So…….I know I’m getting old and alllll BUUUUT– Remember DVDs, those shiny discs that better than VHS but worse than blu ray?…. Netflix made its name off of them? no? Did you know or do you remember that corporations desperately tried locking them down in a pre-streaming era allowing only proprietary usage? It was dumb…… Devices could TECHNICALLY play them but were locked out…. Well what did people do? What people ALWAYS DO hashtag WORKAROUND
Enter the infamous DeCSS code
Back when you didn’t have monthly subscriptions on services and back when people did things just to do them and not everything wasss profit driven there was this tiny program that cracked DVD encryption and accidentally ignited one of the internet’s weirdest free speech battles. I vaguely remember it going down because I was a WEEEE lad, but I remember all the smear campaigning onn the TV.
Hollywood lawyers attempted burying the code through lawsuits and takedowns, arguing publishing it online violated copyright protections and anti-circumvention laws.
Internet nerds responded predictably: by reposting the number everywhere imaginable, because nothing spreads faster online than something companies demand disappears…. (AKA the Streisand Effect) The best part was, when they redid their encryption method entirely…… THEY GOT broken and LEAKED as well, hahahahahahahahaha DIGITAL ANARCHY
Good ole Tit for tat ensues
It became a fun little game, Eventually activists turned the DeCSS key into something even harder to censor, a literal protest banner called the Free Speech Flag. Somebody figured out that the encryption could be translated into color via HEXIDECIMAL aaaaaaaaaaaaand Can’t block COLORS or make them ILLEGAL. It’s clever, It’s genius, It’s rebellious and I love all of those things. Hexadecimal numbers encoded inside colored stripes…. F-YOU hollywood! Double bonus, the protest technically doubles as mathematics.
All of this does beg a good question though: if code is illegal speech, then are numbers themselves suddenly contraband too under copyright law?
Suddenly a boring string of hexadecimal digits became a legendary symbol representing digital rights, hacker creativity, and stubborn internet rebellion. So that’s my wonderful little story about illegal numbers, sticking it to the man, and the never-ending pursuit to give things TO THE PEOPLE! For those who came here and took the time to read this, I have something special for you below. More anarchy (take care everybody). Thanks again for joining me it’s great to get rolling with entries again.