Digg Dugg
I'm browsing through the SA Forums while watching some Futurama reruns, and I come across this thread about something on Digg.
Turns out that earlier today, someone cracked the HD-DVD encryption key. The one that was supposed to be super-secure so that movie studios could prevent piracy on HD-DVDs. And like DeCSS for DVDs, someone posted the key online. And it was on Digg. And then Digg removed the story, and banned the user who posted it for violating his terms of service.
And Digg, being a democratic website full of, well, Internet types, revolted. For the last several hours, all the top stories and many comments have included the key. Digg's blog posted an explanation. Any story not containing the key is being buried.
I've not always been impressed with Digg in the past, but witnessing its possible destruction at the hands of its own overly-self-important users is leaving a sour taste in my mouth. Despite its shortcomings, the theory behind Digg is certainly an honorable one. But its users are showing themselves to be little more than a bunch of spoiled children. And I cannot help but think:
Is this the consequence of too much information, that we no longer exercise discretion in the sharing of it?
3 comments:
If Digg is removing the code itself to protect themselves from lawsuits, I can live with that. If Digg is removing even posts that link to the information on other sites, that seems to my mind to be a bit more questionable.
At this point in the chaos, it's hard to tell which is the case--and it might be both.
I'm pretty surprised by the users in this one also. The code wasn't just posted once - it was posted over and over again.
Yesterday, I noticed a ton of stories about it cluttering up my reader coming in from Digg. It's good to hear the guys are at Digg are on top of it - they clearly don't want to be struck down.
Even so, I'll be honest and say that a lot of the stories linked through Digg don't really interest me. Sure the concept is great and some stories are golden but I do sense a "young boy" mentality behind a lot of what's posted.
Just a commentary on the state of the internet and some web 2.0 sites I suppose. Democratic indeed.
Actual the law that protects this hex key string (that law that would open Digg to lawsuits) specifically PROHIBITS linking to sites the point to the location of the information. Once the website owner is made aware of the violation, the DMCA states that the site MUST remove link to the site that links to the offending page AND register the violation with federal authorities.
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