Digg.com has been absolutely flooded with stories including the HEX key code that can be used to unlock HD-DVD dvd’s after the first few stories reporting it were deleted and some users had their accounts banned. The ways these crazy nerds have thought to include it in their stories have been vast and creative:
- One writer mentioned a piece of the IPv6 address space that has not yet been allocated which was the key
- Another invited a user named after the key to join digg (thus putting it on the frontpage
- Yet another has a new avatar based on the code
- Finally you can purchase T-Shirts with the code on them
At some point the entire frontpage of Digg was these stories.
On the face of it this event is not that interesting. DMCA is a piece of draconian legislation but Digg.com must still abide by the laws and just because nerds don’t believe in the laws doesn’t mean they are not still enforceable. What does make this event cool is that it looks like the first Web 2.0 revolution and I believe has actually proved that Digg.com in its current form is actually created and controlled by the people. Many thousands of users dugg stories about the HD-DVD hex code and banning all of them now is impossible.
Perhaps the new test for any Web 2.0 community you join should be what checks and balances exist that mean that this community will remain community driven.
Update: Digg.com has just gone down. Keep on watching and we’ll see how they cope with their user revolt.
Update: Kevin Rose posts his comments. Full respect to the man. If he doesn’t want this fight I think he shouldn’t have to fight it to be honest, on the other than deleting user accounts for contributing and breaking a rather bizarre piece of legislation is almost certainly wrong. I was hoping that digg would take a “we just run the servers, you write the content” kind of approach and leave the users liable for what they write. Viva Digg nice move.