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A story that contained a HD-DVD encryption key was submitted to Digg. After it made it to the front page, the site moderators took it down.

Another user posted the number with the title as, ‘The number.Again’. It made it to the front page in record time. That story was taken down as well. Why?

“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.” (Digg Blog)

 What followed totally blew away anything that I have ever seen before. The power of the mob!

Digg was flooded with the HD-DVD stories containing the encryption key and 100 percent of the front page popular stories were on it. We all know how much Diggers hate MPAA and the RIAA and this censoring by Digg caused an uproar and a ‘revolt’. There was also a link made between HD-DVD and Kevin Rose’s Podcast, Diggnation. HD-DVD sponsors this podcast and many Diggers believe that this may be the reason Kevin caved in and moderated the stories.

Kevin Rose, usually loved by all his users has never seen this side of them. He is trying to win back the mob and this is what he blogged:

Digg This: 09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0

Yes! The encryption Key…

Here is what he had to say:

“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”

I personally feel that a number cannot be a copyright infringement. It was the key that protected the copyrights and not the copyright itself! There are so many comments on Digg that I was p*ssing myself laughing. Everyone is trying to get the number up there on digg, let it be through submiting stories, via comments and even pictures! Click here for an example.

Wow! This is what I call the 21st Century Digital Revolt. I think soon the MPAA and RIAA will realise that DRM doesn’t work anymore.

Here is a very brief 10 step list:

1. Make a list or a How-to tutorial: If you look at past Digg posts, you will find an endless number of ‘Top 10 Photoshop tricks’ tutorials and ‘Top 30 CSS’ sites lists. To top it all, take this post as an example!

2. Flame the RIAA: Post any story that is negative about the RIAA, it is definitely going onto the front page.

3. Flame the RIAA again!: Flame the RIAA again and make it to the top, twice! You can add in MPAA and Sony too to spice it up a bit!

4. A Witty or Catchy title is always a Bonus: Post your story with a catchy title, this applies not only to Digg but to anything you write. ‘Why this is’ ‘How the RIAA..’, ‘5 reasons…’ are a few examples.

5. Write about Digg and Kevin Ross: Diggers love Digg and just about any news related to Digg and its founder.

6. Write about the evil alliance: Writing anything bad about George bush, Fox News, Wal-Mart, Microsoft will get you there…

7. Write about Google, Apple, Firefox, YouTube, Ubuntu: These are the good-doers in Diggers eyes. Write about them and you will be on the front page (I hope). C’mon how many freaking Ubuntu articles have you seen on the front page?!!

8. Get your friends to digg for you: A friend in need is a friend indeed and this applies to Digg as well. Add top diggers to your friends list and Digg their articles. They might Digg your articles in return and vice-versa. You can also get all your 50+ (MSN) messenger contacts to Digg for you, Hey you can even co-ordinate a massive digging session!

9. Use a fancy profile icon: Looks go a long way. On the predominately white background Digg page, bright coloured Profile Icons stand out. You have more chances of being Dugg if you have a colourful profile icon, as this attracts attention.

10. Last but not the least: Write a ‘10 steps to get onto the Digg Front Page‘ article! Hey, it is worth a try…

Doesn’t that frustrate you? You have a few minutes to kill or have a break and you can’t access Digg. Here is a simple trick to access digg when it is down and I hope it will work for you. It has for me most of the time…

Digg usually only blocks entry from http://www.digg.com/ and http://www.digg.com/news when it is down. If you try any other digg address you can still get through.

Go to http://www.digg.com/news/upcoming instead and you should be able to access digg and get digging in no time! Any other address like http://www.digg.com/news/page1 works as well.

I couldn’t get through digg and it displayed the Out of Service page. I put in http://www.digg.com/news/upcoming and was able to see the page. (Screenshot below)

Happy digging!

How many of you have noticed that the Digg Podcasts section does not have a bury option. There are many brilliant podcasts out there but some of them, I just want to ‘Ok, this is lame!’ ‘em.

Well I know it is still in betab but don’t you think Digg Podcasts should have a bury option and be consistent in design and functionality with the rest of the website?

Please Vote below: