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"not without a purpose, not without a fight"
-street dogs

"Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, except for maybe a lot of pissed off nerds....."

When will these Copy protection/DRM loving idiots ever learn. Copy protection has only one purpose, and that is for someone out there to break it. It's always been that way, and it always will be that way.

Last night was so great. The joy!

Let see if digg gets burried

But how will the nerds survive the loss of digg??? Oh, the humanity...

bravo to kevin rose. way to back your users!! this is why i use the site and watch the podcast, cause he's one of us!

I've always felt like Digg is a bit of a Quirrel to Microsoft's Voldemort. Have I gotten the wrong impression of them?

wow... Kevin is my hero.

WHY WOULD ANYONE CARE IF DIGG DIES? OF COURSE THEY WANT THEM TO FIGHT.


Normal public is selfish, they dont care about digg, they just want their codes.

High Definition is just another way to sell the same content over again. Using draconian DRM is going to doom both flavors of High Definition.

Releasing the hack into the wild may just save the two formats in spite of the industry's attempt to kill them at birth.

hey, I know I am evil incarnate, but comparing me to microsoft?? I have to draw the line somewhere.

The Internet.... still (and hopefully always) the great equalizer.

What a night!

Can't wait till enough idiots demand free bread and gas and clothes. Communism doesn't work and the people who work hard trying to make money in the hd-dvd business should be able to set the terms for their product.

What a lame move by digg, they caved in to pressure from their users in an attempt to not cave in to pressure from another source. That's not heroic, just misguided.

the guys at digg should open up their own site ftp info in the spirit of sharing protected codes -

"I'd rather die, than be a toy."
-nomenasno

I can just picture a bunch of dorks having a rebellion march (million dork march?).

A pitchfork or flaming torch in one hand and a stack of blank Blueray disks in the other.

"We will not be denied our right to steal content!"

Losers

considering how Digg censors other content ( eg Roughly Drafted articles) who give a flying eff what happens to them.

mac user 47 and Thorin are right -- These are no doubt mostly Windows losers clamoring for more FREE stuff. Hell, most of the software they buy-- err, STEAL -- is obviously "free" to them. And now they want all of their Hi-Def content for "free" as well.

Buncha f-ckin' scumbags. It doesn't matter if it's the "big, bad movie studios" or the "evil record companies" from whom you're stealing, dipshits. STEALING is still STEALING!

For giving in to a rabid mob of cheaters, losers, and thieves, Kevin Rose officially wins the first 2007 Pandering Spineless Douchebag Award.

This is so not about stealing. At all.
It's about the free flow of information.

C1,

I'm not really polarized on the issue, you may be right. I was kind of using it for a conveyance of humor. I guess what you are saying is that the issue that sparked the censorship is irrelevant. I understand that, but I do question the need for cracking the code. I'm ignorant as to how badly the encryption cripples the portability of the content. Maybe it goes back to the Jobs / DRM situation. If we are entering an era of personal responsibility, then that suits me. The basis of the issue itself, however, just rubs my fur the wrong way. Peace.

ChrissyOne -This is so not about stealing. At all.
It's about the free flow of information.

What's your phone no. little one?

I'd like to say one more thing about this: where do you draw the line? What if someone posted an article about how to build a homemade bazooka, or how to coax a 14 year old girl into the back of a van? Does this information really deserve to flow freely?

@ Thorin

I understand. My position on the issue is that DRM is a fundamentally flawed idea, especially when it's based on secrets. We've seen how difficult it has been to unlock the secret of HD DRM, and now the secret is out. There is no putting the cat back in the bag.
It doesn't matter if the code is posted on Digg or MySpace or on the front page of CNN. It's now out there for anyone to find and use. So what was the point of having it in the first place? Every duplicator in China can now copy HD DVDs, and a Digg ban certainly can't stop that.
If it were true, if you really couldn't make any money from an un-encrypted media storage method, then how come they can still sell CDs? Real Phillips-compliant CDs have never had copy protection, and they've been sold for something like 20 years. Why in the world should we believe that movies are somehow special?

Digg will allow that code, but they will still CENSOR everything else. You can't Digg roughlydrafted.com because he bashes Microsoft too effectively. They have censored him. And they will continue censoring others. Only when forced, will they capitulate.

"how to coax a 14 year old girl into the back of a van?"

If memory serves me, when I was 15, all I had to do was open the door......I don't guess that's what you mean, though.

"What if someone posted an article about how to build a homemade bazooka, or how to coax a 14 year old girl into the back of a van?"

Come on. Coping a movie to my iPod is now terrorism? This isn't a slippery slope, it's about maintaining fair usage rights that we've always had, until now. Now we're told that industries are in danger and we should deal with crippled and exploding media to save the precious plastic-box-selling industry. I'm just not buying it.
Those who want to pirate, will pirate aplenty. You can't stop it. What you can do is make it easy for people to use the media that you sell them, and not put junk in their way for some fantasy of perceived security.

They should comply, Remove it. When it comes back, remove it. When it comes back, remove it.... It'll always be there and it'll always get removed.

C1,

No, I'm not equating the two, I was just saying where do you draw the line on what gets posted, that's all. When you said free flow of information i thought you meant regarding what gets posted on Digg, but now I realize that you actually are talking about the DRM issue. In that respect, I was confused. We are on the same page. I respect and completely agree with your views on DRM. Sadly though, a lot of those protestors are certainly hell bent on stealing content. That goes back to my earlier statement about personal responsibility. DRM will not fix that problem, as you said.

Yeah like Chrissy says whats so great about a movie anyway. Its not like a song you like, one that you can play 100 times a year or whatever. Once youv'e seen a movie 3 or 4 times it becomes boring and just sits on the shelf anyway.

Well, for me it's about the posting as well. The slippery slope goes both ways - If you ban the site with instructions on how to lure a girl in to van, then you will have to ban the movie The Silence of the Lambs, correct? Then where does it end? You could say that Fight Club is a textbook on how to create a terrorist cell network, so you might have to ban that, too.
What's called for in these situations is Reason™. Not a mindless set of rules to be applied in like to every situation. People can do this, if they're pressed, though I agree that it doesn't always come easy.

-c

C1,

You make another excellent point (as usual), I concede. I guess in the end, if there is to be such protest, I wish it were over a more noble cause. Have a good day.

All very convenient, ChrissyOne, except for the fact that this isn't really about people "abhoring" DRM so much as it's about cheap bastards wanting something for free. Sure, some fair use rights are infringed. But how do you counter that with the fact that it's now possible to "share" something with a billion people nearly instantaneously? Intellectual property owners have a right to actually get paid for the content they produce. Because they have a valid position in wanting to continue to work in the field of their craft. And specious arguments about "people who steal it wouldn't have bought it anyway" don't work. If they did, we could apply them to all sorts of commodities, but we don't. Why? Because if one of these fools stole a BMW from a car dealership I don't think law enforcement would accept the excuse that:

"Gee, officer, I'm joyriding in this beamer and it's true that I stole it -- but cut me a break. I would never have actually BOUGHT it anyway. So I'm really just exposing more people to the car dealer's product. Aren't I to be applauded?"

No way. No how. Intellectual property needs to be protected. It's part of the backbone that makes the American and western economies so vibrant and responsive. There's a huge difference between the mantra of "free flow of information" and "paying for something that has a pricetag in the marketplace". If there weren't, then the rates that an information database like Lexis-Nexis charges wouldn't be viable.

Couldn't agree more. ^_^

“Crack heads” don't just want to break DRM, "crack heads" want other people to make it easier for them to break DRM. It seems that most "crack heads" relied on Digg to reference access to the code because they too incompetent to transmit and retrieve the code without Digg. I thought "crack heads" were the world’s uber geeks. Not anymore. These "crack heads" are just lazy bahstids.

That is, I couldn't agree more with Thorin. Sauder, I could take of leave.

@ Sauder

Could you explain to me then how the music industry still makes millions upon millions of dollars selling unprotected CDs?

ChrissyOne,

Good call on the slippery slope argument. I was thinking the same thing myself. I believe that slippery slope is usually a bad argument against anything. It's too easy to do, and it doesn't prove anything.

My own thoughts about this encryption is that is doesn't stop people from doing what they want. If you want to steal, your going to figure it out. No encryption is going to stop you. All the encryption does is make it difficult for me to use my data/movie/music the way I want to. What do the movie studios care if I want to copy my DVD to my hard drive. Why make it such a pain in the ass.

- DT

there is no means by which i can watch an HD DVD on my Mac - which is how i watch all content on my Sharp Aquos.

I see no problem with cracking HD DVDs i purchase so that i can watch them on my TV via my Mac. Its just that simple.

This makes me think of Gail Wynand.

for example - all of my DVDs are ripped to my Mac and i use Front Row to pull them up and watch them. The DVDs sit protected in my basemet, not being scratched or lost or squashed. If i want to let someone borrow my DVD, i can - its my DVD.

I can also watch those DVDs in any other room that will be getting a Apple TV soon.

if this sounds familiar, its because it is 100% the same as your iPod and the music you ripped to it from your CDs that you no longer carry around with you.

"Could you explain to me then how the music industry still makes millions upon millions of dollars selling unprotected CDs?"

I can't believe how quickly you went for that. Straw man, I say.

It doesn't matter if an industry "still" makes money selling their wares. It's still ILLEGAL to steal from them. The question isn't one of "Yaah, but are they still able to make money?" Rather, the question is "Do they have a right to be compensated for their work/efforts/labor/product?"

You didn't answer that, and you conveniently tried to shift the discussion away from my original position. Hence, my straw man (or, straw woman, as the case may be) moniker for you.

Put it this way: Theoretical small business owner makes a living by selling technical journals in digital format via subscription online. If one of his limited pool of, let's say, 2500 customers decides to upload all of his technical journals to a file-sharing service so that the business owner's other customers can get them for free, isn't it a possibility that a sizable percentage of those customers now become "ex-customers"? Isn't the business owner harmed? By your logic you would have us believe that there's some "means test" that YOU would use to determine . . . what? If he's been harmed "enough"? Too much? How many customers would he have to lose to digital theft before it was too many in your opinion? Or more importantly, how many customers would he have to lose before he went out of business?

The basic argumnet is this: Most of the people of this ilk who want the Digg information want it so that they don't have to PAY for the goods they want to OWN. They're cheap and they don't want to PAY for what they acquire.

Information has value. That's why it's called INFORMation. Because it INFORMS.

Do you or do you not believe, for instance, that all of the hundreds or thousands of employees of Lexis-Nexis who spend hundreds of thousands of man-hours gathering data and collating information for their clients have a right to their jobs? Do you think it would be proper and acceptable and legal for the entire Lexis-Nexis database to suddenly be made available for free?

Just because it's "information" doesn't mean it should be free. If so, then you should set about endeavoring to change the western capitalist economic model. Of which you are a part.

Wow, so *I* went for the straw man? ^_^

This is not about the creators of content being compensated. The music companies do not create content, they distribute it. They are, at this moment, redundant an unnecessary. They can now be removed from the equation.
DRM is a tool to leverage them back into the game, nothing more. This is not very hard to grasp.

-c

The "free flow of information" indeed. That argument is so naive. I am a pro photographer who shares the same intellectual property theft concerns about my images (some of which I risked my life to get) that musicians and record companies have about their intellectual property. For me the sale of CDs of photos (downloaded from the internet) in the back alleys of China or India erodes my abilitiy to 1. make a living from my photos, or 2. reasonably certify image exclusivity to a legitimate, paying client.

I am all for DRM. The battles that the music and movie industries are fighting involve the same principles of intellectual property ownership that concern me and my photos. A legal loss for them sets a dangerous precedent for me. A shift in the cultural view towards intellectual property theft while disingenuously calling it "free flow of information" makes it more likely that people feel emboldened to steal my photos also.

Several decades ago David Brinkley (of Huntley-Brinkley fame - the NBC Evening News in the 50's & 60's) was commenting on the Soviet style of "negotiating " with the West. He summed up the Soviet attitude as follows "what's ours is ours; what's yours is negotiable." Unfortunately for people who actually create intellectual property that same attitude increasingly pervades our society today.

Chrissy One,

You put hours, sweat and tears writing and hopefully perfecting a code that you hope to sell to the masses and someone releases (steals) that code so you are no longer able to profit from your labor and see how you feel about free information then.

P.S. Funny how the MDN Magic Word for this particular submission is 'moral'.

Well, first of all, I thought the article was tangentially about "movie" companies, not "music" companies. And thanks for not answering any of the contentions I raised.

As for any other topics, it was you who brought up "information":

"It's about the free flow of information."
- ChrissyOne, 10:41 am

And it was me who answered on-topic about . . . information.

Good day.

ChrissyOne:
"This is not about the creators of content being compensated. The music companies do not create content, they distribute it. They are, at this moment, redundant an unnecessary. They can now be removed from the equation.
DRM is a tool to leverage them back into the game, nothing more. This is not very hard to grasp."

Actually it IS very much about content creators being compensated. The photo agency that markets my work splits proceeds with me. They provide a valuable service that's worth their cut. They:
1. sell my images to markets I have no access to.
2. they provide the admin to track image sales
3. they have a team of international copyright lawyers to sue the crap out of IP thieves
4. money "magically" shows up in my account every quarter, enabling me to focus on creating more images.

This is basically what the recording companies do for musicians so they can make more music

@Guest01,

You made your point, but fail to see ChrissyOne's point. DRM does not solve the problem! If they are set on stealing content, they will steal the content. It's kind of like gun control (doesn't work), you can tell criminals that they can't have guns, but they don't care. They are criminals, they will get the weapons if they want them. Same with the "war on drugs". Maybe there is an alternative to DRM that will protect the property and not make the experience nasty for the honest consumer, but it hasn't been found yet.

For the most part, this is what APPLE is doing for musicians. What are the labels doing? They're buying shelf space for 50 Cent to occupy. I'm wondering why we need them.