It's OK everyone ... I am a nerd, which by Jesse Jackson rules, allows me to call other people nerds.

There were riots in the streets yesterday over illegal immigration, and riots online over illegal numbers. The illegal numbers in question are the 16 hexadecimal numbers that make up the key necessary to decrypt a DVD movie encrypted with the new AACS encryption scheme.

What happened at first, was that a couple bloggers posted stories to the social networking site Digg.com that included the illegal digits. After receiving several "diggs" the stories started showing up on the front page of Digg. At some point yesterday, the AACS sent DMCA takedown notices to Digg, Google, and various other blogs. Over at Digg, they decided to start removing the offending posts, and even posted an apology in their blog. Then all hell broke loose.

So many people were digging stories about the key, that every story on the front page was about the key. A full-scale nerd revolt erupted, and nothing could stop the flow of stories on Digg about the key, as hard as they tried. Eventually, the admins at Digg gave up, and resigned themselves to suffer the consequences.

For now, it appears as if the revolt is over, and the nerds won. With so much exposure, I can't even imagine how the AACS will react. According to an article at Slashdot, as of last night, there were over 283,000 hits within Google for the key itself. Those lawyers are going to be working overtime.

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin is now covering the story, and has included some excellent insight from Bryan Peterson.