HD-DVDs are protected using a system known as AACS. In order for someone to bypass AACS and make a copy of a disc, a 16 digit hexidecimal code must be first known.

When the code was first discovered, it was posted on Digg. It was quickly removed by the Digg staff, which very quickly caused a huge revolt. Users posted the number hundreds of times on Digg, while the Digg staff kept trying to delete those entries as quickly as they could.

As a result of them trying to keep the number quiet, it became huge. As of right now there are 857,000 pages in Google with the number, along with a few domain names and even a song about it.

09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0

In the spring of 2003, 15,000 internal e-mails from Diebold were leaked onto the internet.  The e-mails largely showed the concern that the company had over the security of their own voting machines.

Abusing the power of the DMCA, Diebold sent cease-and-desist letters to every site that had posted the e-mails.  Two college students, Nelson Pavlosky and Luke Smith of Swarthmore College, knew better.  They knew that Diebold was not within their rights to demand that the information be removed, so they sued Diebold for abusing copyright law.

The suit drew a ton of media attention and a few days later Diebold announced that they would not try to stop anyone else from publishing the messages.