It was the first tweet I received this morning, from Joi.
You may have noticed it too, as (at the moment) google reports 21,900 results for this phrase.
What makes this particular string of hexadecimal characters so viral is that it is the HD-DVD processing key for most movies released so far, published on the net by the AACS (Advanced Access Content System) a couple of days ago by mistake.
Most interesting, and something you may or may not be aware of, is that yesterday under pressure from the MPAA, Digg admins removed the original articles and then Digg users started rebelling in protest, burying normal stories, while digging up the HD DVD stories, so much so that all of the stories in Digg’s homepage yesterday were related to the DVD key story… have a look at Laughing Squid for the whole story.
update: By the way, this reply from Kevin Rose is the kind of suicidal, totally irrational, passionate positions that I can’t help but love and support with all myself:
But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you’ve made it clear. You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be.
If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.
Digg on,
Kevin