Free Speech Flag

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Free Speech Flag
Sample 09-F9 protest art, Free Speech Flag by John Marcotte.svg
Use Other
Proportion2:3 or 3:5
AdoptedMay 1, 2007
DesignShades of green, pink, blue and purple stripes, with byte "C0" appended in bottom right corner
Designed byJohn Marcotte

The Free Speech Flag is a symbol of personal liberty used to promote freedom of speech. Designed by artist John Marcotte, the flag and its colors correspond to a cryptographic key which enabled users to copy HD DVDs and Blu-ray Discs. It was created on May 1, 2007, during the AACS encryption key controversy.

Contents

Marcotte was motivated to create the flag after the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Advanced Access Content System Licensing Administrator (AACS LA) began issuing cease and desist letters to websites publishing the key 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 (commonly referred to as 09-F9).

In response to attempts to remove the key from the Internet, netizens publicized the cryptographic key on the news aggregator website Digg.

History

On April 30, 2007, a blogger named "Rudd-O" published the encryption key for HD DVDs and asked readers to share it widely. [1] Knowledge of this numeric key value allowed users to bypass digital rights management (DRM) and copy HD DVDs that previously could not be duplicated. [1] [2] News media reported, and Digg, a news aggregator and social media website, provided a way for users to vote on stories they felt were most newsworthy. [1] [2] [3] Votes by 15,000 Digg users drove an article about the encryption key to the front page of the site. [1] [3]

The Advanced Access Content System (AACS), the organization which controlled access to the HD DVD encryption key, sent a cease and desist letter to Digg on May 1, 2007. [1] [2] [3] [4] In its letter, AACS claimed that by publishing news articles on its website that reported on the encryption key, the website was engaging in illegal activity. [1] [2] [4] Articles by numerous journalists reporting on the news story were posted to Digg. [1] [2] [3] Jay Adelson, the CEO of Digg, announced that the website would abide by the AACS' requests and self-censor articles reporting on the encryption key. [1] [2] [4]

Adelson's decision to self-censor his website caused a backlash from the Digg community. "In trying to make the cracked issue go away", notes Jeremy Goldman in his 2012 book Going Social, "the AACS's letter (and Digg's response) succeeded only in making the story bigger." [2] Digg users made sure, by their votes and online participation, that all front-page stories on Digg were about the encryption key. [1] [2] [4] Digg founder Kevin Rose observed: "The Digg community is one that loves to have their voice heard, and this has been something that struck a chord with them." [2]

After listening to complaints from Digg's community about Adelson's decision to self-censor news stories about the encryption key, Rose wrote a message to his users reversing this decision. [3] He announced that Digg would stop self-censorship and he acknowledged that he understood the message from Digg's members: "After seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you've made it clear ... you'd rather see Digg go down fighting than bow to a bigger company. Effective immediately, we won't delete stories or comments containing the code, and we will deal with whatever the consequences might be." [1] [2] [3]

Design and message

John Marcotte, a writer and editor at the website Badmouth, created the Free Speech Flag with the intent of disseminating the secret HD DVD code on the Internet, publishing it on the website on May 1, 2007. [5] [6] In his initial post announcing his flag, Marcotte criticized how the mere use of numbers had become intellectual property. [6]

"We want to start a movement", Marcotte wrote. "A movement to reclaim personal liberties and decorporatize the laws of our nation." [6] He encouraged online viewers of his work to spread his message throughout the Internet and to freely publicize his work. [6] "To that end we have made a flag, a symbol to show support for personal freedoms. Spread it as far and wide as you can." [6]

Marcotte embedded the secret HD DVD key into the colors of the flag itself, using the flag hex code format colors #09F911 #029D74 #E35BD8 #4156C5 #635688. [6] [7] By appending the byte "C0" to the bottom right corner of the flag, Marcotte implied that the act of publishing a number is "Crime Zero". [6] He originally released the flag "freely" with "rights for people to make similar, derivative works", [6] but later released it into the public domain. [8] [9]

Impact

PlayStation 3 free speech flag, created in honor of the original Free Speech Flag Free-speech-flag-ps3.svg
PlayStation 3 free speech flag, created in honor of the original Free Speech Flag

Soon after it was first published, bloggers publicized the Free Speech Flag, increasing its popularity and disseminating the code within the flag. [11] The flag entered popular culture as Internet users chose creative ways to spread knowledge of the HD DVD encryption key. [7] [12]

Users wore the code emblazoned on T-shirts, added it to poems, integrated the code into the lyrics of hip hop songs, and created music utilizing its numeric values. [7] [12] Musician Keith Burgun composed a song using the code titled "Oh Nine, Eff Nine", and published it on YouTube. [1] [7] [12] The sole lyrics to the song were the numbers of the digital code itself: "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0". [12] [13] "I thought it was a source of comedy that they were trying so futilely to quell the spread of this number," Burgun said. "The ironic thing is, because they tried to quiet it down it’s the most famous number on the Internet." [13]

Matthew Rimmer, senior lecturer at Australian National University, commented upon the legality of the innovative ways Internet users like Marcotte chose to publicize the secret HD DVD code: "I don't think it's necessarily designed to stay within the bounds of the law. It's just a fun way to comment on what's happened. I think that it's designed to show that the law is absurd or ridiculous and should be abolished." [7]

Antonio Ceraso of Pennsylvania State University placed the flag's conception within a larger framework—"the formation of a communal ethos...the 09 F9 tribe"—and posed the question: "Would five striped colors arranged into a flag constitute an anti-circumvention device under the DMCA?" [12]

The flag inspired Jeff Thompson, assistant professor and program director of Visual Art and Technology at the Stevens Institute of Technology, to create a sound file of the AACS encryption key as a melody. [14] After a similar encryption key was cracked for the PlayStation 3 gaming system, a new flag was created by a different user as a tribute to Marcotte's original flag. [10]

See also

Related Research Articles

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High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) is a form of digital copy protection developed by Intel Corporation to prevent copying of digital audio and video content as it travels across connections. Types of connections include DisplayPort (DP), Digital Visual Interface (DVI), and High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI), as well as less popular or now deprecated protocols like Gigabit Video Interface (GVIF) and Unified Display Interface (UDI).

Broadcast encryption is the cryptographic problem of delivering encrypted content over a broadcast channel in such a way that only qualified users can decrypt the content. The challenge arises from the requirement that the set of qualified users can change in each broadcast emission, and therefore revocation of individual users or user groups should be possible using broadcast transmissions, only, and without affecting any remaining users. As efficient revocation is the primary objective of broadcast encryption, solutions are also referred to as revocation schemes.

Below is a timeline of notable events related to cryptography.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">BackupHDDVD</span> AACS decryption software

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Advanced Access Content System</span> Standard for content distribution and digital rights management

The Advanced Access Content System (AACS) is a standard for content distribution and digital rights management, intended to restrict access to and copying of the post-DVD generation of optical discs. The specification was publicly released in April 2005. The standard has been adopted as the access restriction scheme for HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc (BD). It is developed by AACS Licensing Administrator, LLC, a consortium that includes Disney, Intel, Microsoft, Panasonic, Warner Bros., IBM, Toshiba and Sony. AACS has been operating under an "interim agreement" since the final specification has not yet been finalized.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Digg</span> Social media/news aggregator website

Digg is an American news aggregator with a curated front page, aiming to select articles specifically for the Internet audience such as science, trending political issues, and viral Internet issues. It was launched in its current form on July 31, 2012, with support for sharing content to other social platforms such as Twitter and Facebook.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">HD DVD</span> Obsolete optical disc format

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Security of Advanced Access Content System</span>

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The Content Scramble System (CSS) is a digital rights management (DRM) and encryption system employed on many commercially produced DVD-Video discs. CSS utilizes a proprietary 40-bit stream cipher algorithm. The system was introduced around 1996 and was first compromised in 1999.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">AACS encryption key controversy</span> Controversy regarding copyright

A controversy surrounding the AACS cryptographic key arose in April 2007 when the Motion Picture Association of America and the Advanced Access Content System Licensing Administrator, LLC began issuing cease and desist letters to websites publishing a 128-bit (16-byte) number, represented in hexadecimal as 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0, a cryptographic key for HD DVDs and Blu-ray Discs. The letters demanded the immediate removal of the key and any links to it, citing the anti-circumvention provisions of the United States Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

Homebrew software was first run on the PlayStation 3 by a group of hackers under the name "Team Ice" by exploiting a vulnerability in the game Resistance: Fall of Man. Following various other hacks executed from Linux, Sony removed the ability to install another operating system in the 3.21 firmware update. This event caused backlash among the hacker communities, and eventually the group Fail0verflow found a flaw in the generation of encryption keys which they leveraged to restore the ability to install Linux. George Hotz (Geohot), often misattributed as the genesis of homebrew on the PS3, later created the first homebrew signed using the private "metldr" encryption key which he leaked onto the internet. Leaking the key led to Hotz being sued by Sony. The court case was settled out of court, with the result of George Hotz not being able to further reverse engineer the PS3.

DeCSS haiku is a 465-stanza haiku poem written in 2001 by American hacker Seth Schoen as part of the protest action regarding the prosecution of Norwegian programmer Jon Lech Johansen for co-creating the DeCSS software. The poem, written in the spirit of civil disobedience against the DVD Copy Control Association, argues that "code is speech."

A user revolt is a social conflict in which users of a website collectively and openly protest a website host's or administrator's instructions for using the website. Sometimes it happens that the website hosts can control a website's use in certain ways, but the hosts also depend on the users to comply with voluntary social rules in order for the website to operate as the hosts would like. A user revolt occurs when the website users protest against the voluntary social rules of a website, and use the website in a way that is in conflict with the wishes of the website host or administrators.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Li, Charlene; Josh Bernoff (2011). Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies (Expanded and Revised ed.). Harvard Business Review Press. pp. 3–8, 288–289. ISBN   978-1-4221-6198-2. OCLC   172980082.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Goldman, Jeremy (2012). Going Social . Amacom. pp.  126–127. ISBN   978-0-8144-3255-6. OCLC   793973948.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Barlow, Aaron (2007). Blogging America. Praeger. pp.  62–65. ISBN   978-0-275-99872-1. OCLC   191675023.
  4. 1 2 3 4 Jaffe, Joseph (2007-10-19). Join the Conversation. John Wiley & Sons. pp.  90–92. ISBN   978-0-470-13732-1. OCLC   647762840.
  5. ↑ Marcotte, John (2014). "Badmouth Crew". Badmouth. Archived from the original on 30 September 2014. Retrieved October 31, 2015.
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Marcotte, John (May 1, 2007). "Free Speech Flag". Badmouth.net. Archived from the original on May 4, 2007. Retrieved September 25, 2015.
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 Bushell-embling, Dylan (May 15, 2007). "Digg finds the key is safety in numbers". Brisbane Times . Archived from the original on September 24, 2015. Retrieved September 24, 2015.
  8. ↑ Crofton, Isaak (2015). Crypto Anarchy. Lulu Enterprises Incorporated. p. 160. ISBN   978-1-329-05980-1.
  9. ↑ Kiyuna, A.; L. Conyers (2015). Cyberwarfare Sourcebook. Lulu.com. p. 291. ISBN   978-1-329-06394-5.
  10. 1 2 S, Ben (March 1, 2011). "46 DC EA D3 17 FE 45 D8 09 23 EB 97 E4 95 64 10 D4 CD B2 C2". Yale Law & Technology. Yale University. Archived from the original on March 10, 2011. Retrieved September 24, 2015. A 'PS3 Flag', an homage to its predecessor, the 'Free Speech Flag'
  11. ↑ Sheffield, Jessica (2010). Weblogs and Activism: A Social Movement Perspective on the Blogosphere (Ph.D.). Pennsylvania State University. p. 16. ISBN   9781124487861. OCLC   707492881. Archived from the original on March 15, 2016. Retrieved October 29, 2010. (PDF Archived 2016-03-04 at the Wayback Machine )
  12. 1 2 3 4 5 Ceraso, Antonio (2009). Crowd Technologies: Rhetoric and Power in Peer Production Discourse (Ph.D.). Pennsylvania State University. pp. 56, 97. ISBN   9781109375428. OCLC   476852578. Archived from the original on March 4, 2016. Retrieved October 29, 2015. (PDF Archived 2024-07-01 at the Wayback Machine )
  13. 1 2 Stone, Brad (May 3, 2007). "In Web Uproar, Antipiracy Code Spreads Wildly". The New York Times . Archived from the original on December 11, 2008. Retrieved October 29, 2015.
  14. ↑ Thompson, Jeff (August 13, 2011). "AACS encryption key". Jeff Thompson, Assistant Professor and Program Director of Visual Art & Technology at the Stevens Institute of Technology. Archived from the original on September 24, 2015. Retrieved September 24, 2015. An example of this is the so-called 'Free Speech Flag', seen above.

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