The Digg Users Were Revolting

This next story is supremely interesting for those of us involved with the development and moderation of communities, especially looking at how communities behave given tools, rules and norms.

Last night, there was a big dust-up over at social link sharing site Digg. (Digg in a nutshell: Users submit links to interesting sites, and other users vote them up or down. The highest voted, or "dugg" stories make it to the front page of the site, which is highly visible and drives a lot of traffic. Users can also comment on the stories. The site is kind of a Web 2.0 darling, and it features a very tech-centric, not to mention, young, audience.)

Now, there's a 16-character hexadecimal encryption key (basically, a sequence of 32 letters and numbers) going around that Linux hackers can use to "crack" the anti-copying measures on High Definition DVDs (HD-DVD).

(These anti-copying measures are generally known as Digital Rights Management, or DRM. A lot of people hate DRM with a passion, since while it's supposed to hinder piracy, it also gets in the way of legitimate users who try to make backup copies, or watch DVD movies on their iPods or whatever.)

Some links to HD-DVD crack Web sites were featured on Digg, so the HD-DVD people (the AACS) sent Digg a takedown notice. Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), bad things can happen to Web sites if they don't comply with takedown notices. So Digg started taking down the HD-DVD articles, and banning the accounts of people who kept reposting them.

The Digg users didn't like that very much.

They started submitting and digging so many HD-DVD stories, that for a while, every link on the main page of Digg featured the encryption key.

(Check out the BBC News article for a good summary of events.)

In the face of this user revolt, eventually, the Digg folks said: Okay -- you win: We're going to stop taking down the stories and deal with the consequences.

Naturally, those of us in the online community business are watching this with interest, not only because the DMCA affects us, too, but because sites that depend on community and user-generated content have to figure out what to do whenthe users don't want to play by the rules any more, and in essence, start to make their own.

After all, it's a pretty clear-cut rule violation (even if you don't think the DMCA is a very good law -- and a lot of people don't), so Digg could technically get sued into oblivion (unless the law gets changed).

I'm not an expert in intellectual property law (or much of anything else), so here are some reactions from around the Internet:

* Fark.com's Drew Curtis says that they don't have the venture capital millions to fight a legal battle which could "crush [them] into a fine paste", so they'll continue deleting violator's posts (but they will try to help Digg in their legal battle, if they can).

* TechCrunch's Michael Arrington says "Vive La Revolution" in 'Digg Surrenders to Mob'.

* Over at PaidContent.org, Staci Kramer writes that the lesson is:

"In other words, community first — even when it breaks your own rules, business second. This time. No clue as to what Digg will do the next time it's faced with a take-down request on another topic but it's clear who actually holds the power in this equation. What that means for business — not so clear."

* Gizmodo called it a "Digg Riot" and posted screenshots.

* Interestingly, BoingBoing's Cory Doctorow, who is pretty much an anti-DRM zealot, complied with his own takedown request on lawyer's advice.

* Here's the discussion thread over at Plate-of-Beans-Overthinker site Metafilter

* Tech industry gossip blog Valleywag characterizes this as another episode of social media navel-gazing (they have a summary of events, too -- with some swearing)

So, like I said, it's an interesting (not to mention complicated) story, since it touches on intellectual property, social media, and the wisdom of crowds/madness of mobs.

It's notable, though, that the DMCA is kind of a big, fat target, and that DRM isn't exactly a sympathetic party to this crowd.

What is more interesting, I think, is to see what lasting, downstream effects this has, and how communities can deal with similar situations when the lines aren't so clearly defined and the target isn't so universally reviled.

Thanks -- Joe

Tags: digg, hd-dvd, social media, online community, dmca