Digg gets 0wn3d by its own Community

Posted by Miles Evans

Forget about what I was blathering about yesterday over the autodigg hack. What happened shortly after I posted that was much crazier. As it turns out the HD DVD cypher was cracked and posted on the internet recently, much as it was for the original DVD back in 2001 when Jon Johansen (DVD Jon) released DeCSS.

Back in 2000 when the MPAA was using their powers to get DeCSS removed from websites like 2600, hackcanada and others, a grass roots campaign was launched for DRM haters everywhere to host the files on their own servers and spread the word. This worked except that the MPAA used the DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) to successfully sue 2600 magazine, and offend everyone with any common sense the world over. The MPAA won and a movement was born.

This time around it's a bit more interesting as you can see from the screenshot below:

Props to Kevin Rose for having this to say late yesterday:

"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."

Now we all know Kevin Rose has way more dollars and media pull than Emmanuel Goldstein (Owner of 2600) had then. Emmanuel had real big balls to try and fight back then. Kevin's not a dumb guy and this decision to not stop the community from posting the HD DVD cypher is going to only improve his golden boystatus. Call me crazy but the way I see it is that Kevin really had no choice in the matter as everyone proved yesterday. Am I wrong?

I guess we can all applaud Kevin and digg for biting the hand(s) that feed them. I think the only problem digg is going to have as their future unfolds is that they have a whole lotta hungry hands to keep happy.

If you're interested Ars has a great write-up on the history of DRM.

Posted May 02, 2007 at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Trackback URL | Del.icio.us | DIGG!