The following is not meant to be legal advice.
By now, many may have heard about Digg’s decision in early May 2007 to not take off certain posts relating to copyright circumvention from its site rather than follow its terms of use relating to copyright violations.
At issue were posts citing offending code, the hexadecimal series "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" that unlocks AACS encryption used on HD DVDs. Since the incident, the offending code has multiplied across the web, in music, on t-shirts, and in answers to riddles.
AACS Licensing Administrator, a media consortium that created and licenses the AACS disc-encryption scheme, sent notices to hosting providers and websites informing the sites they were hosting content that violated the DMCA's prohibition on sharing circumvention technology, not that the code was copyrightable. Digg first pulled the posts disclosing the AACS encryption key, but users came back with more posts on the subject. Then, Digg decided that it would leave the posts as is.
There will be debates on prohibitions on circumventing copyright-protection schemes that make it illegal to bypass restrictions wrapped around movies and music, and whether Digg will be charged for violating the DMCA.
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