Digg continues to risk a lawsuit from the AACS-LA by keeping the HD content hacking code up for over five days. The offending hex code appearing in the title of a blog post by Kevin Rose and has had over thirty six thousand diggs. But the real story transcends Digg and the AACS-LA’s cease and desist order. Digg and Kevin Rose have stood up for a principle and in doing so it looks like Web 2.0 and Internet media might have crossed an important milestone.
AACS – LA stands for Advanced Access Content System - Licensing Administrator. This is the legal body doing the work for the encryption system encoded into HD content on high def disks such as HD DVD or Blu-ray. The legal leg the AACS stands upon to send out cease and desist orders or threaten litigation is the same used by the RIAA or MPAA. It’s the DMCA, a piece of legislation that has been abused in the last several years.
The DMCA arrived in 1998 as a way to bring copyright laws into the digital age. But it’s being used to redraw the lines between copyright infringement and private property. Anyone tasked with moving their iTunes collection to a new computer knows the issue all too well. Groups like the RIAA and MPAA. Now it’s being used as a tool to stamp out competitors of broadcast radio. The CRB (Copyright Royalty Board) has approved a new plan dreamed up by the RIAA that will sink Internet radio.
