This actually happened a couple days ago.  I didn’t have time to post and comment on the topic cuz I was too busy following the progress of Britney’s half-assed “comeback” tour lol.

So a recap: Some hackers found the HD-DVD encryption key a.k.a. AACS Processing Key, and posted it on Digg. With this key, people can crack the copy-protection and freely copy HD-DVD movie discs like you would copying a regular music CD.  Then Digg got a cease and desist letter and started to delete and remove all posts related to the topic because it’s copyright infringement. The geeks rioted over this and started writing posts like

“Digg deleted my hard drive for posting the HD-DVD KEY! Now my hard drive refuses to write in binary. I get Error Code: 09-F9-11-02-9D-74-E3-5B-D8-41-56-C5-63-56-88-C0 . Oh, noz.”

By the end of the day there were over 50,000 diggs on HD-DVD hacking related topics, and Digg finally gave up. Digg Founder Kevin Rose made a post that said something like

“…effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be. If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.”

Kinda pathetic that they changed their tone after totally trying to censor the topic all day.  It’s a huge blow to AACS and Microsoft/Toshiba, but what do you expect? The hackers want to watch porn for free in HD, and the porn industry isn’t adopting Sony’s Blu-Ray format, lol.

The power of Web 2.0 is amazing. Score 1 for the Geeks!