Digg Community Takes No Prisoners
May 2, 2007 by Pablo Palatnik
As most of you Diggers noticed yesterday, a story went up, or a few I believe with the code: 09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0
This is the code for the HD-DVD processing key for almost all movies released so far. It was first published by the AACS (Advanced Access Content System) by mistake! What exactly you can do with this code, im not sure, but it’s a code that will cause some havoc if its out…and it is.
Digg took down the story to avoid any legal troubles with the company but after receiving TONS of emails from DIGGERS about not taking any stories down, after much consideration, Digg decided to not take the stories with those codes down.
Quoting Kevin Rose, “Today was an insane day. And as the founder of Digg, I just wanted to post my thoughts…
In building and shaping the site I’ve always tried to stay as hands on as possible. We’ve always given site moderation (digging/burying) power to the community. Occasionally we step in to remove stories that violate our terms of use (eg. linking to pornography, illegal downloads, racial hate sites, etc.). So today was a difficult day for us. 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.
Digg onâ€
Random Posts
Comments (2)
well, digg users have no more reason to complain — Rose makes it sound like he’s upholding the integrity of the digg system at a high cost, and that digg may be shut down for it — but is that a real possibility? Or just a tactic to make it look like he’s wholeheartedly devoted to the digg community?
I’m not a Digg user–in fact, I found this page through StumbleUpon–but I must say this is pretty cool. Whether or not he’s putting some spin on the situation to make it seem like he is making this decision at a high risk, the fact is that Digg did decide to stick with the community against a cease and desist order that will probably be (if it is not already) backed by the MPAA. That’s alot of clout to be pissing off. Besides, how many other “Web 2.0″ services/websites actually listen to their users when they complain about subjects like this?