Why banning numbers is like playing god

It's been a strange few days especially with regard to the AACS. These are the guys that designed the HD-DVD copy protection and who have maintained that the scheme is "uncrackable". Well folks if you know any hackers then chances are you also know that NOTHING is uncrackable, and when you issue words like that your only encouraging the few, the proud and the geeky from rendering a solution.

So anyway at some point on Wednesday a few folks decided to publish a now well known AACS decryption key to the social news site Digg. Shortly after receiving a "takedown" notice from the AACS the offending content was removed. However the Digg user community didn't appreciate the censorship and the site was soon flooded with many duplications of the code. Eventually the website's operators backtracked on the censorship and allowed the stories to remain.

After reading the continuous commentary for a few days I'm inclined to agree with those that believe that forced take downs of an encryption key is tantamount to censorship. Despite what this code can be used for all it represents is simply a number, albeit expressed as an alphanumeric hex value. Trying to censor the code or claiming that it is intellectual property is the same as saying that a person owns the number.

And that's precisely the problem. A person can't own a number regardless of what it represents. I think that the public tends to gloss over this fact and view the information solely in the context of it's application for breaking copy protection. Aside from the obvious ownership details it is also equally as hard enforce take down policy, let alone attempt to litigate against any republishing of the code.

In short attempting to stamp out this number is like trying to declare war on gravity. It's simply part of the universe and exists everywhere we look. Trying to say that you own it or that you can exert control over it is to claim that you are god of the known universe. And I for one believe that this is simply not the case for the AACS and the companies they represent.