On 5/2/07, Philippe Beaudette philippebeaudette@gmail.com wrote:
Agreed - in fact, I would go so far as to say that very few legitimate reporting organizations are going to print the key in their newspaper, encyclopedia, radio story, or magazine story. They're going to say that the key was disclosed, but they're not going to say what it is.
I think that's a good model for us to go by.
Actually, it was openly published in a number of columns and some of the mainline news stories about the discovery.
The law here is legitimately somewhat muddled. It may turn out to be legal, but there's also no clear evidence that the MPAA are wrong. The law was written in a way that's explicit for just about everything else, but may or may not cover a number that happens to be a key for such decoders.
I think that the number is of questionable notability. 99.9999% of the people who see it aren't going to go code up a DVD player. For anyone else, it's purely a trivial point. That it exists, was findable, and is now public is notable. We can say all that (and the articles do, now) without listing the actual number.
I separately do morally support the publication; but I don't see it as something Wikipedia can or should get involved in.