I write software in my spare time, and at work. It's what I do. To a degree, it's how I make a living. When my shutdown tool ShutOff 2000 was cracked, I didn't bother writing a new encryption algorithm. I realised that it would take only 20 minutes to crack it again, compared to the hours it would take to write. Sure, it's potential lost income, but the basic good of people paying me money to use it has (if you'll pardon the pun) paid off.

DRM will be cracked, regardless of the encryption method used. The whole notion of copy protection is ridiculous to the extreme. Enforcing laws that prevent me from using media I've bought, for personal use, is against my basic human rights.

The MPAA and RIAA in America are acting above the law by forcing websites to shut down over a string of hexadecimal numbers that, by all reasonable rights, cannot be copyrighted. A Slashdot reader, in one response to this debacle, stated that these numbers are merely a representation of a key.

By all means, protect your work (just as I did), but don't be surprised when someone cracks it, and then someone else (and it's the "someone else" being targeted here in this gag order) posts a string of numbers on a website. It cannot be stopped. If information is going to get out, 1.1 billion people are going to find a way.

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