AACS vows war over leaked HD DVD key

[admin]

The head of the Advanced Access Content Protection licensing group says the leaking of the HD DVD processing key goes beyond free speech. Michael Ayers, chair of the AACS Licensing Authority (AACS LA), told the BBC that his group respects free speech, but bloggers who distributed the key stepped “outside of the realm of protected free speech” ...

http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/31912/97/

[blutach]

Interesting viewpoint. Can numbers and letters be copyrighted? If not, can a specified sequence of numbers be copyrighted?

If not, then there is no issue to answer.

Do the blogs owe any duty of condifentiality to AACS LA? I think not. Even if they did, the information came into their possession not by them breaching confidentality, but by others publicising the now famous PK. Most NDAs do not punish a party if confidential info is disclosed not by them.

I feel sorry for the copyright holders for they have invested much in trying to protect their investment, but I wonder who of these "baddies" actually owes them any obligations of non-disclosure?

Regards

[admin]

I think you can apply the same argument to CD-keys, serial unlock codes or passwords - publishing these is definitely a no-no. These keys were also generated using some kind of function and licensed for profit, and perhaps that in itself would mean that these combinations of letters and numbers have some additional meaning/value.

But the good thing is that even if they take this thing to court (the AACS LA may not want the extra attention, considering these keys are no longer valid for new movies anyway), and even if Digg loses, they can afford to do so. What's a couple of million or even 100 million for a site like Digg? I don't see much in the way of damages either. If they lose, then they'll be forced to remove the keys, but their users will at least accept this decision.

The real issue here is that for sites like Digg where it is dependent on user submissions, who is liable? The users who posted the keys, the websites who Digg linked to or Digg itself? Based on recent cases where even ISPs and search engines were found liable, I don't think Digg has much of a case on this point based on precedent. But my opinion is that Digg should not be liable because there will come a point (if we're not there already), where user submissions will be so numerous, it would be impossible to keep track of everything. The same for search engines too. Companies shouldn't be allowed to go after Digg or Yahoo simply because it is much easier to do so, when there are other culpable parties involved (but harder to get).