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Censorship The Internet Your Rights Online

Digg.com Attempts To Suppress HD-DVD Revolt 1142

fieryprophet writes "An astonishing number of stories related to HD-DVD encryption keys have gone missing in action from digg.com, in many cases along with the account of the diggers who submitted them. Diggers are in open revolt against the moderators and are retaliating in clever and inventive ways. At one point, the entire front page comprised only stories that in one way or another were related to the hex number. Digg users quickly pointed to the HD DVD sponsorship of Diggnation, the Digg podcast show. Search digg for HD-DVD song lyrics, coffee mugs, shirts, and more for a small taste of the rebellion." Search Google for a broader picture; at this writing, about 283,000 pages contain the number with hyphens, and just under 10,000 without hyphens. There's a song. Several domain names including variations of the number have been reserved. Update: 05/02 05:44 GMT by J : New blog post from Kevin Rose of Digg to its users: "We hear you."
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Digg.com Attempts To Suppress HD-DVD Revolt

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  • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 01, 2007 @10:27PM (#18951023)
    If you're one of the endless little "Slashdot is dead, go to digg" trolls that reply to stories every now & again, I (and the rest of slashdot) would like to say: "Fuck You".

    Your wonderful little Digg isn't looking so wonderful now - is it?

    In comparison to Digg's censorship, slashdot has the hex key as a story tag. [slashdot.org]
    • by Marcion ( 876801 ) on Tuesday May 01, 2007 @10:34PM (#18951091) Homepage Journal
      All credit to the song, its quite good actually, I am gonna set it as my ringtone I think.

      Who'd have thought, they would use all that Web 2.0 wisdom of the crowds stuff to hide the fact they censor everything.

      kdawson, and the old Taco himself, we salute you.
    • by Sancho ( 17056 ) on Tuesday May 01, 2007 @11:10PM (#18951505) Homepage
      It's pretty crappy, because according to the DMCA, they only have to take down content which they are specifically notified of. There's no way that the MPAA is keeping up with the storm on Digg, so it's got to be the admins being proactive. When you start censoring, you start losing some of the protections that the DMCA affords you. I doubt this will be the end of Digg, but if the MPAA got ballsy enough, they might try to shut the site down, since it's clearly impossible to keep all that user-submitted content off of the front page.
    • by nmb3000 ( 741169 ) on Tuesday May 01, 2007 @11:25PM (#18951657) Journal
      Well, this is just great! Thanks a lot guys! We thought we'd give this a fair run, see how things went, etc. I think we've been fair, very patient, but after the stunts pulled today I'm afraid we've spoken to our lawyers and we have to pull the plug. You only have yourselves to blame. Thanks for helping us test the system. So long.

      - Al Gore

      +++AH*$*&*^!NA(*$&!(HDSF....[ NO CARRIER ]
    • by Cylix ( 55374 ) on Tuesday May 01, 2007 @11:45PM (#18951899) Homepage Journal
      In the spirit of a new fad...

      Where is your digg now?

    • by Sloppy ( 14984 ) on Wednesday May 02, 2007 @12:16AM (#18952237) Homepage Journal
      One of the things I like about Slashdot is how they handled the Cult of Scientology thing. Slashdot complied with style. [slashdot.org] Cowards [digg.com], by contrast, have no style.
  • Credibility (Score:5, Insightful)

    by airencracken ( 993443 ) on Tuesday May 01, 2007 @10:31PM (#18951053) Homepage Journal
    Digg took a big hit to their credibility today. They underestimated the outrage caused by the banning of users and removal of stories. Perhaps they'll learn that the site is made by the users. Without diggers, there is no digg.
    • Re:Credibility (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Marcion ( 876801 ) on Tuesday May 01, 2007 @10:43PM (#18951201) Homepage Journal
      "Our goal is always to maintain a purely democratic system for the submission and sharing of information" ... " the posting of the encryption key infringes their intellectual property rights. In order to respect these rights" ... "we have removed postings of the key that have been brought to our attention." - Digg

      '"intellectual property" - The distorting and confusing term did not arise by accident. Companies that gain from the confusion promoted it... eject the narrow perspectives and simplistic picture the term "intellectual property" suggests. Consider each of these issues separately, in its fullness, and you have a chance of considering them well.' -- RMS

    • by DavidLeblond ( 267211 ) <me@@@davidleblond...com> on Tuesday May 01, 2007 @10:48PM (#18951267) Homepage
      Raise your hand if you are surprised.

      Digg is a website that is only as good as the users that contribute to it. Its user base is a bunch of people that... well... lets face it, watch Diggnation.

      I rest my case.
    • Re:Credibility (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ZachPruckowski ( 918562 ) <zachary.pruckowski@gmail.com> on Tuesday May 01, 2007 @10:49PM (#18951273)
      This just proves that the journey is as important as the destination. Both digg and slashdot will ultimately have to remove most of the instances of the number eventually, but digg is doing it in secret. Ultimately, slashdot will get a DMCA notice, and can chose whether or not to fight it. If they do what they did last time [slashdot.org], then they'll come out as heroes. If the comments disappear in the dead of night and people notice, they'll get attacked.
      • Re:Credibility (Score:5, Informative)

        by russotto ( 537200 ) on Tuesday May 01, 2007 @10:59PM (#18951395) Journal
        If Slashdot gets a DMCA section 512 notice, they can probably safely trash it. The number isn't copyrightable; it's not a creative work. More likely they'll get a C&D accusing them of violating DMCA 1201 (17 USC 1201(a)(2) and 17 USC 1201(b)(1) ). Then it's the 2600 case all over again -- and DVDCCA won that one.
        • Re:Credibility (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Breakfast Pants ( 323698 ) on Tuesday May 01, 2007 @11:30PM (#18951729) Journal
          Informative? You are mistakenly thinking the DMCA can only be used to send takedowns for copyrighted material--most people at the time of the DeCSS hubub had no problem with that provision. The problem most people had, and have, with it is that the DMCA also says that notices may also be sent to take down things whose primary purpose is to circumvent digital copyright protection schemes (the DeCSS program was the first high profile thing to be taken down-- *it* wasn't copyrighted by the people taking it down, just like this number isn't). The argument under the law will not be whether this key is copyrighted, it will be whether posting it is posting a circumventing device.
  • Ah, how timely (Score:5, Insightful)

    by metlin ( 258108 ) on Tuesday May 01, 2007 @10:32PM (#18951059) Journal
    The fortune cookie at the bottom of the page reads -

    "Anyone attempting to generate random numbers by deterministic means is, of course, living in a state of sin." -- John Von Neumann

    Indeed.
  • by craznar ( 710808 ) on Tuesday May 01, 2007 @10:33PM (#18951071) Homepage
    The harder you sqeeze, the more comes out.

    MPAA Lesson of the day.

    00110000001110010100011000111001001100010011000100 11000000110010001110010100010000110111001101000100 01010011001100110101010000100100010000111000001101 00001100010011010100110110010000110011010100110110 00110011001101010011011000111000001110000100001100 11000000100000
  • Just so you know (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 01, 2007 @10:34PM (#18951087)
    09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
  • by cioxx ( 456323 ) on Tuesday May 01, 2007 @10:35PM (#18951103) Homepage
    Since its inception Digg had a community-driven submission and voting process which did not supress free speech. I've seen endless stories and links to torrent sites like piratebay, demonoid, bitme, et al. and Digg management turned a blind eye on directing users to places of "copyright infringement"

    Today it's different for some reason. One of the managers posted a justification on the official blog [digg.com]:

    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. Diggs 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.


    Funny stuff.
    • by martin-boundary ( 547041 ) on Tuesday May 01, 2007 @11:15PM (#18951543)
      The funniest thing about the sort of attitude you quote from Digg's management is that they have no clue about the DMCA at all.

      The DMCA rule is (loosely paraphrased): if a site doesn't censor its users posts and implements an automatic takedown system with notification to the user, then it's safe from copyright infringement claims (safe harbor provision). By doing this, the copyright claimants must ask for each offending comment to be removed individually, and each time some comment is removed, the user who posted the comment receives a realtime notification and he can decide that he's not infringing anything and is allowed to put the post back up. After that, the post cannot be removed again, unless a court looks at the case and makes a ruling.

      If however a site censors or modifies its users posts, then it is effectively taking editorial ownership and *that* is when the site becomes potentially liable for copyright infringement claims by third parties.

      • by cpt kangarooski ( 3773 ) on Wednesday May 02, 2007 @12:33AM (#18952389) Homepage
        This is precisely why I dislike people talking about the DMCA, as opposed to the particular portions of Title 17 that happen to be at issue. The DMCA did a lot of unrelated things.

        You're describing, not all that accurately, the takedown procedure at 17 USC 512. The thing is, that only applies in cases of copyright infringement. But the current fuss hasn't got a thing to do with copyright infringement. It has to do with trafficking in circumvention devices under 17 USC 1201, which has no connection to 512 whatsoever. There is no 512 safe harbor for trafficking.

        I'd say that they have more of a clue than you do.
  • by at_slashdot ( 674436 ) on Tuesday May 01, 2007 @10:36PM (#18951115)
    Title says all ;-)
  • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 01, 2007 @10:36PM (#18951119)
    Notwithstanding the fact that most articles are either innacurate or stupid, they will IP ban anyone who says anything bad about their site. Digg is one step up from "myspace"

    Also, you can get a perm ban from digg if you use the star of david as your "digg icon"... no kidding!
  • Honestly curious... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ParadoxDruid ( 602583 ) on Tuesday May 01, 2007 @10:37PM (#18951127) Homepage

    Digg actually posted a reply to the community on their blog here [digg.com].

    What I'm honestly curious about is this: Is this numeric string code copyrighted? Where is the copyright filed, if so? Or is it a trade secret? Do trade secrets need to be filed or declared somehow? Is a trade secret intellectual property that must be removed when a theatening (maybe DMCA) notice is sent?

    I'm nowhere near understanding the complexities of the current intellectual property legal codes in the USA, let alone how they actually apply in this situation. All I see is hysteria.

    • by SpectreHiro ( 961765 ) on Tuesday May 01, 2007 @11:06PM (#18951463) Homepage

      What I'm honestly curious about is this: Is this numeric string code copyrighted? Where is the copyright filed, if so?

      Standard Disclaimer: IANAL -- By United States Copyright law, and I believe the laws of all signees of the Berne Convention (163 nations), a work is "copyrighted" the instant it is recorded in some tangible form. There is no need for it to be registered with any legal body. The United States Copyright Office does offer a registration service, but it's more a matter of convenience than of necessity.

      Now, a sixteen digit hexidecimal number almost certainly fails to meet the minimum requirements for novelty and authorship (whatever the hell such qualities are referred to legally) and thus is not under the protection of copyright. However, the distribution of encryption codes undoubtedly falls afoul of the draconion terms of the DMCA, which has basically nothing to do with copyright.

      The US Copyright Office runs a fairly informative website that's well worth the 10 or so minutes it takes to skim --> http://www.copyright.gov/ [copyright.gov]

  • Wikipedia (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 01, 2007 @10:37PM (#18951129)
    Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] has chosen to speedy-delete the article and all similarly titled articles based on the hexadecimal number. I found the deletion review [wikipedia.org] at this link. It seems like the only way left to get the article undeleted is to present good arguments there. I, for my part, have been blocked by another admin for posting my undelete comment. It looks like censorship is in season.
    • by micksam7 ( 1026240 ) on Tuesday May 01, 2007 @10:51PM (#18951301)
      The key has also snuck into other places [wikipedia.org] on wikipedia as well. :)
    • Re:Wikipedia (Score:5, Insightful)

      by bky1701 ( 979071 ) on Tuesday May 01, 2007 @11:12PM (#18951529) Homepage
      I know, it's sad, but it's not like anyone didn't see it coming. Wikipedia sold out long ago, now the only thing they care about is easy funding (overall) and keeping themselves admins (just about every admin...). None of them are going to speak out because it hurts #1, and hurting #1 hurts #2. The emperor has no clothes, ad nauseum.

      So what's the next wiki that's going to take over? Cowboynealpedia?
      • Re:Wikipedia (Score:5, Insightful)

        by asninn ( 1071320 ) on Wednesday May 02, 2007 @04:53AM (#18954011)
        Wikipedia has a clear purpose/goal, though - namely, to create an encyclopaedia. It's not a democracy, an experiment in free speech, an effort to resist censorship, the EFF, Wikileaks, or anything like that.

        There certainly are a bunch of problems with the way the community is being run (and I say that as someone who is an admin on en.wp and has been for a couple of years already), but the fact remains that Wikipedia's goal is to write an encyclopaedia - and NOTHING else.
  • by nobodyman ( 90587 ) on Tuesday May 01, 2007 @10:38PM (#18951147) Homepage
    And quick to fall. I cannot believe how swift and concerted this response is. I bet the digg admins are kinda wishing they had, oh I dunno.... EDITORS?
  • Digg meltdown (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ISurfTooMuch ( 1010305 ) on Tuesday May 01, 2007 @10:39PM (#18951151)
    I've been watching this develop tonight, and Digg has gone into meltdown, not so much in the technical sense but in the sense that the user base is in open revolt, posting stories containing the code and commenting on events over...and...over...and over. As quickly as one article is removed, two more appear, and the tone of them is getting angrier and angrier by the hour.

    Just my opinion, but I don't see how Digg can come out of this with any credibility left. Was this ever about the DMCA? Perhaps in the beginning, but it's turned into a battle of wills between the Digg admins and its user base, and, even if the admins could somehow manage to magically obliterate every article on this subject, they're going to have a hard time explaining themselves to the user base, who are, by and large, mad as hell.

    And to those who are, indeed, mad as hell, consider what you will do after this incident is over. Kevin and the other admins may indeed fear a lawsuit if they don't take these articles down. Is that wrong, or is the law that allows this possibility the thing that is wrong? It's easy to sit there and paste line after line of numbers, but what would you do in the face of a lawsuit, even if it it's a ridiculous lawsuit supported by a law crafted just for this kind of abuse? You're taking action now, but will you get organized to push for real change tomorrow, the day after, and the day after that?
  • Beyond the hex (Score:5, Interesting)

    by loconet ( 415875 ) on Tuesday May 01, 2007 @10:41PM (#18951191) Homepage
    As I said numerous times,

    People don't seem to understand that this goes beyond a silly little hex key. The key has been out for months. A new one will come and it will also be broken. This is not about that. This is about consumers finally standing up against the bullshit being fed to them by media giants. They crossed the line today when they forced digg to censor user generated content, not only articles but also comments and somewhat related content.

    As a consumer i am sick and tired of getting fabricated excuses as to why i can't play what I've bought wherever the hell i want. NO, i don't care if you keep making up the story that DRM is to protect yourself from piracy. I don't buy it. DRM will be broken no matter what. DRM is there to ensure your revenue stream by controlling where I can play the content. Now you go and censor my news source giving a bullshit excuse that a randomly generated hex number is some how your IP? You install rootkits in my computer, You stop me from using my content I bought the way I want? pretend to own _MY_ hardware? Enough of that bullshit.

    This is a revolt [facebook.com] against the greediness and blatant disrespect for the consumer that comes from the mpaa/riaa.

    SAVE THE NUMBERS, SAVE THE WORLD. REMEMBER The 1st of MAY.

  • Screw digg! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Cervantes ( 612861 ) on Tuesday May 01, 2007 @10:44PM (#18951213) Journal
    Yeah, screw Digg! Those bastards, censoring shit, trying to hide things, giving in to "The Man" and the fear of legal battles. Fuck them! Slashdot rules!

    Hey, on a completely unrelated note, can anyone point me to that copy of book 3 of Scientology that was posted here a few years back?
    kthnx.
    • Re:Screw digg! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by metlin ( 258108 ) on Tuesday May 01, 2007 @10:51PM (#18951299) Journal
      The thing is, Slashdot took off the Scientology crap because they were served a legal notice.

      Also, Slashdot also provided a detailed writeup on what had happened, why they were taking down the said comments (which happened to paste entire texts) and gave some pointers on finding the said information.

      Which is completely different from Digg removing the story and not telling anyone about it (until of course the users discovered it). And their response was an after-the-fact event, made worse by the fact that Digg receives sponsorship for Diggnation from the very folks this thing seems to piss off.

      The two are completely different, and Slashdot did it right. Digg did not do it right and the users are revolting. More power to them.
  • by Tackhead ( 54550 ) on Tuesday May 01, 2007 @10:46PM (#18951251)
    Ahem. You know it's gonna be one of those weird filks when I post with "With Apologies To" in the Subject: line. Not sure how this got here. Probably the same twisted place that Natalie's Restaurant came from.

    At any rate, this is a parody of Allan Sherman's tirade against all-digit dialing, "The Let's All Call Up AT&T And Protest To The President March". By staggering coincidence, the original was inspired by someone posting it in on USENET in the .mp3.comedy group. Weren't me, although my parents turned me onto Mr. Sherman's parodies by giving me their vinyl original that they'd owned since before I was born.

    By even more coincidence, you can sing it as either: "Let's all post the Processing Key and fuck AACSLA" March, for rather obvious reasons, or the "Let's all post To D-I-G-G and say 'fark you' to Kevin Rose" March, (on account of every single story on digg.com's front page, as the original poster already linked to in TFA)

    By utterly unsurprising coincidence, and like every filk I write here, this parody is in the public domain, and you can sing it however you like, although in this case it'll probably be funnier if you keep the numbers the way they was written.

    AACS VERSION:

    It's the "Let's all post the processing key and fuck AACSLA!" march!
    Watch their lawyers worry and fidget,
    Cease and DE-sisting sixteen hex digits!

    So let's all post the processing key and fuck AACSLA, march!
    So protest! (so protest!)
    Do your best! (do your best!)
    Let us show them that we post in unity.
    If they won't (if they won't!),
    Change the rules (change the rules!),
    Let's buy our movies from another monopoly!

    Let's all post the processing key and fuck AACSLA march.
    Let us wake their landsharks from slumber,
    Get a pencil, I'll give you their number.

    It's Nine, Eff-nine, One-one, Two, Nine-D,
    SevenTY-four, Eee-three, Five-B... (dash!)
    Dee-eight, four-one, five-six, Cee-five,
    Sixty-three, fifty-six, eight-eight... (hyphen!)
    And now that you're on the right road,
    Don't forget to end with Cee-0h!

    Here's to freedom and fair use! 09F9! 1102s!
    Watch your HD-DVD! 9D74! E35B!
    Let's keep that 16-byte key alive!
    D841! 56C5! AACS is totally broke! 6356! 88C0! Hooray!

    To arnezami's mental fiber,
    We'll erect a triumphal arch!
    For the "let's all post the processing key and fuck AACSLA!" march.

    And since we're long (about 2 and a half months!) past the point that a parody of the AACS key wouldn't be complete without the
    DIGG VERSION [digg.com]:

    It's the "Let's all post To D-I-G-G and say 'fark you' to Kevin Rose" march!
    Watch him worry, watch as he fidgets,
    As his users post sixteen hex digits!
    So let's all post to D-I-G-G and say 'fuck you' to Kevin Rose march.
    So protest! (so protest!)
    Do your best! (do your best!)
    Let us show him that we digg in unity.
    If he won't (if he won't!),
    Change the rules (change the rules!),
    Let's take our pageviews to Slashdot's company!

    Let's all post to D-I-G-G and say 'fuck you' to Kevin Rose march.
    Let us wake him up in his slumber.
    Get a pencil, I'll give you his number.

    It's Nine, Eff-nine, One-one, Two, Nine-D,
    SevenTY-four, Eee-three, Five-B... (dash!)
    Dee-eight, four-one, five-six, Cee-five,
    Sixty-three, fifty-six, eight-eight... (hyphen!)
    And now that you're on the right road,
    Don't forget to end with Cee-0h!

    Here's to freedom and fair use! 09F9! 1102s!
    Watch your HD-DVD! 9D74! E35B!
    Let's keep that 16-byte key alive! D841! 56C5!
    AACS is totally broke! 6356! 88C0! Hooray!

    To arnezami's mental fiber,
    We'll erect a triumphal arch!
    For the let's all post to D-I-G-G and say 'fuck you' to Kevin Rose march.

    And don't make me deal with this "Your comment has too few characters per line (currently 35.7)", because it's a long pair of

  • On-topic comment (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Old Wolf ( 56093 ) on Tuesday May 01, 2007 @10:52PM (#18951307)
    Something that nobody's explained, since this story broke:

    Whose bright idea was it to use the same 128-bit symmetric key for every DVD ??

    NB. Please don't mod this off-topic just because I said it wasn't.
    • Re:On-topic comment (Score:5, Informative)

      by shird ( 566377 ) on Tuesday May 01, 2007 @11:47PM (#18951925) Homepage Journal
      Something needs to be common between every DVD, otherwise you couldn't make players that can play every DVD.

      The keys are actually different for each DVD, but they are derived from a common secret, and hashed and mixed about etc. The system is actually quite clever, and not a single symmetric key by any means. But no matter how you slice it, there will always need to be a common shared secret which is used to derive the means to unlock the media. That shared secret isn't the key itself, but the "processing key" which is in part used to derive the real key for each disc (to put it in very simple terms).
  • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 01, 2007 @10:53PM (#18951327)
  • by Trollificus ( 253741 ) on Tuesday May 01, 2007 @11:05PM (#18951451) Journal

    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.

  • by zappepcs ( 820751 ) on Tuesday May 01, 2007 @11:35PM (#18951775) Journal
    because what the Digg users did to put the number on various posts on the Digg front page is exactly why government monitoring of communications of citizens will never net them the "terr'ists" messages. There are so many low tech ways to encode a message that can be broadcast in broad view of the public and still be coded that the government could spend billions or more man years trying to find them, never mind decode them. Some of those today included:

    A song, a t-shirt, a commercial, blog title, html color coding scheme, a bad poem, street directions, website name, and many others...

    This is EXACTLY why monitoring private communications will never stop covert communications. This is exactly why the DRM won't work, why the relative Patriot Act efforts will fail and why monitoring doesn't work. The fact that the bad guys know there is monitoring will ensure that they use something so covert that all of us will see it and not know it, which is BTW very LOW tech, so won't be caught by hitech monitoring systems.

    Whatever you think of Digg users, they have demonstrated an important thing. When someone needs to communicate, censorship will not work, the DMCA will fail to stop it, the Patriot Act cannot prevent the damage done and no new laws will fix this basic failure of preventative control.

    Any message that wants to get out will get out, be it a key, a program, or just a rebellious thought. Censorship does not work.

    Sure, there are those who pedantically will tell me it seems to be working in countries like China, but even there I think all they have done is slow down the information flow rather than cut it off. If writers in China want to post to blogs, they can get someone in Sweeden to write / host a dtmf translation program that takes a phone call, translates the DTMF and posts the information to the appropriate blog site/account. This would bypass all the censorship efforts to date.

    The plus side of this is that along the way, someone somewhere is going to find innovative ways to do things. My bet is that it will always be those that want to be uncensored that innovate most.
  • by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday May 01, 2007 @11:47PM (#18951923)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • by flyingfsck ( 986395 ) on Wednesday May 02, 2007 @12:16AM (#18952245)
    must be 09,F9,11,02,9D,74,E3,5B,D8,41,56,C5,63,56,88,C0

    Future data archaeologists will be dumbfounded by this number and will no doubt ascribe great religious significance to it.
  • by Bueller_007 ( 535588 ) on Wednesday May 02, 2007 @12:43AM (#18952499)
    http://blog.digg.com/?p=74 [digg.com]

    Digg This: 09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0
    by Kevin Rose at 9pm, May 1st, 2007 in Digg Website

    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
    • by BillGatesLoveChild ( 1046184 ) on Wednesday May 02, 2007 @02:01AM (#18953263) Journal
      Beautiful! Kevin of Digg's Response has all the signs of an arrogant businessman who flipped the bird to his users, and was freaked out when they flipped the bird back. He even pulls out the "What about the Children Argument" claiming '(eg. linking to pornography, illegal downloads, racial hate sites, etc.)'. He then goes on to add 'If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.' I mean, how childish. The guy made a bad call, and now he thinks he's Gandhi.

      The thing these arrogant upstarts forget is when you create something and the public use it, the public own it. Sure legally you have 'title', but if you try and mess with it the public will be at your throat. They've invested their time and effort in building up your business, and they're now a part of it too. MMPOGs like EverQuest and Star Wars Galaxies have discovered it the hard way, to the point Raph Koster warns upstarts once others use it, you cease to own it. But the message still hasn't got out.

      The smartest thing Kevin could have done is admitted a mistake and canceled the HD DVD Digg sponsorship to avoid conflict of interested. The smartest thing the board could do now is fire Kevin, before their investors see their hard earned cash peed up against the wall. The longer Kevin hisses and spits at his users, the more damage it does Digg. Digg dugg their own grave.

      (pause) feel the power, boys!
  • Digg is offline (Score:5, Interesting)

    by xaviel ( 1015137 ) on Wednesday May 02, 2007 @12:44AM (#18952507)
    Digg is officialy offline, the revolt suceeded!!
  • by tedivm ( 942879 ) on Wednesday May 02, 2007 @12:48AM (#18952569)
    From the offical Digg blog [digg.com], "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."

    At this point it looks like look much like a PR move. In an attempt to make themselves look good, they're acting like they're decided to take a stand against The Man, when in fact they're just bowing to pressure. Besides the fact that they just literally couldn't continue enforcing the censorship without turning off the site, they seem to ignore the fact that they didn't just remove articles containing the hex code, but articles containing the story of their censorship!

    Slashdot isn't making a big deal out of their lack of censorship, and they aren't issuing a war cry- but I can write F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 without having to worry about my account being deleted, and that means more to me than some half-assed excuse.

    Digg is attempting to shift the blame and rally a cause away from it, when it should be admitting that they all made a mistake and apologizing. Now its too late for them to gain the respect of their user base without a lot of long, hard work (if even that will be enough).
  • by Anthony Boyd ( 242971 ) on Wednesday May 02, 2007 @02:43AM (#18953457) Homepage

    I started a page for this, here [outshine.com]. It contains ribbons that use 5 colors. The 5 colors are comprised of the "secret" hex code that is being suppressed. Interested parties are free to use these ribbons on their own sites. If you would like to link your ribbon to an explanatory page, I provide one here [outshine.com].

Truly simple systems... require infinite testing. -- Norman Augustine

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