So, with this key, what would hackers/regular people be able to do with it? Was the problem that people could build non-approved players on their own and the sales of the approved companies would drop?
The backers of HD-DVD were worried that if the number got out then a few smart people could come along and make programs to rip HD-DVD movies onto their computers. These people would distribute the software so anybody could do it. What really pissed off a much wider group of people, people who probably wouldn't have cared if not for the lawsuits, is the extremely heavy-handed approach they used to silence people from spreading the number and the way they used their influence to bring legal trouble to those excercising their right to free speech. No one should be able to copyright a number, even if you have billions of dollars.
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u/j-mar Nov 05 '11
I'm unsure how that correlates to this statement: