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May 2, 2007
The Day Digg Died?
Wow, this has got to hurt a little. People were a little miffed over at Digg last night, to say the least. Although, its interesting to see the power of the internet when people pull together in the same direction. Yes, piracy is bad but so is censorship. In truth, this number has been around the Internet for months so really, what's the big deal and why try to ban it now? Besides, its just a number and you probably wouldn't know what to do with it if you saw it anyway. However, if you're still curious, here's what all the fuss is about: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 . That's it. Pretty impressive, isn't it?
I have to wonder if Digg will completely recover from the backlash, even if honcho Kevin Rose is now talking tough and vowing to fight for his user's rights and against censorship. I don't know exactly what will happen (who can?) but it kinda seems like a case of too little, too late -- at least where die-hard Digg users are concerned. I can't blame someone for wanting to ensure his company survives, but Rose had to at least have some idea that this (and more) would not go over well with his very vocal community of users.
Rose is a smart guy who's come a long way since I met him on the set of The Screen Savers several years ago. As Digg became more important to the Internet, Rose certainly seemed to have a good instinct for what the "cool kids" are into these days. I guess those instincts failed him this time. Fortunately, some users are beginning to call for calm and are ready to move on and get back to the way things were. But is that even possible now? It happened and like it or not, Digg first decided to censor content and then, after a huge outcry from users, changed tactics and reversed itself vowing to "fight to the end." Like many embarrassing and unfortunate things on the Internet, Digg's decision to remove posts and comments and the consequences of that decision is out there for all to see -- and it always will be.
It's just something Rose and his fellow Digg owners are going to have to live with. Fortunately, even when a "scandal" is fresh and everyone is in an uproar, the Internet often has a short memory and soon another "scandal" will rise up and take its place angering and motivating people to action. I like Rose and Digg and feel a little sorry for him and the rest of the company and hope this really does blow over. I would hate to see a good sight go down due to one or two unfortunate decisions. Now we just need something to take Digg users minds off this current situation. Where's a good upskirt picture of Britney Spears or Lindsay Lohan when you really need one?
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Also note that Digg was banning users that only questioned the censorship. They didn't even post the HD-DVD code yet STILL got banned. It's been known to VERY few users that digg often bans any user that shows public dissent. No one ever noticed because the majority thought it was a lie. Digg was long overdue for this thrashing. Note that in Jay and Kevin's posts, they still REFUSE to acknowledge that they banned those users. Lying through omission is still lying.
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They had to abide by DMCA thanks to Al Gore and the fact that nobody in the FCC was truly interested in revising critical parts of it in recent years despite the blowing up of p2p and the social Web. So while Digg was going by their official policy, without which they never would have gotten the funding they have gotten, it's surprising that this is the first such occurrence and it's ironic that they happen to have the relationship with HDDVD to begin with.
What Kevin Rose should do is be a real revolutionary and work towards change in Internet and copyright policy. After all, copyright is as backward as it gets -- everything on the Web (including this comment) is copyrighted by default and one must be proactive (i.e. placing Creative Commons badge on their work or giving permission) to legally share / spread the content virally. This policy must be reversed -- it is even more backwards that everyone seems to follow the Google/YouTube policy of violating b.s. copyright laws until receiving takedown request.
www.eff.org/IP/DMCA/
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The way Digg nixed the articles linking to the code for pirating HD-DVDs had NOTHING to do with "linking to illegal content." The cat's out of the bag on that one.
It had everything to do with the fact that HD-DVD is an advertiser on Digg, a fact that Digg conveniently elided in its explanations of why it initially tried to remove articles linking to the code.
Like many others, this pissed me off as a basic freedom of speech issue, and I automatically Dugg every article with the illicit code. When I checked late last night, the Digg home page was packed with maybe 2 dozen article all sharing the code. :)