Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking

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    $_=‘while(read+STDIN,$_,2048){$a=29;$b=73;$c=142;$t=255;@t=map{$_%16or$t^=$c^=($m=(11,10,116,100,11,122,20,100)[$_/16%8])&110;$t^=(72,@z=(64,72,$a^=12*($_%162?0:$m&17)),$b^=$_%64?12:0,@z)[$_%8]}(16..271);if((@a=unx”C*”,$_)[20]&48){$h=5;$_=unxb24,join”“,@b=map{xB8,unxb8,chr($_^$a[—$h+84])}@ARGV;s/ [ … ] $/1$&/;$d=unxV,xb25,$_;$e=256|(ord$b[4])<<9|ord$b[3];$d=$d>>8^($f=$t&($d>>12^$d>>4^$d^$d/8))<<17,$e=$e>>8^($t&($g=($q=$e>>14&7^$e)^$q*8^$q<<6))<<9,$_=$t[$_]^(($h>>=8)+=$f+(~$g&$t))for@a[128..$#a]}print+x”C*”,@a}’;s/x/pack+/g;eval
    If Perl allows programmers to write code more poetically (in this case, being terse) than other computer languages, Schoen took up the challenge of publishing a bona fide poem in the form of an epic haiku—456 individual stanzas written over the course of just a few days. Schoen, who was inspired by the clever re-creations of DeCSS compiled in the gallery, wrote the poem to deliver a stark and clear political message. The author asserts that source code is not a metaphor or similar to expression but rather
is
expression, and he makes this point by re-creating the original DeCSS program as a poem. This bit of poetry is now well known among hackers as an exemplary hack for displaying the cleverness that hackers collectively value. Schoen opens his poem by thanking Touretzky and then moves immediately to abandon his “exclusive rights” clause of the copyright statute, indexing the direct influence of F/OSS licensing.
    How to Decrypt a DVD: In Haiku Form
    (Thanks, Prof. D. S. T.)
    (I abandon my
    exclusive rights to make or
    perform copies of
    this work, U. S. Code
    Title Seventeen, section
    One Hundred and Six.)
    Muse! When we learned to
    count, little did we know all
    the things we could do
    some day by shuffling
    those numbers: Pythagoras
    said “All is number”
    long before he saw
    computers and their effects,
    or what they could do
    by computation,
    naive and mechanical
    fast arithmetic.
    It changed the world, it
    changed our consciousness and lives
    to have such fast math
    available to
    us and anyone who cared
    to learn programming.
    Now help me, Muse, for
    I wish to tell a piece of
    controversial math,
    for which the lawyers
    of DVD CCA
    don’t forbear to sue:
    that they alone should
    know or have the right to teach
    these skills and these rules.
    (Do they understand
    the content, or is it just
    the effects they see?)
    And all mathematics
    is full of stories (just read
    Eric Temple Bell);
    and CSS is
    no exception to this rule.
    Sing, Muse, decryption
    once secret, as all
    knowledge, once unknown: how to
    decrypt DVDs.
    Here, the author first frames the value of programming in terms of mathematics along with its antagonists in the entertainment industry, intellectual property statutes, lawyers, and judges—all of which use software without recognizing, much less truly understanding, the embedded creative labor and expressive value. This critique is made explicit through a question: “Do they understand the content, or is it just the effects they see?” The author then launches into a long mathematical description of the forbidden CSS code represented in DeCSS. The expert explains the “player key” of CSS, which is the proprietary piece that enacts the access control measures:
    So this number is
    once again, the player key:
    (trade secret haiku?)
    Eighty-one; and then
    one hundred three—two times; then
    two hundred (less three)
    Two hundred and twenty
    four; and last (of course not least)
    the humble zero
    The writer states the access control mathematically, but using words. From these lines alone a proficient enough programmer can deduce the encryption key. Thus the poem makes a similar point to the one made in the amicus brief—namely, that “at root, computer code is nothing more than text, which, like any other text, is a form of speech. The Court may not know the meaning of the Visual BASIC or Perl texts [ … ] but the Court can recognize that the code is text.” 19
    The author then conveys that many F/OSS programmers conceive of their craft as technically precise (and so functional) yet fundamentally expressive, and as a result, worthy of free speech protection. In formally comparing code to poetry in the medium of a poem, Schoen displays a playful form of clever and recursive rhetoric valued among hackers; he also articulates both the meaning of the First Amendment and software to a general public:
    We write precisely
    since such is our