[WORDPRESS HASHCASH] The poster sent us ‘0 which is not a hashcash value.

John, Denis — Right. AACS doesn’t really claim to “own” a number; AACS claims a legal right over the meaning of a number. The relevant precedent (the Reimerdes case), however, mostly rejects the idea of a First Amendment defense protecting a “protest” here, at least so far as the claim is made against the intermediary that intentionally distributed that meaning, rather than against the individual user.

Scotty — Apples and oranges. The DMCA isn’t about trade secrets. Somewhat paradoxically, the DMCA offers protection against distribution of certain circumvention technology, even if that circumvention technology is well-known. AACS may or may not be a trade secret. Even if its trade secret status is lost, the DMCA claim is still potentially valid. Separately, does the fact that the short integer has been revoked mean that the DMCA claim vanishes, too? (The legal question would be this: Does the revoked short integer lose its status as “a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work”?) Perhaps, at least as to people who are currently republishing the number, and perhaps also as to people who republished the number following revocation. To my knowledge, however, there is no legal precedent applicable to that question.

The short integer in question here has many common shared uses with other commercial and non-commerical computer software systems. The DMCA appears to grant an exemption for such cases.

The AACS-LA previously revoked the short integer in question. They can not argue that Digg users caused or contributed to said revocation. They are now arguing about control over a short integer that they themselves have already conceded as a lost cause.

In any case, does the DMCA continue to protect revoked short integers that are by the design of the protection system now supposed to stop working?

In addition, apparently the cause of the disclosure of the AACS-LA’s use for the short integer in question was lack of reasonable measures to protect the short integer by an AACS-LA licensee.

Apparently the short integer was left out in public memory on millions of personal computers and some number of owners whom were inspecting the contents of their personal computers memory stumbled upon the unprotected short integer.

Is it not incumbent upon those wishing to maintain secret ownership, as in trade secrets, to take reasonable efforts to secure those items from public disclosure? And having been shown to have not taken reasonable care with their secrets do they not lose any claim to proprietary ownership of them?

What level of lack of protection of their proprietary secrets does the DMCA provide a shield to? Can the AACS-LA publish the new short integer they have selected and sit back and expect the DMCA provisions to protect them? If not, did they provide sufficient protection in the case of the now revoked short integer?