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500-1000 diggs without making the front page. Comments in every single story, regardless of topic material, contain "09-F9-11-02-9D-74-E3-5B-D8-41-56-C5-63-56-88-C0". It's nuts.
It shows how completely broken copyright law is today. It underlines how completely stupid the DMCA is (which is a fact we've known for years now). At some point you have to wonder when society will stop putting up with it, when a randomly-generated hex string can be deemed "intellectual property".
In a broader context, what does this really mean for digital rights management in general? We already know EMI is dropping DRM on its music offerings starting - wow, coincidence ahoy - today, or at least very shortly. I suppose it could have happened already and I wouldn't have noticed it since digg is inundated with stories about the key. But with the music industry moving away from DRM (EMI is being joined by other labels by the end of 2007), does this say something about the consumer's rejection of DRM in general? Admittedly, this is highly techie-centric at this point, but this is something that just has catalyst written all over it; this is really huge. Maybe over the next year or two we'll see the barriers falling once and for all.
In the meantime, enjoy digg; some of the stories are really quite funny if you're a techie. The different ways people are remixing the original string really are great: poetry, color palettes, Quartz screen savers, t-shirts, random sentiments about a link to 9/11, and so on. It's the controversy around deCSS many, many times over. Kevin Rose is actually in quite a pickle; their users are going rather wild, and while I can see why they don't have the resources to stand up to a court date, they are in an interesting position to do something about the flimsy DMCA notices. I can not wait to see Diggnation as soon as it gets pushed out; I wonder if they'll push it out earlier, in fact.
Here's a toast to freedom of speech (and a wish of good luck on publishing the key on my blog!)