LAist: The Day Digg Died?

I Aint Diggin' It

Wed, 02 May 2007 09:46:18 -0800

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. :)

andy

Wed, 02 May 2007 08:54:35 -0800

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/

Lee

Wed, 02 May 2007 08:13:16 -0800

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.