All about a GUID

What's such a big deal for a GUID that every COM programmer is so used to?

What's such a big deal with this particular GUID:
09f91102-9d74-e35b-d841-56c5635688c0

Apparently someone, very touchy organisation like AACS LA causes a storm in Digg when someone rewrote the GUID by removing the separators and posted it on the Internet.

If someone like say AACS LA finds publication of a GUlD offensive, every com programmer should better check their GUID with AACS LA before they publish it in the type library or IDL. I suggest every com programmer just sends e-mail to AACS LM requesting permission to publish the GUID in the IDL.

This is stupid. As Ed Fulton rightly says, no one should be allowed to own an integer - a GUID is just a 128 bit integer!

Would they get upset if these special "AACS offensive" numbers were published in the form of a COM type library?

As Bruce Schneier once said in relation to using DRM to protect digital materials: it is like "making water not wet"

Some one is touchy! If they try to take down this kind of stuff, smart people can write materials carrying double, triple or n-possible meaning to conceal the true meaning or intend. How can anyone police that? The Chinese were doing this centuries ago before computer were even in the vocabulary.