Saint Paul, Minnesota
May 1, 2001

Using spare computing cycles on a 300 mhz K6 (left over from distributed.net) to amplify underwhelm.org's unpatented (unpatent pending) neural network and Underficial Intelligence Engine, we made a startling discovery.

Jack Valenti, demonstrating the powers of his superior intellect and dashing good looks, encoded the source of css_descramble directly into the deposition he gave on June 6, 2000 for the MPAA v. 2600 trial in New York. We can only speculate about his purpose for this exercise. Maybe he was upset about the case in California superior court where the DVDCCA insisted the court claim personal jurisdiction over everyone on the planet that has published their "trade secret" CSS, and had publicly available court documents retroactively sealed. Maybe he is a closet fan of 2600 magazine, and wanted to demonstrate his skills of steganography to the hacker world (p433r 41m!). Perhaps it is his own demonstration that everything is an encoding of anything else, and the only thing distinguishing them is an appropriate algorithm.

It took tens of person hours, untold CPU cycles, and a team of experts to discover the key that laid plain the algorithm that revealed the code that unlocks the keys to unlock your favorite dvds, like "My Giant" and "Lethal Weapon 4," that Mr. Valenti  hid in plain sound in the audio transcript.

Utilizing the discovered algorithm on the entire deposition unmasked a "shadow deposition" that suggests how incomplete our understanding is of Mr. Valenti's abilities to manipulate time, the english language and human minds weaker than his own, only that those same abilities make him singularly well-suited for the movie business in the early 21st century.

Regardless of his motives and yet unrevealed additional powers (invulnerability? superhuman strength? knowledge of a multilevel marketing system that really works?), he clearly succeeded in producing a version of the CSS descrambling algorithm that is both artfully disguised and permanently, publicly available. Kudos to you, Mr. Valenti, and keep fighting the good fight.

Underwhelm.org does not have the resources to formally delineate and publish the algorithm needed to reproduce the encoded "shadow deposition;" the rigors and expense exceed our limits. We make available the audio of the decoded deposition and a transcript. Anyone interested in reproducing our work is welcome to, or for a six-month stipend, we will consider preparing a formal work-up of the algorithm.

Underwhelm.org certifies that the only ingredients to the "shadow deposition" are the audio to Jack Valenti's June 6, 2000 deposition, the domain of mathematics, and Mr. Valenti's inspiration and deft use of his likely extraterrestrial brain.

Currently, you can download the file as an mp3. A transcript will be available soon, and other file formats may follow at underwhelm.org.