Digg.com Attempts To Suppress HD-DVD Revolt

fieryprophet writes "An astonishing number of stories related to HD-DVD encryption keys have gone missing in action from digg.com, in many cases along with the account of the diggers who submitted them. Diggers are in open revolt against the moderators and are retaliating in clever and inventive ways. At one point, the entire front page comprised only stories that in one way or another were related to the hex number. Digg users quickly pointed to the HD DVD sponsorship of Diggnation, the Digg podcast show. Search digg for HD-DVD song lyrics, coffee mugs, shirts, and more for a small taste of the rebellion." Search Google for a broader picture; at this writing, about 283,000 pages contain the number with hyphens, and just under 10,000 without hyphens. There's a song. Several domain names including variations of the number have been reserved. Update: 05/02 05:44 GMT by J : New blog post from Kevin Rose of Digg to its users: "We hear you."

Comments

I'd like to say...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're one of the endless little "Slashdot is dead, go to digg" trolls that reply to stories every now & again, I (and the rest of slashdot) would like to say: "Fuck You".

Your wonderful little Digg isn't looking so wonderful now - is it?

In comparison to Digg's censorship, slashdot has the hex key as a story tag.

Re:I'd like to say...

[Marcion]

All credit to the song, its quite good actually, I am gonna set it as my ringtone I think.

Who'd have thought, they would use all that Web 2.0 wisdom of the crowds stuff to hide the fact they censor everything.

kdawson, and the old Taco himself, we salute you.

Re:I'd like to say...

[Marcion]

Hello, I can fix it for you. At the back of the computer, there is a socket called the Ethernet socket, pull the wire out and go sit it a dark room. Everything will be fine.

Re:I'd like to say...

[Sancho]

It's pretty crappy, because according to the DMCA, they only have to take down content which they are specifically notified of. There's no way that the MPAA is keeping up with the storm on Digg, so it's got to be the admins being proactive. When you start censoring, you start losing some of the protections that the DMCA affords you. I doubt this will be the end of Digg, but if the MPAA got ballsy enough, they might try to shut the site down, since it's clearly impossible to keep all that user-submitted content off of the front page.

Re:I'd like to say...

[nmb3000]

Well, this is just great! Thanks a lot guys! We thought we'd give this a fair run, see how things went, etc. I think we've been fair, very patient, but after the stunts pulled today I'm afraid we've spoken to our lawyers and we have to pull the plug. You only have yourselves to blame. Thanks for helping us test the system. So long.

- Al Gore

+++AH*$*&*^!NA(*$&!(HDSF....[ NO CARRIER ]

Re:I'd like to say...

[CokoBWare]

I can't stand it when people throw the "terrorist" label around. No matter what the cause, IMHO it's irresponsible. Period. When bombs start going off, then we can start looking at terrorism as a possible motive. Otherwise, forget it.

Let's all refrain from over hyping this more than it needs to be...

Re:I'd like to say...

[Cylix]

In the spirit of a new fad...

Where is your digg now?

Re:I'd like to say...

[thegnu]

I'm the last one to defend the MPAA, but the only reason for sharing this number is so that cheapskates can get free movies. Right?

Not quite. The issue is wrapped up in the temper tantrum the RIAA and MPAA have been throwing for several years now that their distribution model is getting messed up. They have always used strong-arm tactics to manufacture a monopoly in a genre that is replete with passion and creativity--I'm talking about art. Of course, the MPAA and the RIAA don't protect the artist, or protect the consumer. They protect the BUSINESS MODEL. Their argument that if people copy media, it makes it harder to get media, has collapsed in the past few years, and they've started randomly suing people.

In fact, look into how much music we would never get to hear but for the industrious hobbyists and fanatics keeping the original vinyls of their favorite music in pristine condition. There are tons of classic recordings that record labels are sitting on, and if I were any one of those dead artists, I would rise up from my grave and unleash my motherfucking zombie face on those cocksuckers. It's unfair.

So, to the conclusion. The encryption keeps people from making backups of their movies. HD-DVDs are not archival quality, I'm betting, and I WILL NOT replace my fucking media at a "reasonable price" (retail, according to the MPAA and RIAA). When you share information that has a fair use, and you get threatened with legal action by a corporate behemoth, sometimes people rise up and defend you. If reason, logic, pleading, conscience, legal action, and appealing to their better nature have failed, why not try the million flies in the ointment method?

Oh, but if you copy an album, the artist doesn't get his 80 cents.

PS: It still fucks me off that the RIAA is trying to claim ownership of the fucking royalties to my music. Really.

Re:I'd like to say...

[chebucto]

Yes, but:

Slashdot is better than digg post-popularity. The only two clear incidents of censorship on slashdot that I remember - the scientology posts that were deleted, and the thread about story moderation - are both quite exceptional; the scientology censorship was done with as much publicity and openeness as could be expected, and the story-moderation censorship was (presumably) done by a now-disbanded and dishonoured editor (Michael Sims, 'Nazi Editor').

The point being: Slashdot has retained much or all of its independence; it survived the surge of popularity only to be bought up by a - as far as I can tell - benign corporate overlord, losing none of its independence and none of its verve (as much as the latter may seem to be lacking).

Digg, meanwhile, seems to be a short-lived exercise in user-defined content that has devolved into a juvenile comment squad and an editorship that is apparently willing to practice censorship for the basest of reasons.

Re:I'd like to say...

[Anonymous Coward]

I also gave Digg a try when it first came out, and what ruined it for me was the obvious lack of maturity. For example, right now the front page of Digg is completely full of "OMFGZ!!111! DIGG PWNED" articles.

The lack of maturity also lets a lot of articles that aren't really interesting get to the front page. What's "new" or interesting for a 13 year old isn't usually new or interesting for everyone else.

To make it worse, when I tried it again a few months ago they had modified the comment moderation system a bit, and people who went against the group-think were heavily modded down, regardless of if they were correct. On Digg you can say "The sky is blue", link to pictures, and have a dozen references, and still get modded down if the "group" says the sky is green.

It's like all the bad of Slashdot, but an order of magnitude worse. All for the slight possibility of seeing a rare interesting article before it reaches Slashdot. No thanks.

Re:I'd like to say...

[Score Whore]

Nope, sorry, the results tantrum over the troll post is still in place. I know because I don't get mod points.

Re:I'd like to say...

[Sancho]

Right, but this isn't copyrighting. This is a number used in circumvention of "effective copy controls." Lots of people have made this mistake in web publications.

Of course, you can also argue that a DVD contains one really, really long number, and thus should not be copyrightable. I tell those people that they're full of shit and move on.

Re:I'd like to say...

[mrchaotica]

This is a number used in circumvention of "effective copy controls."

No, this is just a number. Only a number. To use something to circumvent copy controls it has to have functions or methods associated with it (e.g. be executable computer code). This shouldn't qualify.

Re:I'd like to say...

[geminidomino]

No, "cyber-terrorism" is not terrorism. It's a politico-speak term coined as part of a power-grab to rationalize more invasive methods of investigating internet-based crimes.

In fact, calling it a DDOS is disingenuous at best. Digg's entire concept is centered around user-posted content. The problem they have now is that their users are at odds with thier corporate overlords, and they picked thier side. It's not a DDOS. At worst, it's teenage "information wants to be free" mob-wankery. Digg invited this conflict with thier business model. Hardly an "innocent bystander."

Just about the only thing you got right is that they are accomplishing nothing, but the rest of your mealy-mouthed double-speak is pure bullshit.

Re:I'd like to say...

[wordsthatendinq]

it's late and i might be saying something really obvious... but i've convinced myself that slashdot is better because it has been around for so long. the user base has mostly been around for very long and is familiar with the system as well as what possibilities exist to exploit and troll it. ie, it is stable and i always know what i'm getting.

i don't think digg will forever be a forum for immature posts, but it is still young and what we see now may not be its equilibrium state. though, i sure wouldn't mind if its homepage were always as hilarious as it is right now.

Re:I'd like to say...

[TheoMurpse]

done by a now-disbanded and dishonoured editor (Michael Sims, 'Nazi Editor')

I'm glad this has finally been brought up, because it's been bugging me -- I never saw an announcement on /. about his departure. I just noticed one day that he hadn't posted any stories in a while. I wondered about whether the Censorware stuff caught up with him finally.

Google turns up nothing except for obvious fake explanations of what happened involving multiple acts of sodomy and a few members of the Free Software Foundation :/

Wikipedia doesn't have anything either. Can someone just tell me what the heck happened?

Re:I'd like to say...

[Spikeles]

Ah, more people who don't read articles or do research.. Google was indeed sent a cease and desist letter and can be found here ( dated April 17, 2007 )

Re:I'd like to say...

[drix]

You know, this is not the first time I have heard someone say something to the effect of, "do whatever you want in your bedroom, but you'd better not suck someone's cock on my lawn/porch/dinner table/cul-de-sac." Who are these gay suburban exhibitionists you people are so afraid of? The only time I ever saw open air fellatio was at the Folsom Street Fair, and that's, well, not a typical setting. I have a bunch of gay friends, and they are all a lot more conservative than, say, the 200 sorority whores I dormed with freshmen year. So just come off it.

As for the pot thing, maybe it's because I lot of people like to smoke pot? (I do.) Consider yourself in the boring, prudish minority on this one, bro. "Do dope and cook your brain" sounds like something my grandfather would say. Not the one who's still alive. The one who died 20 years ago. When he was 90. What is your hangup? It's not as if the smoke is coming through the monitor screen or something.

Re:I'd like to say...

[IgnoramusMaximus]

Of all my friends, I know not a single person who's built a "homebrew video server, ...

I know (personally) an engineer who did. Although we are speaking of DVDs rather then HD-DVDs (and quite compressed rips at that). It contains a pile of Disney and other kids stuff. The thing came about when he got annoyed at the horrid mess his kids managed to create with their DVDs (including scratching the mirror side) and also inspired by the observation that they seem to enjoy the same movie over and over and over and ... you get the idea. Hence the MythTV box with a remote. Kids are ecstatic and he has no more trouble with their lost/damaged disks.

Re:I'd like to say...

[thanksforthecrabs]

A Scientology article was censored? What did the person say -- that Scientology is a looney, brain-washing cult that sucks people of their money? And that the cult's highest-profile member/actor recently married a beard again in an attempt to resurrect his career? I'm not saying that stuff is fact...just asking if it was said. Big diff.

Re:I'd like to say...

[shaitand]

Slashdot has better overall content but that is largely because it has been taken over by a different class of trolls. Anyone who reads through Slashdot comments can tell you that there are no if's about it, there are definitely corporate paid propaganda posters from large tech companies.

Anytime you have negative PR coming to a large tech company (particularly software companies and the larger the more prevelent the problem) there are dozens of posts defending the company in the comments here that could have come right off an official press release.

If you have ever attended the sales seminars and meetings from these companies you will recognize their material being used both defensively and offensively all over Slashdot. The biggest companies respond to highly moderated negative posts about them even if the story isn't about them. It's pretty clear these companies have full time Slashdotters.

I once put an intentional grammar error in my sig to catch grammar trolls and forced them into ACdom. Maybe now I should do a similar hunt for corporate shills and list the ones I've found in my journal.

Re:I'd like to say...

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone posted a copyrighted portion of the scientology bible (or whatever they call it). Because it was copyrighted material, and a seemingly serious legal threat was issued, the offending comment was removed.

http://slashdot.org/yro/01/03/16/1256226.shtml

Re:I'd like to say...

[IgnoramusMaximus]

Wow, you must really be pissed at Digg.

Hypocritical stances do piss me off.

Digg has no power. Its possible they could have "grown" some and legally fought against the litigation when it comes... but... they're a business, not some moral heroes or some cult religion. They are a business. They want to make money, not lose it in $500/hr increments.

The problem is that digg tried to be a business based on certain ethos. You can't have it both ways, to project "radical", "anti-estabilishment" etc image to create your business and then fold like a cheap suit as soon as your revenue is threatened by one of the very members of the "estabilishment" and then expect that your audience wont notice.

So this pathetic "But we only tried to make moneeeeey! Waaah! We said all those things to make money! We meant none of it! Mommy! They are trying to take away my moneeeey! Waaah!" excuse is likely to achieve the flight properties of a ton of bricks with their audience.

Re:I'd like to say...

[Fordiman]

Can you copyright a math problem? 'Cos if so, then I own the below.

2^6 x 5 x 19 x 12,043 x 216,493 x 836,256,503,069,278,983,442,067 = x

Solve for X and express in big-endian hexidecimal.

Re:I'd like to say...

[Anonymous Coward]

Be careful that you're not simply writing off other people's opinions as propoganda because you don't agree with them. That could make you... eek... a republican.

Re:I'd like to say...

[Anonymous Coward]

i for one am sick of these heterosexuals pushing their lifestyle in everyone's face. Pictures of their "husband" or "wife" on their desk at work where everyone has to see it, constantly mentioning mentioning them to co-workers when talking during lunch breaks, even bringing in not just photos but the actual CHILDREN that are the consequence of their heterosexual activities.

Look, it's your business if for some reason you have no self-control and find it necessary to put your private parts into the private parts of a member of the opposite sex... it's none of my business if for some strange reason you find it necessaary to do that... but keep it and the infant results of your "lifestyle choice" hidden at home and stop being so blatant about it.

Re:I'd like to say...

[Photo_Nut]

There's an obvious explanation for the "corporate trolling" -- my generation which was in college when /. became popular, and we graduated from High School and College. Lots of us got recruited at places like Apple, IBM, MS, etc. It's kinda like, you might be able to tell in general when or how someone got broadband by if they use Friendster vs MSN Spaces vs MySpace vs... Or if they use AOL or Hotmail or GMail or MSN or Yahoo.

Computer nerds grow up to become corporate shills. Would you rather spend years at an unknown startup or game company, slaving away 24-7 on a product which may not succeed, or would you like an 8+ hour flexible time job with a nice $80K paycheck + benefits? If you had the latter, you might take a little pride in the company paying you, and you might know something that is being misconstrued and want to correct the /. public's interpretation of the FUD that others are spreading. Of course, you might just have the stupid my-company-can-do-no-evil blinders on, too.

I have friends at places including Adobe, Apple, Amazon, IBM, Google, Microsoft, etc. They all read /., although many have also moved on. In time, the new popular places for geeks to hang out will be overrun with the next generation of corporate shills and OSS zealots. I've been called both by my friends at different points in time. :)

Re:I'd like to say...

[ZaMoose]

Try "demagogue in general". Fingers-in-ears la-la-la-I-can't-hear-you behavior is certainly not the exclusive province of the right wing. See Black, Lewis and the hypocrisy of the Greens, for instance. "Cars run on cognitive dissonance" indeed.

Re:I'd like to say...

[iogan]

If any of you (corporate shills) are reading, let me know if there's a job opening sometime... since all I do is read slashdot all day I might as well get paid.

Re:I'd like to say...

[Ed Avis]

Anyone who reads through Slashdot comments can tell you that there are no if's about it, there are definitely corporate paid propaganda posters from large tech companies.

Care to give some examples?

Re:I'd like to say...

[Tim C]

and the story-moderation censorship was (presumably) done by a now-disbanded and dishonoured editor (Michael Sims, 'Nazi Editor').

And yet, some of us still appear to be banned from moderation, presumably because of that thread. I don't remember modding it, and I don't remember commenting on it (although I may have), but I certainly read it.

I've not been able to moderate since. It was a good couple of years before I could even meta-mod; going to metamod.pl directly (I didn't get the link on the front page) gave me a curt "you're not allowed to do this" message.

It may just be a coincidence, but with a 5-digit UID account that hit the karma cap back when karma was a number rather than a textual description and stayed there I can't see what other crime I could have committed.

(And no, I've never bothered to ask; to be honest, I don't really care. I just thought I'd point out that while the editor responsible may well have been let go, the fallout still exists)

Re:I'd like to say...

[Hadlock]

If this is the same editor I'm thinking of, he had a tendancy to add his own malicious commentary, or edit the user submitted part of the article to swing the conversation away from the original intent. This finally caught up with him when he finally crossed the line and he was removed once and for all. This only occured for 2-3 weeks before his termination, so it sounds like there was some stuff going on behind the scenes we'll never know about, and his commentary was just the issue bleeding through on to the front page.

Re:I'd like to say...

[jellomizer]

I more or less agree with you. I don't like being called a corporate shill though. It is more of a fact that people grow up, and gain experience, when they realize when they are working at Adobe, Apple, Amazon, IBM, Google, Microsoft, etc. The realize they are not going to meeting after meeting on how to kill Linux. At best they will go we are competing with Linux they say their strong points are this our week points are this how can we fix that. I myself work for a small firm who does work for a lot of large corporations, but still after working there for 5 years I have learned to tolerate Windows, Embrace Apple, See Problems in Linux, and find OSS isn't all the it is cracked up to be. It happens to most people unless they stay in somewhat isolated sectors such as Government, Education, or Non-Profit (GEN) . But otherwise we can usually tell the kids from the pros by just listening to them, They can still be democrats or liberal, but their views are not as sharp and one sided as it use to be is become more of a normal curve vs. a Uniform block. They in time learn to pick their battles, and over time the slow subtile approach usually wins.

Over time people realize that the Republican/Consertive view does have merit too, but by working with people with these different views and understanding that they are not the devil and their views are quite rational. Right now GEN are mostly populated with people with the same views so it serves to reinforce their beliefs so you don't get the other side from people you can trust and thus you stay on your side. I actually grew up in a conservative family and over time I have become more liberal, on many things, Computer Liberalism did peak in college but sense calmed down. But in general I am more of a liberal person then I use to be.

Microsoft doesn't need to me me or anyone to post on a board that their product isn't really that bad anymore, or hey they actually did that part correctly now. or to say I think RMS is too radical for OSS, and disconnected from reality. These are my views from me, I have made them with information I have gained over time, Linking with the values that were taught to me then moderated and manipulated over years of experience, and combining them with Logic to help predict possible. Nor corporate money all the time.

Re:I'd like to say...

[Mr. Underbridge]

it's late and i might be saying something really obvious... but i've convinced myself that slashdot is better because it has been around for so long. the user base has mostly been around for very long and is familiar with the system as well as what possibilities exist to exploit and troll it. ie, it is stable and i always know what i'm getting.

i don't think digg will forever be a forum for immature posts, but it is still young and what we see now may not be its equilibrium state. though, i sure wouldn't mind if its homepage were always as hilarious as it is right now.

Slashdot was great before the idiot hordes of brainless 15 year olds found it (as opposed to the intelligent 15 year old geeks who belong here). Then it sucked while the morons were around. Now it's great again since they've left for digg.

I think your premise is correct, that slashdot established enough of a culture and history of people who know what they're talking about that there was something to revert to after it was (thankfully) no longer the flavor of the month. I don't think digg has that. I think once the kiddies roll over to the next big thing, digg doesn't have enough of an essence to sustain it. What is digg without the kiddies? Just the ability to vote on stories? Idol worship of that Kevin guy? Doesn't seem enough to sustain it. Digg was headed down, but it really jumped the shark when it opened itself to non-tech stories.

I think slashdot owes digg a substantial debt, in that digg took a large number of the morons and made it more than likely that highly moderated posts on slashdot are actually insightful as opposed to insipid.

Credibility

[airencracken]

Digg took a big hit to their credibility today. They underestimated the outrage caused by the banning of users and removal of stories. Perhaps they'll learn that the site is made by the users. Without diggers, there is no digg.

Re:Credibility

[Marcion]

"Our goal is always to maintain a purely democratic system for the submission and sharing of information" ... " the posting of the encryption key infringes their intellectual property rights. In order to respect these rights" ... "we have removed postings of the key that have been brought to our attention." - Digg

'"intellectual property" - The distorting and confusing term did not arise by accident. Companies that gain from the confusion promoted it... eject the narrow perspectives and simplistic picture the term "intellectual property" suggests. Consider each of these issues separately, in its fullness, and you have a chance of considering them well.' -- RMS

Re:Credibility

[DavidLeblond]

Raise your hand if you are surprised.

Digg is a website that is only as good as the users that contribute to it. Its user base is a bunch of people that... well... lets face it, watch Diggnation.

I rest my case.

Re:Credibility

[ZachPruckowski]

This just proves that the journey is as important as the destination. Both digg and slashdot will ultimately have to remove most of the instances of the number eventually, but digg is doing it in secret. Ultimately, slashdot will get a DMCA notice, and can chose whether or not to fight it. If they do what they did last time, then they'll come out as heroes. If the comments disappear in the dead of night and people notice, they'll get attacked.

Re:Credibility

[russotto]

If Slashdot gets a DMCA section 512 notice, they can probably safely trash it. The number isn't copyrightable; it's not a creative work. More likely they'll get a C&D accusing them of violating DMCA 1201 (17 USC 1201(a)(2) and 17 USC 1201(b)(1) ). Then it's the 2600 case all over again -- and DVDCCA won that one.

Re:Credibility

[vanyel]

Does Digg have corporate deep pockets willing to take the chance? They're in a no-win situation: risk being destroyed legally and/or financially, or be destroyed by idiots who don't have to make essentially life or death decisions about their creation. Idiots who would rather destroy and vandalize than do something productive like spread the number around in the less conspicuous nooks and crannies of the internet where it has a chance to get embedded in the depths of search engine caches and archives before it can be discovered and taken down. Or for that matter, on remote web sites out of reach of US et al lawyers.

As though the number actually mattered anyhow. The only people who will use it don't need it posted.

Re:Credibility

[Breakfast Pants]

Informative? You are mistakenly thinking the DMCA can only be used to send takedowns for copyrighted material--most people at the time of the DeCSS hubub had no problem with that provision. The problem most people had, and have, with it is that the DMCA also says that notices may also be sent to take down things whose primary purpose is to circumvent digital copyright protection schemes (the DeCSS program was the first high profile thing to be taken down-- *it* wasn't copyrighted by the people taking it down, just like this number isn't). The argument under the law will not be whether this key is copyrighted, it will be whether posting it is posting a circumventing device.

Re:Credibility

[klingens]

They're in a no-win situation: risk being destroyed legally and/or financially, or be destroyed by idiots who don't have to make essentially life or death decisions about their creation.

That's wrong. when the first key appeared they could have simply let it stand. Then if/when the CCA comes with a C&D, they do what other websites in such trouble before them have done: they take the offending postings down, notify the users who wrote the postings directly. And most importantly put a big article on the frontpage "The evil MPAA censored us!". They look out as persecuted heroes to their community while complying with the law.

This is not rocket science: slashdot did it, google did it. Lots of well publicized cases for this approach. No court case, no lawyer fees.

Instead, to salvage their business relationship with the HDDVD consortium, they did the worst possible thing and silently deleted the posting and even the user!

Only THEN the backlash started with tons of submissions with the forbidden number to point out digg's shameful behaviour in dealing with the problem.

Re:Credibility

[cpt kangarooski]

Also, if MPAA claims a circumvention of a protection measure what does have to do with people posting a number on any site they didn't circumvent anything and that number is not copyrighted (and probably can't be copyrighted) what do I infringe if I post the number here?

You infringe nothing, and the copyrightability of the key is irrelevant. Frankly, a discussion about circumvention has nearly nothing to do with copyright; ignore copyrights, and infringements, exceptions and defenses that go with copyrights. Circumvention is basically sui generis.

17 USC 1201(a)(2)-(3) says this:

(2) No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that--
(A) is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title;
(B) has only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title; or
(C) is marketed by that person or another acting in concert with that person with that person's knowledge for use in circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.

(3) As used in this subsection--
(A) to "circumvent a technological measure" means to descramble a scrambled work, to decrypt an encrypted work, or otherwise to avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate, or impair a technological measure, without the authority of the copyright owner; and
(B) a technological measure "effectively controls access to a work" if the measure, in the ordinary course of its operation, requires the application of information, or a process or a treatment, with the authority of the copyright owner, to gain access to the work.

The key, in this context, is a part of a device which likely falls under 1201(a)(2)(C) if not (A) and (B) as well. Disseminating the key is unlawful, apart from its use. It's not an infringement, but it's still illegal. The particular offense would be called trafficking.

Ah, how timely

[metlin]

The fortune cookie at the bottom of the page reads -

"Anyone attempting to generate random numbers by deterministic means is, of course, living in a state of sin." -- John Von Neumann

Indeed.

Re:Ah, how timely

[AKAImBatman]

Figures. The funniest part of that quote is missing! Before Von Neumann uttered that sentence, he first stated that "The generation of random numbers is far too important to leave to chance." :-P

Toothpaste..

[craznar]

The harder you sqeeze, the more comes out.

MPAA Lesson of the day.

00110000001110010100011000111001001100010011000100 11000000110010001110010100010000110111001101000100 01010011001100110101010000100100010000111000001101 00001100010011010100110110010000110011010100110110 00110011001101010011011000111000001110000100001100 11000000100000

Re:Toothpaste..

[airencracken]

Governor Tarkin: Princess Leia, before your execution, you will join me at a ceremony that will make this battle station operational. No star system will dare oppose the Emperor now. Princess Leia: The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.

Just so you know

[Anonymous Coward]

09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0

Re:Just so you know

[dynamo]

Thank you. Someone mod that up so I can find it if I ever need it later.

Digg management are full of hypocrites

[cioxx]

Since its inception Digg had a community-driven submission and voting process which did not supress free speech. I've seen endless stories and links to torrent sites like piratebay, demonoid, bitme, et al. and Digg management turned a blind eye on directing users to places of "copyright infringement"

Today it's different for some reason. One of the managers posted a justification on the official blog:

Whether you agree or disagree with the policies of the intellectual property holders and consortiums, in order for Digg to survive, it must abide by the law. Diggs Terms of Use, and the terms of use of most popular sites, are required by law to include policies against the infringement of intellectual property.

Funny stuff.

Re:Digg management are full of hypocrites

[martin-boundary]

The funniest thing about the sort of attitude you quote from Digg's management is that they have no clue about the DMCA at all.

The DMCA rule is (loosely paraphrased): if a site doesn't censor its users posts and implements an automatic takedown system with notification to the user, then it's safe from copyright infringement claims (safe harbor provision). By doing this, the copyright claimants must ask for each offending comment to be removed individually, and each time some comment is removed, the user who posted the comment receives a realtime notification and he can decide that he's not infringing anything and is allowed to put the post back up. After that, the post cannot be removed again, unless a court looks at the case and makes a ruling.

If however a site censors or modifies its users posts, then it is effectively taking editorial ownership and *that* is when the site becomes potentially liable for copyright infringement claims by third parties.

Re:Digg management are full of hypocrites

[cpt kangarooski]

This is precisely why I dislike people talking about the DMCA, as opposed to the particular portions of Title 17 that happen to be at issue. The DMCA did a lot of unrelated things.

You're describing, not all that accurately, the takedown procedure at 17 USC 512. The thing is, that only applies in cases of copyright infringement. But the current fuss hasn't got a thing to do with copyright infringement. It has to do with trafficking in circumvention devices under 17 USC 1201, which has no connection to 512 whatsoever. There is no 512 safe harbor for trafficking.

I'd say that they have more of a clue than you do.

You can't ban a number. Period.

[at_slashdot]

Title says all ;-)

Digg is a piece of shit

[Anonymous Coward]

Notwithstanding the fact that most articles are either innacurate or stupid, they will IP ban anyone who says anything bad about their site. Digg is one step up from "myspace"

Also, you can get a perm ban from digg if you use the star of david as your "digg icon"... no kidding!

Honestly curious...

[ParadoxDruid]

Digg actually posted a reply to the community on their blog here.

What I'm honestly curious about is this: Is this numeric string code copyrighted? Where is the copyright filed, if so? Or is it a trade secret? Do trade secrets need to be filed or declared somehow? Is a trade secret intellectual property that must be removed when a theatening (maybe DMCA) notice is sent?

I'm nowhere near understanding the complexities of the current intellectual property legal codes in the USA, let alone how they actually apply in this situation. All I see is hysteria.

Re:Honestly curious...

[SpectreHiro]

What I'm honestly curious about is this: Is this numeric string code copyrighted? Where is the copyright filed, if so?

Standard Disclaimer: IANAL -- By United States Copyright law, and I believe the laws of all signees of the Berne Convention (163 nations), a work is "copyrighted" the instant it is recorded in some tangible form. There is no need for it to be registered with any legal body. The United States Copyright Office does offer a registration service, but it's more a matter of convenience than of necessity.

Now, a sixteen digit hexidecimal number almost certainly fails to meet the minimum requirements for novelty and authorship (whatever the hell such qualities are referred to legally) and thus is not under the protection of copyright. However, the distribution of encryption codes undoubtedly falls afoul of the draconion terms of the DMCA, which has basically nothing to do with copyright.

The US Copyright Office runs a fairly informative website that's well worth the 10 or so minutes it takes to skim --> http://www.copyright.gov/

Wikipedia

[Anonymous Coward]

Wikipedia has chosen to speedy-delete the article and all similarly titled articles based on the hexadecimal number. I found the deletion review at this link. It seems like the only way left to get the article undeleted is to present good arguments there. I, for my part, have been blocked by another admin for posting my undelete comment. It looks like censorship is in season.

Re:Wikipedia

[micksam7]

The key has also snuck into other places on wikipedia as well. :)

Re:Wikipedia

[bky1701]

I know, it's sad, but it's not like anyone didn't see it coming. Wikipedia sold out long ago, now the only thing they care about is easy funding (overall) and keeping themselves admins (just about every admin...). None of them are going to speak out because it hurts #1, and hurting #1 hurts #2. The emperor has no clothes, ad nauseum.

So what's the next wiki that's going to take over? Cowboynealpedia?

Re:Wikipedia

[asninn]

Wikipedia has a clear purpose/goal, though - namely, to create an encyclopaedia. It's not a democracy, an experiment in free speech, an effort to resist censorship, the EFF, Wikileaks, or anything like that.

There certainly are a bunch of problems with the way the community is being run (and I say that as someone who is an admin on en.wp and has been for a couple of years already), but the fact remains that Wikipedia's goal is to write an encyclopaedia - and NOTHING else.

Re:Was this duped on purpose?

[leonbev]

It's only a partial dupe... The first story was about the HD DVD key getting censored on certain sites, and the second story was about Digg's front page getting trashed because they were one of the sites who was censoring it.

Slashdot deserves a big thumbs-up from the tech community for NOT being one of those sites!

Quick to rise....

[nobodyman]

And quick to fall. I cannot believe how swift and concerted this response is. I bet the digg admins are kinda wishing they had, oh I dunno.... EDITORS?

Digg meltdown

[ISurfTooMuch]

I've been watching this develop tonight, and Digg has gone into meltdown, not so much in the technical sense but in the sense that the user base is in open revolt, posting stories containing the code and commenting on events over...and...over...and over. As quickly as one article is removed, two more appear, and the tone of them is getting angrier and angrier by the hour.

Just my opinion, but I don't see how Digg can come out of this with any credibility left. Was this ever about the DMCA? Perhaps in the beginning, but it's turned into a battle of wills between the Digg admins and its user base, and, even if the admins could somehow manage to magically obliterate every article on this subject, they're going to have a hard time explaining themselves to the user base, who are, by and large, mad as hell.

And to those who are, indeed, mad as hell, consider what you will do after this incident is over. Kevin and the other admins may indeed fear a lawsuit if they don't take these articles down. Is that wrong, or is the law that allows this possibility the thing that is wrong? It's easy to sit there and paste line after line of numbers, but what would you do in the face of a lawsuit, even if it it's a ridiculous lawsuit supported by a law crafted just for this kind of abuse? You're taking action now, but will you get organized to push for real change tomorrow, the day after, and the day after that?

Beyond the hex

[loconet]

As I said numerous times,

People don't seem to understand that this goes beyond a silly little hex key. The key has been out for months. A new one will come and it will also be broken. This is not about that. This is about consumers finally standing up against the bullshit being fed to them by media giants. They crossed the line today when they forced digg to censor user generated content, not only articles but also comments and somewhat related content.

As a consumer i am sick and tired of getting fabricated excuses as to why i can't play what I've bought wherever the hell i want. NO, i don't care if you keep making up the story that DRM is to protect yourself from piracy. I don't buy it. DRM will be broken no matter what. DRM is there to ensure your revenue stream by controlling where I can play the content. Now you go and censor my news source giving a bullshit excuse that a randomly generated hex number is some how your IP? You install rootkits in my computer, You stop me from using my content I bought the way I want? pretend to own _MY_ hardware? Enough of that bullshit.

This is a revolt against the greediness and blatant disrespect for the consumer that comes from the mpaa/riaa.

SAVE THE NUMBERS, SAVE THE WORLD. REMEMBER The 1st of MAY.

Re:Beyond the hex

[JFMulder]

This is about consumers finally standing up against the bullshit being fed to them by media giants.
No. Those are nerds in their basement who feel safe in the anonymousity of the web who would shit their pants if they tried to stand up for the same issue in real life.

If anything, online petitions are such furor have proven time after time that most (but not all, see Sony rootkin fiasco) of the time, when people complain on the web, nothing happens.

Re:Before this gets out of hand again...

[QuantumG]

Excuse me.

The MPAA (or whoever) is telling Digg to take down those stories.

They have the authority to do this thanks to the DMCA.

The DMCA is a law enacted by who? That's right, the government of the United States of America.

So who is threatening the people who run Digg with jail time? That's right, the United States of America.

How is that not censorship?

Screw digg!

[Cervantes]

Yeah, screw Digg! Those bastards, censoring shit, trying to hide things, giving in to "The Man" and the fear of legal battles. Fuck them! Slashdot rules!

Hey, on a completely unrelated note, can anyone point me to that copy of book 3 of Scientology that was posted here a few years back?
kthnx.

Re:Screw digg!

[metlin]

The thing is, Slashdot took off the Scientology crap because they were served a legal notice.

Also, Slashdot also provided a detailed writeup on what had happened, why they were taking down the said comments (which happened to paste entire texts) and gave some pointers on finding the said information.

Which is completely different from Digg removing the story and not telling anyone about it (until of course the users discovered it). And their response was an after-the-fact event, made worse by the fact that Digg receives sponsorship for Diggnation from the very folks this thing seems to piss off.

The two are completely different, and Slashdot did it right. Digg did not do it right and the users are revolting. More power to them.

Re:Frickin' Hilarious

[Old Wolf]

This is the funniest thing I've seen since reading the "Slashdot Trolling Phenomena" entry in Wikipedia.

That page has now been removed (it redirects to Slashdot). But I did learn something useful - prime-number user IDs are considered valuable by some. Funnily enough, I checked mine and it is prime. All I have to do now is sit back and wait for my plan to come to fruition.

1. Discover your user ID is prime
2. ???
3. Profit!

With Apologies To Allan Sherman

[Tackhead]

Ahem. You know it's gonna be one of those weird filks when I post with "With Apologies To" in the Subject: line. Not sure how this got here. Probably the same twisted place that Natalie's Restaurant came from.

At any rate, this is a parody of Allan Sherman's tirade against all-digit dialing, "The Let's All Call Up AT&T And Protest To The President March". By staggering coincidence, the original was inspired by someone posting it in on USENET in the .mp3.comedy group. Weren't me, although my parents turned me onto Mr. Sherman's parodies by giving me their vinyl original that they'd owned since before I was born.

By even more coincidence, you can sing it as either: "Let's all post the Processing Key and fuck AACSLA" March, for rather obvious reasons, or the "Let's all post To D-I-G-G and say 'fark you' to Kevin Rose" March, (on account of every single story on digg.com's front page, as the original poster already linked to in TFA)

By utterly unsurprising coincidence, and like every filk I write here, this parody is in the public domain, and you can sing it however you like, although in this case it'll probably be funnier if you keep the numbers the way they was written.

AACS VERSION:

It's the "Let's all post the processing key and fuck AACSLA!" march!
Watch their lawyers worry and fidget,
Cease and DE-sisting sixteen hex digits!

So let's all post the processing key and fuck AACSLA, march!
So protest! (so protest!)
Do your best! (do your best!)
Let us show them that we post in unity.
If they won't (if they won't!),
Change the rules (change the rules!),
Let's buy our movies from another monopoly!

Let's all post the processing key and fuck AACSLA march.
Let us wake their landsharks from slumber,
Get a pencil, I'll give you their number.

It's Nine, Eff-nine, One-one, Two, Nine-D,
SevenTY-four, Eee-three, Five-B... (dash!)
Dee-eight, four-one, five-six, Cee-five,
Sixty-three, fifty-six, eight-eight... (hyphen!)
And now that you're on the right road,
Don't forget to end with Cee-0h!

Here's to freedom and fair use! 09F9! 1102s!
Watch your HD-DVD! 9D74! E35B!
Let's keep that 16-byte key alive!
D841! 56C5! AACS is totally broke! 6356! 88C0! Hooray!

To arnezami's mental fiber,
We'll erect a triumphal arch!
For the "let's all post the processing key and fuck AACSLA!" march.

And since we're long (about 2 and a half months!) past the point that a parody of the AACS key wouldn't be complete without the
DIGG VERSION:

It's the "Let's all post To D-I-G-G and say 'fark you' to Kevin Rose" march!
Watch him worry, watch as he fidgets,
As his users post sixteen hex digits!
So let's all post to D-I-G-G and say 'fuck you' to Kevin Rose march.
So protest! (so protest!)
Do your best! (do your best!)
Let us show him that we digg in unity.
If he won't (if he won't!),
Change the rules (change the rules!),
Let's take our pageviews to Slashdot's company!

Let's all post to D-I-G-G and say 'fuck you' to Kevin Rose march.
Let us wake him up in his slumber.
Get a pencil, I'll give you his number.

It's Nine, Eff-nine, One-one, Two, Nine-D,
SevenTY-four, Eee-three, Five-B... (dash!)
Dee-eight, four-one, five-six, Cee-five,
Sixty-three, fifty-six, eight-eight... (hyphen!)
And now that you're on the right road,
Don't forget to end with Cee-0h!

Here's to freedom and fair use! 09F9! 1102s!
Watch your HD-DVD! 9D74! E35B!
Let's keep that 16-byte key alive! D841! 56C5!
AACS is totally broke! 6356! 88C0! Hooray!

To arnezami's mental fiber,
We'll erect a triumphal arch!
For the let's all post to D-I-G-G and say 'fuck you' to Kevin Rose march.

And don't make me deal with this "Your comment has too few characters per line (currently 35.7)", because it's a long pair of

Re:Was this duped on purpose?

[jamie]

Sure seems like a dupe to me.

It's not.

On-topic comment

[Old Wolf]

Something that nobody's explained, since this story broke:

Whose bright idea was it to use the same 128-bit symmetric key for every DVD ??

NB. Please don't mod this off-topic just because I said it wasn't.

Re:On-topic comment

[shird]

Something needs to be common between every DVD, otherwise you couldn't make players that can play every DVD.

The keys are actually different for each DVD, but they are derived from a common secret, and hashed and mixed about etc. The system is actually quite clever, and not a single symmetric key by any means. But no matter how you slice it, there will always need to be a common shared secret which is used to derive the means to unlock the media. That shared secret isn't the key itself, but the "processing key" which is in part used to derive the real key for each disc (to put it in very simple terms).

Re:Before this gets out of hand again...

[Nasarius]

Must we go through this every single time? From M-W:

censor
to examine in order to suppress or delete anything considered objectionable <censor the news>; also : to suppress or delete as objectionable <censor out indecent passages>

If you can find me a single definition of "censor" as a verb that refers exclusively to the government, I'd be shocked. By virtue of the US Constitution, such acts are typically only illegal when done by the government. It is no less "censorship".

Re:This saddens me

[Tibor the Hun]

we slashdotters are honored by your honesty, and we hope you documented your feelings in your blog.

it's called the "Streisand effect"

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect

Re:Before this gets out of hand again...

[NorthwestWolf]

"Censorship is a government telling someone what they cannot read, hear, see, or think."

You might want to try that one again chief, the act of censorship isn't only carried out by governments. By your logic media private outlets couldn't censor information.

See the following to get a fucking clue:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship

n. censor 1. A person authorized to examine books, films, or other material and to remove or suppress what is considered morally, politically, or otherwise objectionable.

tr.v. censored, censoring, censors
To examine and expurgate.

This isn't about the number anymore

[Trollificus]

While they can do what they want on their own site, it is more a matter of credibility than anything else right now. The whole revolt isn't even about the HD-DVD key. What has people feeling burnt is the fact that Digg purports to be about free and open user-driven content in a democratic setting, and what we're seeing here is a cabal of admins who are subverting the entire process of the system to suit their own whims.

Now as I said, it's not even about the 128-bit key anymore. And it's not about the DMCA or its merits(or lack thereof). The problem goes much deeper than that, and the encryption key debacle was more of a catalyst for what the more perceptive Diggers knew was going on all along but never really had any proof of. See, it's not just any posts containing the number they're removing. The Digg admins are removing and banning any discussion on the topic, even legitimate discussions on the ramifications of censorship in the user-driven internet era. Quite a few legitimate and thought-provoking discussions got clobbered when the admins got ban-happy today.

They have unwittingly set themselves up as a prime example of what can go wrong when marketing dollars(it is being reported that the HD-DVD guys throw ad dollars at Diggnation) meet the voice of the people. It is now being said that the Digg admins are stepping in and removing "objectionable" content when it conflicts with the will of their advertisers or displays any anti-Digg sentiment. While I'm sure this is good business sense, it's a very ugly way of being outed as a shill and a fraud to your readers. Digg is supposed to be the underdog who fought the status-quo and beat overwhelming odds against "the system". Now people are finding out that Digg has become the system, and they're a bit disillusioned that their hero Mr. Rose is just like any other business man who is out to make a buck. But like I said, the admins of Digg are obviously free to do with their site as they see fit. But Digg is only as good as the people who contribute to it. Kiss them good-bye and you kiss Digg good-bye.

Re:P.S. Digg This

[alex4u2nv]

In order to get Dugg, you must first title your article with "Coolest ... you'll ever see!!!"

Re:P.S. Digg This

[Marcion]

"The founders of Digg.com - which has been rocked by an unprecedented user revolt over the release of an HD-DVD decryption code - accepted sponsorship from the organization behind HD-DVD last year." hmmm

Old Joke

[Kenshin]

- "Digg's community is revolting!"

- "I know! And they seem pretty upset about something too..."

Five thousand 12-year-olds throw a temper tantrum

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll agree the Digg community took a hit today, but only because it shows the mentality of its users. These are the same people that believe internet petitions actually do something.

Fark's response...

[Daychilde]

Fark is actively censoring as well... recent headlines on redlit discussions: Don't bother submitting the HD-DVD passcode. It's against the FarQ, isn't going to be greenlit, and is against the law. Don't like it? Vote and OMG Admins just DELETED a post on Fark that contained a blatent violation of the FarQ and could have legal ramifications for a privately owned website. CENSORSHIP NDIT LGT GIS for "Whiny biatch"

Re:Fark's response...

[Lehk228]

fark is dead since the redesign anyways. long threads take forever to load now, and the whole site looks like carebear bukkake

Intriguing.

[jd]

In a day and age when Big Brother is all but day-to-day reality, the government is prohibited from censoring but corporations are actively encouraged. Corporate censorship is probably worse than Government censorship, in that corporations produce things - and sometimes those things have turned out to be harmful in some way, or sometimes quite lethal to the user. Said Vioxx. Other times, there have been very very narrow escapes - aspartamine was never clinically tested and this information was actively suppressed for some time. Turns out it does impair brain functioning, mildly. Sony did everything in its power to limit knowledge of the rootkit it released and the potential damage it could cause, on a less hazardous - but potentially expensive - note.

Yet as the grandparent post shows, there are those determined to believe only governments can censor, and there have been many cases where people have attempted to sue companies over first amendment rights. Censorship can happen between any two or more individuals, and you ONLY have rights when it comes to the Government.

This makes me laugh and angry at the same time

[zappepcs]

because what the Digg users did to put the number on various posts on the Digg front page is exactly why government monitoring of communications of citizens will never net them the "terr'ists" messages. There are so many low tech ways to encode a message that can be broadcast in broad view of the public and still be coded that the government could spend billions or more man years trying to find them, never mind decode them. Some of those today included:

A song, a t-shirt, a commercial, blog title, html color coding scheme, a bad poem, street directions, website name, and many others...

This is EXACTLY why monitoring private communications will never stop covert communications. This is exactly why the DRM won't work, why the relative Patriot Act efforts will fail and why monitoring doesn't work. The fact that the bad guys know there is monitoring will ensure that they use something so covert that all of us will see it and not know it, which is BTW very LOW tech, so won't be caught by hitech monitoring systems.

Whatever you think of Digg users, they have demonstrated an important thing. When someone needs to communicate, censorship will not work, the DMCA will fail to stop it, the Patriot Act cannot prevent the damage done and no new laws will fix this basic failure of preventative control.

Any message that wants to get out will get out, be it a key, a program, or just a rebellious thought. Censorship does not work.

Sure, there are those who pedantically will tell me it seems to be working in countries like China, but even there I think all they have done is slow down the information flow rather than cut it off. If writers in China want to post to blogs, they can get someone in Sweeden to write / host a dtmf translation program that takes a phone call, translates the DTMF and posts the information to the appropriate blog site/account. This would bypass all the censorship efforts to date.

The plus side of this is that along the way, someone somewhere is going to find innovative ways to do things. My bet is that it will always be those that want to be uncensored that innovate most.

Re:Wow...just wow

[tekrat]

Excuse me, but there are companies out there that buy and sell information about you, me and everyone else. Can I go out and have all that information suppressed? That's *my* information, and yet, every supermarket, potential employer, car dealership, hospital, etc., gets to profit and make use about information about ME, and yet, I don't see a dime of that money.

Tell ya what. I'll agree not to pass around that NUMBER if every company agrees never to pass around my NAME, particularly to junk mail vendors and telephone marketeers.

Why can't *you* see that it's exactly the same thing?

Re: Are you for real?

[craznar]

They did no such thing, they used their own computer, own time, own disk.... at no time did they break into anyone's house, computer....

I buy a DVD, I own the disk, the holes, the metal - the bits. The only bit I don't own is the actual art content.

To put it in the context of a book ... I own the paper AND the ink, just not the story.

I can choose to read the book backwards, skip every second letter - and even read the boring publication bits at the front - all legally.

So don't give me this crap that reading the bytes off a DVD I own is illegal.

My poem to the digg editors

[JFMulder]

Roses are #FF0000
Violets are #0000FF
All my encryptions
Are belong to 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0

However...

[Draconix]

Fark's doing so is not ironic. This sort of thing is normal, to be expected, and other synonyms for "not news." Digg, on the other hand, is "...all about user powered content. Everything is submitted and voted on by the Digg community. Share, discover, bookmark, and promote stuff that's important to you!"

They should have learned from Slashdot

[Sloppy]

One of the things I like about Slashdot is how they handled the Cult of Scientology thing. Slashdot complied with style. Cowards, by contrast, have no style.

The most common number in the universe

[flyingfsck]

must be 09,F9,11,02,9D,74,E3,5B,D8,41,56,C5,63,56,88,C0

Future data archaeologists will be dumbfounded by this number and will no doubt ascribe great religious significance to it.

Why strong IP law is so attractive:

[Kadin2048]

I think the answer is staring you in the face: as a nation, the U.S. imports a lot of physical goods, but exports a lot of intellectual property. Therefore, we reward companies who chisel their foreign suppliers into squeezing their employees, because this results in cheap imports here in the States. Likewise, we punish IP 'theft,' because IP is one of the last things that we seem to be able to produce and sell.

Now, I'm no fan of the DMCA, because I think it causes more damage and economic loss, here in the U.S., than it can or will ever possibly create in new IP-export revenue. But the logic driving it, when you separate it from the implementation, isn't that hard to understand, at least from a certain point of view. Allow me to illustrate how I think many people see the problem:

When we set aside irrational feelings of American exceptionalism -- those warm feelings that politicians always play to, when they talk about the "American worker" being the "best in the world" as if it was self-evident -- it is not immediately clear exactly how our previous success over the past century [1], necessarily translates into continued success in the future. In short, although everyone likes to say reassuring things like "Americans have always been at the forefront of innovation!", those words ring pretty hollow -- it's not clear why we would continue to be. We're not smarter than everyone else, our education system basically sucks, and we have a culture that's increasingly anti-intellectual and in some cases bordering on non-secular.

What this boils down to is: in a fully globalized economy, it's not clear what areas the U.S. will have a comparative advantage in. We'll probably always be able to export some agricultural products, but agricultural products do not a first-world civilization pay for. Same with natural resources like coal and timber but we'll need them here eventually, so we'd just be selling ourselves down the river. So what do you have left, when you've outsourced everything that can be outsourced to lower-cost second- and third-world areas? I think Neal Stephenson was onto something: music, movies, microcode, and pizza delivery.

'Pizza delivery' is the remaining service-sector crap that can't be outsourced. Music and movies are 'cultural exports,' things that for whatever reason, have a certain cachet in the rest of the world, and so don't really fall victim to direct price competition with foreign competitors. And microcode [1A] -- even if we're not the best at that, either, we'll use our monopoly to milk the rest of the world pretty good for as long as we can. But we can only do that if we can get them to buy into the legal framework which lets you sell IP as if it were physical goods. Hence, the DMCA and other 'strong IP' laws.

All of this is just my rather long-winded way of trying to explain why so many people (people in government in particular) are hooked on strong IP law (including the DMCA, DRM, and anti-circumvention), and proprietary software: they see it as a way to ensure that the U.S. can still make money doing the only thing that we seem to be good at. It may not seem at first glance to make a whole lot of sense, particularly to non-Americans, but I've met a lot of fairly powerful people who are very, very nervous about where the New/Global Economy is headed, and how the U.S. is going to maintain its standard of living [2] in the future. If you're looking for a near-magic solution, which you are if you're a politician, grabbing onto intellectual property as the salvation of high-cost Western society probably isn't the stupidest thing you'll do all day.

[1] Much of which is attributable to having had the good luck not to get involved in any home-turf land wars (like Europe, which got flattened, some of it twice) and getting on board the capitalism bus early (unlike Asia, which is just coming around to this whole market-economy business).

[1A] I'm using "microcode" here to represent basically all IP-derived exports, which includes most pharmaceuti

Digg Management Has Officially Forfeited

[Bueller_007]

http://blog.digg.com/?p=74

Digg This: 09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0
by Kevin Rose at 9pm, May 1st, 2007 in Digg Website

Today was an insane day. And as the founder of Digg, I just wanted to post my thoughts...

In building and shaping the site I've always tried to stay as hands on as possible. We've always given site moderation (digging/burying) power to the community. Occasionally we step in to remove stories that violate our terms of use (eg. linking to pornography, illegal downloads, racial hate sites, etc.). So today was a difficult day for us. We had to decide whether to remove stories containing a single code based on a cease and desist declaration. We had to make a call, and in our desire to avoid a scenario where Digg would be interrupted or shut down, we decided to comply and remove the stories with the code.

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.

Digg on,

Kevin

Digg is offline

[xaviel]

Digg is officialy offline, the revolt suceeded!!

too little too late

[tedivm]

From the offical Digg blog, "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."

At this point it looks like look much like a PR move. In an attempt to make themselves look good, they're acting like they're decided to take a stand against The Man, when in fact they're just bowing to pressure. Besides the fact that they just literally couldn't continue enforcing the censorship without turning off the site, they seem to ignore the fact that they didn't just remove articles containing the hex code, but articles containing the story of their censorship!

Slashdot isn't making a big deal out of their lack of censorship, and they aren't issuing a war cry- but I can write F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 without having to worry about my account being deleted, and that means more to me than some half-assed excuse.

Digg is attempting to shift the blame and rally a cause away from it, when it should be admitting that they all made a mistake and apologizing. Now its too late for them to gain the respect of their user base without a lot of long, hard work (if even that will be enough).

Digg decides to stand up to the MPAA!

[Anonymous Coward]

Digg is currently down. This was the top of the page right before it went down.

http://blog.digg.com/?p=74 [digg.com]?

Digg This: 09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0
by Kevin Rose at 9pm, May 1st, 2007 in Digg Website

Today was an insane day. And as the founder of Digg, I just wanted to post my thoughts...

In building and shaping the site I've always tried to stay as hands on as possible. We've always given site moderation (digging/burying) power to the community. Occasionally we step in to remove stories that violate our terms of use (eg. linking to pornography, illegal downloads, racial hate sites, etc.). So today was a difficult day for us. We had to decide whether to remove stories containing a single code based on a cease and desist declaration. We had to make a call, and in our desire to avoid a scenario where Digg would be interrupted or shut down, we decided to comply and remove the stories with the code.

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.

Digg on,

Kevin

Re:Digg decides to stand up to the MPAA!

[elrous0]

I love the way he's trying to make himself out as some kind of goddamn hero just because his revolting customers forced him to reverse himself on something he never should have done in the first place. Fucking sellout!

Re:Digg decides to stand up to the MPAA!

[Khisanth Magus]

Yeah, lets blame the guy who was attempting to keep himself from being sued and possibly more for ignoring a cease and desist order! Heaven forbid he try and protect himself and his site from legal action. His nerve in not listening to his users who are protected by anonymity, while he would be the one to bite the bullet!

Re:Digg decides to stand up to the MPAA!

[elrous0]

The worst part wasn't even that he did it, but that he tried to do it in secret. He wanted to cave and quietly remove these posts, but still keep Digg's "geek cred" by not publicly announcing he was doing it. It was only after Digg members realized what was going on and called them on it that he suddenly realized he wasn't going to get away with that.

When /. pulled the Scientology comment, they owned up to it like men. Kevin Rose tried to hide it like a bitch. Then, we he got called on it, suddenly he's posturing like he's John Wayne or something.

Re:P.S. Digg This

[Fordiman]

"Update: 05/02 05:44 GMT by J : New blog post from Kevin Rose of Digg to its users: "We hear you.""

From the post:
"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."

fuckin 'ey, Kevin!

Re:Five thousand 12-year-olds throw a temper tantr

[Nogami_Saeko]

Well, Kevin Rose just pulled the plug on Digg (at least in a temporary sense).

Today was an insane day. And as the founder of Digg, I just wanted to post my thoughts...

In building and shaping the site I've always tried to stay as hands on as possible. We've always given site moderation (digging/burying) power to the community. Occasionally we step in to remove stories that violate our terms of use (eg. linking to pornography, illegal downloads, racial hate sites, etc.). So today was a difficult day for us. We had to decide whether to remove stories containing a single code based on a cease and desist declaration. We had to make a call, and in our desire to avoid a scenario where Digg would be interrupted or shut down, we decided to comply and remove the stories with the code.

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.

Digg on,

Kevin

I feel bad for Kevin - I don't believe that anyone legitimately upset by this whole situation wants Digg to die. Unfortunately the moderators made a number of bad decisions that only made things worse. Perhaps they should've allowed one story on the topic and had everyone comment there. Keep that page up until they have a legitimate, hand delivered paper DMCA takedown request. Then users' anger would be focused where it really belongs (read MPAA).

With the moderators banning accounts and deleting posts, they took entirely the wrong approach, and are now suffering the consequences. Sadly, this may be a very, very hard lesson for Kevin / Digg.

When you create a social networking/commenting site, knowingly or not, you put yourself at the mercy of a large number of people who can be extremely volatile. Not a whole lot of difference between that and a good, old-fashioned mob of real people.

Here's hoping some good can come out of this whole unfortunate situation...

N.

Re:I'd like to say...(is pure flamebait)

[Ralph Spoilsport]

how the parent achieved +5 insightful is beyond me.

Don't like gay PDA? Well, imagine how some gays feel about hetero PDA. (I'm straight, for the record). Don't like Pro-420 articles? Well, simple fact is pot never killed anyone - you pass out before you can overdose. But every years thousands of people die from ingesting perfectly legal liquor. Don't like people tweaking the corporate plutocracy by posting crypto keys? Well, then just roll over and let the corporations tel you what to think. Lord knows it's easier than doing it yourself. You're a Troll. A Class A Troll, and I am appalled that you've been modded so well. And when you get your knickers all bunched up, please think twice before posting like that - although, once would be a grand improvement.

RS

Way to fly your company into a hillside, dude.

[BillGatesLoveChild]

Beautiful! Kevin of Digg's Response has all the signs of an arrogant businessman who flipped the bird to his users, and was freaked out when they flipped the bird back. He even pulls out the "What about the Children Argument" claiming '(eg. linking to pornography, illegal downloads, racial hate sites, etc.)'. He then goes on to add 'If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.' I mean, how childish. The guy made a bad call, and now he thinks he's Gandhi.

The thing these arrogant upstarts forget is when you create something and the public use it, the public own it. Sure legally you have 'title', but if you try and mess with it the public will be at your throat. They've invested their time and effort in building up your business, and they're now a part of it too. MMPOGs like EverQuest and Star Wars Galaxies have discovered it the hard way, to the point Raph Koster warns upstarts once others use it, you cease to own it. But the message still hasn't got out.

The smartest thing Kevin could have done is admitted a mistake and canceled the HD DVD Digg sponsorship to avoid conflict of interested. The smartest thing the board could do now is fire Kevin, before their investors see their hard earned cash peed up against the wall. The longer Kevin hisses and spits at his users, the more damage it does Digg. Digg dugg their own grave.

(pause) feel the power, boys!

Anti-censorship ribbons for your site

[Anthony Boyd]

I started a page for this, here. It contains ribbons that use 5 colors. The 5 colors are comprised of the "secret" hex code that is being suppressed. Interested parties are free to use these ribbons on their own sites. If you would like to link your ribbon to an explanatory page, I provide one here.

Re:I'd like to say...(is pure flamebait)

[1u3hr]

Don't like gay PDA? Well, imagine how some gays feel about hetero PDA.

II'm pretty sure Sony Clie is gay. And I've always assumed my Palm V is hetero.

Re:You think that's funny....

[gEvil (beta)]

Comments are owned by the Poster.

I don't see why a guy who's ever only posted one comment to this site gets to own everybody else's comments...