Digg have shot themselves in the foot

Just about every blog is covering this but incase you haven’t read it i thought id cover it

HD DVD, a sponsor of Digg, asked Digg to remove a story which had a HD DVD key noted on it.

Digg replied through their 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

I’m amazed by the number of bloggers covering it. Here is some i found in just a few minutes

• Digg And The HD DVD Key - Digg Just Got Buried?
• When Nerds Run Your Website
• Huge User Revolt At Digg
• The Real Power of User Run Sites - The Digg Community Revolts
• Digg Users Flip Out
• Mob Takes Over at Digg, Widespread User Revolt
• Was it Worth It, Digg?
• How to Piss off A Digg User
• Users turn against Digg: anatomy of a massive online revolt
• can you digg it
• Digg.com in Chaos

Check out Digg to see this developing. I’d hate to be an investor in Digg just now!!

Update : Digg is down. An out of service message is being displayed

This is gonna be interesting!

update 2 : later on in the day digg founder kevin posted this on their 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