I just wanted to explain what some of you have been noticing around some stories
that have been submitted to Digg on the HD DVD encryption key being
cracked.
This has all come up in the past 24 hours, mostly connected to the
HD-DVD hack that has been circulating online, having been posted to Digg as well
as numerous other popular news and information websites. We’ve been notified by
the owners of this intellectual property that they believe the posting of the
encryption key infringes their intellectual property rights. In order to respect
these rights and to comply with the law, we have removed postings of the key
that have been brought to our attention.
A full on prison riot seems to have taken place over at Digg. Digg is a web 2.0 company that allows its users to add stories to its list, and the vote them up or down the list. The riot began with a posting that held the code for hacking DVD files. The site was contacted by a lawyer for the company whose rights had been violated and the content was taken down. The riot started as more and more posts of the code were posted and voted to the top, and other posts were made calling the operator of the site of censorship.
In the end it appears that the mob one this round, and the rule of law has lost for the day. I don't know what this will mean for the history of Digg. Really the code will be re-written in a couple days, but there are a number of ways this could hurt the web site. It could either be purchased by a larger company and brought to compliance or out competed by a company backed by industry.
We had to decide whether to remove stories containing a single code based
on a cease and desist declaration. We had to make a call, and in our desire to
avoid a scenario where Digg would be interrupted or shut down, we decided to
comply and remove the stories with the code.
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.
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