Someone cracked HD-DVD, finding the particular hex key used to defeat the encryption. When the key was posted on Digg they took it down — presumably in response to a lawsuit or a cease and desist from the MPAA. In response Digg’s users posted tons of stories all linking to or containing the key (more).

While I fully believe that content owners should be able to make money from their content, I think that the steps they’ve taken to restrict the use of the content is absurd. Very recently a subset of the music on the iTunes Store was made available at higher quality and without DRM. That’s a huge step forward, in my opinion.

To the RIAA/MPAA: People don’t want to be pirates, they want convenience — and DRM is not convenient. Yes, you will lose some sales to piracy, but your real customers will appreciate not being treated as criminals.

Oh, and here’s the key: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0. If you’d like to protest the MPAA’s stupidity in trying to control this key and show your support for Digg, who is now going to fight it, I suggest you put the code somewhere. Let’s make it ubiquitous! I’m using it as my AIM status message.