UPDATE: I’ve heard that Dirty Microbe is not sending out orders or paying their affiliate fees, buyer be very beware.
Kevin Rose, the founder of Digg was sent a cease and desist letter because someone posted the hex key that enables you to crack the HD-DVD DRM. Digg’s initial reaction was to take down the offending post kicking off what can only be called a virtual riot on digg.
Here’s a comment from Slashdot that I found in the comments on digg.
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.
Story made the front page of the bbc
Dirty Microbe has published the key in a good looking rainbow t-shirt that says sharing is caring. I couldn’t agree more, I’m not advocating stealing things, but I am always finding my media that I’ve purchased is constantly hobbled with attempts by media companies to stop me doing something with it. I’ve stopped buying itunes music because all the DRM’d itunes music won’t play over my connect360 tool on my Mac laptop, to stream through my xbox. It’s really annoying because it is the shiznit to have all my music avalable on my xbox and playable through my home theater and with a full size visualizer running on my 42″ plasma 
Want to learn more about copyright and code, check out the amazing talk from Lawrence Lessig, he’s a professor at Stanford and the formost thinker on issues of the misuse and over extension of copyright.
Originally published at Tcritic
