Digg is down. It may be down for a long time or five minutes. Digg had one of those days that everybody kind of knew would happen. There was this hd-dvd encryption code that was leaked by some people trying to get people from decrypting hd-dvds. The story was posted on Digg. Digg talked to their lawyers and decided to pull the stories with the code in it. Well, the Digg community cried Freedom of Speech and reposted the code in thousands of stories. Thousands.

Jay, of Digg, posted this on the Digg Blog:

Hey all,

I just wanted to explain what some of you have been noticing around some stories that have been submitted to Digg on the HD DVD encryption key being cracked.

This has all come up in the past 24 hours, mostly connected to the HD-DVD hack that has been circulating online, having been posted to Digg as well as numerous other popular news and information websites. We’ve been notified by the owners of this intellectual property that they believe the posting of the encryption key infringes their intellectual property rights. In order to respect these rights and to comply with the law, we have removed postings of the key that have been brought to our attention.

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. Digg’s 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. This helps protect Digg from claims of infringement and being shut down due to the posting of infringing material by others.

Our goal is always to maintain a purely democratic system for the submission and sharing of information - and we want Digg to continue to be a great resource for finding the best content. However, in order for that to happen, we all need to work together to protect Digg from exposure to lawsuits that could very quickly shut us down.

Thanks for your understanding,

Jay

The story submissions continued anyway. Eventually, Kevin posted this on the blog:

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'm not sure posting the hd-dvd code counts as Freedom of Speech. Why? Well, would it be Freedom of Speech if I posted a bank vault combination? Maybe that's an unfair comparison. I honestly don't think you should encrypt media anyway. All it does is make it harder for the average user to enjoy something he paid money for. If you read back through my blog, you'll find dozens of posts about my trouble with getting DVDs that I bought to work in Linux. And as the internets and tubes continue to prove to us on a daily basis is that any and all encryption will be cracked and pirates will pirate.

Like I said, I don't think you should encrypt media. But I also don't think people should have put Digg at risk of being shut down. Digg is one of my favorite sites. What people should have done is found legitimate stories to submit that are debates on whether an encryption code is Freedom of Speech or stories about the hassles with encrypted media. Instead, they rallied, some calling it a revolt, and created fake stories just to get the code on the front page of Digg... and second page... and third...  ¶ 1:08 AM