First We … the Lawyers

First We … AACS*… The Lawyers

* AACS is pronounced, for present purposes, access.

Here are some links for those of you who have been following the HD-DVD movie decryption key gufuffle resulting from the posting one of the keys on Digg.

Blame the Digg revolt on lawyers? See Slashdot for links to a number of articles. One is on Market Watch where the writer (John Dvorak), under the heading “Digg’s DVD-decoder fiasco Commentary: Lawyers’ efforts can be counterproductive” pens gems such as “lawyers can be idiots and have no sense of public relations” and “the episode reemphasizes the new era in corporate control of trade secrets: It’s harder to keep a secret than ever before, and lawyers are not helping.”

An article on the New York Times web site contains the suggestion by one person – who wrote a song whose lyrics contain the key and posted it on YouTube – that the key “most famous number on the Internet”.

I’m not sure of that. I’d offer 666 which, as we all know, is the number of the Devil(‘s Advocate).

The EEF offers a legal primer on the issues under the US DCMA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) resulting from the posting of the HD-DVD movies decryption key.