I've had problems with the DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) and its enforcement for a while. It seems like it's been prone to abuse by megacorps for quite a while.
Recently, one talented hacker cracked the encryption on HD-DVDs because the built-in encryption wouldn't let him play it on the device of his choice. A reasonable presumption since you've bought the bloody thing. In any event, he posted the crack so that others could benefit from his work.
This was mentioned on the Digg Web site (famous for being famous) and they received a DCMA notice threatening them with a lawsuit if they didn't take out articles related to the crack (pointers to info on how to do it).
To cut a long story short, they decided to keep up their articles, inviting a big, fat lawsuit. A whole bunch of people seem to think this is suppression of free speech (I won't go there..) and posted the decryption codes in a variety of imaginative ways. To wit.
Just lovely.
Posted by artandscience at May 3, 2007 09:59 AM