What happened on Digg yesterday was essentially an online revolution, which, although restricted to one web site, has potential ramifications for the entire Internet.
Yesterday on Digg someone posted a story containing the decryption key for HD DVDs. Digg received a take down notice from the powers that be and the story was removed. This infuriated the Digg community. Several users began replicating the story and before long the replications had reached the front page of Digg with some of them breaking records for fasted dugg stories — 15,000+ Diggs. Digg took action again, removing the stories and suspending the user accounts of those responsible for the replication. The chaos only began with that.
By the time I went to bed last night Digg was rampant with entries containing the decryption key. To clarify, every single post on the front page, including all of the top stories, were about the HD DVD key. However, when I woke up this morning there were no more HD DVD keys, everything was back to normal, save the top story about a blog post from Digg co-founder Kevin Rose basically saying that we will not censor your HD DVD key posts anymore.
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.
HD DVD is a known sponsor of Digg, so this is a pretty big decision from the folks that run Digg. What it shows us is that when people join together they do in fact have the power to influence decisions. Karl Marx would be proud of what transpired last night, as this was as crystal clear an example as ever of the proletariat joining together to combat the bourgeoisie.
What does this mean for the future of digital rights management? Well, for one, I think it certainly shows that the population will not accede to every ludicrous demand made from the AACS, RIAA, and the like. Digg users, who collectively are one of the wisest audiences online, know their rights and as demonstrated last night are certainly willing to fight for them.
Moving forward it will be interesting to keep our eye on two things: 1) will this DRM-revolt move from HD DVDs to audio like iTunes; and 2) will Digg take the same course of action in the future and censor itself, or will it stand by its community and fight for what its million+ users believe in. Only time will tell but I am certainly satisfied with the way this thing played out, we can once again say that each and every one of our words actually means something.