Oh yeah, I can digg it
Written by Jeremy Snow
Published on 05/08/2007
Originally from Binary Culture / [the-lowdown.net]
http://www.binaryculture.net

Oh yeah, I can Digg it…

An amazing phenomenon has occurred on the Internet in the past week. Many of you may have heard about it already, and those who haven’t heard about it will know the details by the time this editorial is through.

For those of you who know the story already, I’ll pull a Quentin Tarantino and tell you my reaction ahead of time: HELL YEAH!

Here’s the story in a nutshell: Someone cracked the code on the HD-DVD. The code is basically a 32-digit string of numbers and letters that can allow anyone with the right know-how to crack and produce HD DVDs. This code then ended up on Digg.com. Now, whether or not it originated there or the publicity exploded there is still up in the air, but what can be said is that is where the shit hit the fan. Users began posting and re-posting the code and the HD-DVD company discovered this. Horrified, they issued a cease-and-desist order to the creators of Digg and the moderators and administrators began to take on what I would call ‘damage control’.

This ‘damage control’ did exactly the opposite. Enraged at the censorship, frequent ‘Diggers’ expressed their disappointment in the Digg staff for caving to the censorship hounds and continued to post the code.

In an amazing move, the Digg moderators put their hands up and admitted defeat at the hands of the mob of readers that soon flooded the boards. What follows is the blog of Kevin Rose (creator of Digg) from the night of the incident:

~~~

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.

I will also add at this time that the title for his blog was (and remains) the HD-DVD code.

Now, all of this would be pretty interesting news in itself. What makes the story amazing are the reactions from the media.

In what seemed like a rather surprising turn of events, a large number of newspapers and other mediums expressed their opinion that Digg did the right thing. In the face of a cease and desist order from HD-DVD on one side and thousands of angry consumers on the other, one newspaper admitted that it was no surprise that Kevin took the actions that he did.

Another term came into play as well, Web 2.0: the phenomenon of websites with vast membership and readership (Myspace, Youtube, Digg and others). In cases like these, many of the analysts argued, the creators of the sites give up the right to say ‘no’ (to publishing content) and are at the hands of their consumer, who possesses much more power in large numbers online than in the real world.

This example is pretty easy to understand. If you go to Old Navy or some other store, and you have a terrible time and nobody helps you, you probably won’t ever shop there again. However, while you are having a horrible time, there are many other customers who may be enjoying their shopping and will return to Old Navy again and again. It’s very difficult to stand up in the middle of Old Navy and convince everyone to walk out and never shop there again.

The internet arena is vastly different. There are thousands upon thousands of stores for everything you could possibly want or need…and since the actions of the administrators affects all of its members simultaneously and in the same way, they are more likely to lose huge swaths of members at a time. In Digg’s case, caving to censorship and removing the problem threads could have resulted in a huge dent in their reputation as well as losing thousands of members if they didn’t handle it correctly.

Luckily for them, they did handle it correctly.

What probably stands out as the most encouraging element of this story is the fact that there have been no serious consequences for any of the involved parties. The code is now an internet phenomenon. It had a song and its own domain name for a limited time, and it’s far beyond damage control at this point.

The mob struck out, and the mob won. Right now there are executives of big corporations looking at this situation and realizing the power that consumers still have in the Internet arena. It’s about damn time, I’d say.

I hope they learn from this. I hope the RIAA was paying real close attention too. You want to hone in on censorship? You want to crack down and put some guy who downloaded a Green day album in jail when we already spend over 4 billion dollars a year on prison systems?

Don’t make me laugh. Seriously…the mob wins. It won over HD-DVDs, it has won over music and it will win over anything and everything else that it wants. If the mob doesn’t like the way you do business it can and will end you faster than you came into existence. This goes for all of the corporations all over the country that try to engage in scare tactics.

It isn’t about legality. It’s about desire. It’s about the mob’s desire for something. No amount of legal jibber-jabber or threats will ever curb that desire. That’s why any attempts to do so will always end in frustration on the end of the corporations and comedy on my end.