This Number Is Illegal - And You Can’t Post It Online

Believe it or not, there is a number which is actually illegal - and which can result in legal letters if you even post it online.

This isn’t just in theory, either - multiple websites faced legal threats for posting the 128-bit number in the past.

As YouTube channel Wendover Productions explains this week, the number is a cryptographic key – which could be used to decode DVDs, and which circulated widely among people in 2007.

It’s illegal because it allows people to get round copyright protection systems – and America’s MPAA took this very seriously (at least for a while).

Wendover Productions said, ‘In 1998, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act was passed in the US, making it illegal to get around copyright protection systems.

‘People were breaking the law just by being in possession of this number – an easily findable prime.’

In 2007, America’s Motion Picture Association of America fired out multiple cease and desist notices to websites hosting the number.

This led, of course, to T-shirts being printed with it on – and a huge number of sites deliberately flouting the law.

Nowadays, of course, it’s debatable whether anyone cares about DVD – and the law has been flouted so many times it’s doubtful whether it will ever be enforced again.