The social networking/bookmarking site Digg.com, founded by ex-TechTV anchor Kevin Rose and crew, has currently been completely overrun by its own users after it was discovered that the moderators were deleting or resetting votes on any topic that had a special key, or string of letters and numbers, in the story.
The key in question is the exact programming string needed to defeat the copy protection in the brand new HD-DVD format. This comes as a major blow to the supporters of the format, as it is the primary security on place for every single HD-DVD that gets released. The copy protection being broken may even place its competitor, BlueRay, as the winner of the next-gen home video market.
What happened was this: A user submitted a story to Digg.com that had the exact string in the title of the submitted post (and no, i’m not going to tell you what it is–I don’t want to be sued or have my blog taken down) and the moderators deleted the topic. The user submitted it again, and again it was deleted. Soon more than one user was submitting the topic. As of 12:47am 5/2/2007, every single post on the front page of Digg.com has the number in it in some form or fashion. In short, the entire user base of Digg revolted.
There’s now a song, a CafePress store, and over 250,000 registered domain names with variations of the numbers. Digg.com founder Kevin Rose finally gave up, and in this post he explains why:
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.
On one hand, I absolutely support people who push the boundaries of censorship, and on a heavy social site like Digg.com, bowing to corporate pressure and alienating your users is not the way to go. On the other, I don’t exactly support the release of the code and what it implies, as this is going to affect a lot of people connected with the supporters of the format.
In the end, all I can do is tell other people about it and let them make their own decisions.
