Wow internet people of the world. I was surprised tonight. As slow as defending DeCSS took off all those years ago, so quick was the defending of the AACS key. Many people on the Internet spoke out tonight after AACS LA started sending out takedown notices to companies that hosted a key published by some of their users. The biggest thing as far as I’m concerned is that people seem to be willing to break the companies they love (digg and Google) just to prove the stupidity of the DMCA take down notices. These users are not against Digg and Google, they are it’s most active supporters, and they will use their favourite tools to prove the governments in the world that the DMCA is giving the DRM companies too much power over other companies that are simply doing their work. They proved that the “secret” is to be protected by the DRM company, and not by all the other companies in the world. The secret is out, and Google and Digg can’t stop it, just as little as the DRM companies could prevent the “secret” from getting out in the first place. To ask Google and Digg to stop it is unrealistic, costly and without merit to society as a whole. There are thousands of ways we can communicate those few digits, songs, videos, DNS records, different notations, weak “encoding” variants, barcodes, images, ascii art, etc etc.

It is my full conviction that not a judge in the world will judge Google or Digg as libel in this case. There was no stopping the world, without a full take-down of the companies involved. They couldn’t have hired people fast enough to remove it, as others would be able to post it online. Let’s HOPE it goes to court, that will stop this idiot-icy once and for all.

I’m proud to be part of the new Internet generation. Sure it has it’s faults, the world always has had faults, but it’s time people realize that there is no stopping to this. Information is shared now almost by definition, and the knowledge it has spread is far outweighing the “bad” knowledge it’s spreading. Information is our drug, our virus. Change your business models, because I’m tired of not owning what I buy, and I’m not the only one.

These companies are forgetting that they serve society in their needs. We pay them and expect certain things back. More and more of our expectations are flatly ignored in order to “save the income” of these companies. If we don’t give you money, then that means you are doing something wrong, and the company deserves to go broke. It should not get protected by governments and organizations that serve those same organizations. Many people have said: “If there was a better business-model, then that model would be more successful and win over the other companies”. However this is no longer true. This industry as a whole has become so protected that any other business model is no longer viable. You want proof of that ? Well here is a model: I use work of others that I’m allowed to use for free. Let’s say an Internet radio station and freely licensed music. Sounds like a viable model, albeit one where I have to do a lot of work. Any commoner would come to such a conclusion. Guess what; It’s not viable. In the USA you will have to pay SoundExchange (a daughter of RIAA) regardless of what kind of music you broadcast on the Internet. If the artist doesn’t join up with RIAA and collects it’s fees, too bad for them, all the money goes to RIAA. (link) This is just anti-competitive and the US government should be thrown out over allowing RIAA to work in such a matter.

There is one big thing that people are often forgetting. There is a lot of talk about the movie and music industry. Their sales are indeed rapidly decreasing etc etc. But what we forget is that the Entertainment industry as a whole is still growing. Television, gaming, sports, events, internet entertainment, iPod, etc have all seen enormous growth over the past years. We are just busy with more stuff then ever before and that’s the primary reason we consume less music and movies. You are not losing money over piracy, you are losing money because you are not correctly reading the market you are selling to. Hell some people are even turning to piracy now because of the trouble they have to go trough with their legally bought digital music. And knowing the average computer capabilities of the Internet user I’m not surprised, and neither should they be.

Finally more and more people start to see where all these guidelines are problematic and they start fighting it. This is not about not being willing to pay certain companies for their products. It’s about the protection these companies enforce and the government’s involvement with these companies. It’s about owning a song once you bought it, regardless of the format. It’s about being able to buy what you want, without having to wait 1,5 year before the product enters your geographic-market. It’s about being able to decrypt your movies 30 years after official DVD players were taken out of production. It’s about your right to publish a 16 hex number, regardless of what it means. It’s about the bullying of the companies we love, by the companies we hate. And if one happens to go bankrupt in order to defend that, then we will gladly sacrifice such a company and create another one once the issue is settled.

So with saying: “09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0” to everyone I end this post.