I’m sure you’re wondering what in the world is that? Well, its a number that somehow makes it possible, or at least easier, to rip HD-DVD and Blu-ray discs to your computer so that you can watch them anywhere.
Here’s the story of how I came to writing this post. I received a tweet from Justine of tastyblogsnack.com that simply read “Poor Digg :(“. This piqued my interest so I promptly headed over to Digg and noticed that almost all the stories either mentioned HD-DVD, included the number above, or talked about boycotting Digg because of censorship. (Just for those that actually made it this far and can’t figure out how it can be a number, it is written in hex which is common on computers. Normally numbers are 0-9, well hex is 0-F, 0123456789ABCDEF.) I followed a few of the links to figure out what was going on and also check slashdot. Sure enough, slashdot had a story, Censoring a Number, and earlier story about the number being released to the public. To Digg’s credit, they have decided to stop censoring and take the heat.
But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you’ve made it clear. You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. (blog entry by Digg co-founder Kevin Rose)
This whole debacle just makes me wonder how long it is going to take the movie industry to realize what the music industry has just now started to get. Trying to protect the user from doing what they want with something they bought is hopeless. The music industry tried at one point to make it impossible to rip CDs so that you could put “your” music on your MP3 players, like the iPod. That failed miserably. You can do that and they now encourage it, begrudgingly. The movie industry tried to protect DVDs from getting ripped so you could keep them on your computer or put them on your iPod or other video devices. That failed miserably, but they still try to say it is illegal. Now they think that just because the disc can hold more information that they will succeed? It’s failing!!! Its being cracked and most people don’t even know about HD-DVD or Blu-ray, yet. Can someone please arrest the people at the MPAA and the heads of the movie companies for stupidity? For a while, people were happy with listening to their CDs on CD players. Then came along the MP3 players and they didn’t want to buy “their” album a second time. Along came portable video players and people don’t want to buy “their” video a second time to put it on the player. Now comes along better quality video and they think they can go against the flow? It ain’t happenin’.
After all this depressing stuff, there is a bright light. EMI dared to partner up with Apple and possibly Microsoft to offer better quality and unlocked music files for sale. This means that, one person can buy it and share it with the whole world. Or, it means that I will finally buy some albums I want because I know that I can still play the files in 5, 10, 15 years when the tech world changes so rapidly. I can’t wait until this finally gets implemented. It should be this month sometime. With that ray of hope, I bid you adieu.
cheers!
[UPDATE: 05-02-2007 12:19 AM]
Wired has a good writeup,
The New HD-DVD/Blu-Ray Hack: What It Might Mean For Us