09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0

What the hell is this? I wonder. Hmmm. Let's google it.

Update: Actually, this series of letters and numbers is the hexadecimal decryption key for HD-DVDs. Someone posted it earlier on Digg.com (or rather, linked to a story/site online which cited that key). The people operating Digg started to delete the entries containing the hex key, for both legal and commercial reasons. Digg users, who are by and large techno-libertarians (if not consciously, at least in practice), found ways to alert the whole blogosphere. The story spilled over to Slashdot (the precursor to digg.com - almost made irrelevant by digg until today at least). As a result of this online revolt, the hex key has been made de facto public domain (check out the hit count on google, and it even has a myspace page now). Digg relented and stopped blocking the posts mentioning the decryption key (and Kevin Rose, the founder, wrote a defiant post on digg.com 's blog). There are now 280,000 instances of the key on the internet. The cost of serving DMCA notices to all the hosting websites (including Google) will be so enormous that the usual enforcement through intimidation won't work. Beyond the PR disaster for media conglomerates, the story will inevitably surface on mainstream news outlets - thus letting everybody know about the encryption scheme and its trivial crack. Not so good.

This is a classic example of technology revolutionizing conditions of productions and upending entrenched social forms. Very heady stuff.

In short, this May 1st might very well mark the old media's Haymarket riot. This is the beginning of the end for DRM.