50
I better not catch anyone using this. I'll sue....
