Digg Surrenders to Community

wise move

a) Nothing happens, Digg maintains some respect for listening to the users, not corporate lawyers.
or
b) They get served, taken down. Digg admins setup Digg 2. Loyal users move in knowing the admins are on their side.

This is a win-win for social site democracy.

Cory Doctorow has a rather cheeky, and legal, solution to the problem “another way of doing this would be to take down each user post on receipt of a takedown notice, then post PDFs of each takedown notice that he received in their place, which PDFs will contain the magic number. That way, the information stays alive and Digg doesn’t get sued. I’m not a lawyer, but this has been the strategy I’ve pursued with my class blog, which received a takedown for the same number.”

“This is utterly nuts. This is the Digg community taking control of the site!”

Yeah this will keep the digg site very very interesting to watch over the next couple of weeks and months.

I find the large number of people who are claiming freedom of speech when posting things on Digg is somewhat disturbing. While the community may run Digg, they don’t own Digg. Kevin Rose and company have to be responsible for what happens with their creation. If people want to put the code on their own sites, that is their choice.

I think the other interesting question this raises is whether information can ever die once it gets released into the public. The code has spread so fast, they’re not going to have enough lawyers to be able to send all the cease & desist letters.

“While the community may run Digg, they don’t own Digg.”

The community -is- Digg. Its a symbiotic relationship.

Having called this a mob is exactly right, because they would rather destroy and tear down Digg.com than to address the issues in a respectful manner, mindful of the site’s needs as a business.

Yes, there’s the whole issue about Terms of Service and the fact no one reads them all the way through. There’s also the confluence of Freedom of Speech and Prevention of Censorship that the majority of the audience just cannot separate.

But it was that line — the “If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.” line — that drives me nuts.

“The community -is- Digg. Its a symbiotic relationship.”

EXACTLY. However, in this case it is the Parasitic form of Symbiosis.

Digg.com will fail as a business unless they can shake off the parasites, and start cultivating mutualism.

CORRECTION: I meant other posts calling them a mob. Joshua, I know you didn’t use that term in this post. (My kingdom for an EDIT button!)

I think this is really the first sign of life in a community online. The community acted together in a way larger and in the face of its creators. Go diggers.

Nice to see this discussion. I agree with pauric…this community-is-Digg.

Community aspects completely aside, the post seems to be a clear violation of the DMCA (No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that–) (PS: IANAL)

As bad as it is the DMCA is the current law until we change it.

What if the posting was some other illegal act - something not as geekily hip as cracking DVDs? Would the outcry be as loud?

You know that your social site is working when your users do things you didn’t imagine and hadn’t designed for, right?

Thank you for bringing this up.

It’s ridiculous how Digg bowed down to the mob rule. Past generations fought for their right to have their opinions voiced without gov’t oppression. This generation seems to be fighting for the right to flood an illegal hexadecimal string (bad wording on my part, but you get what I mean).

Social web isn’t much useful when mob rule comes along.

Makes me wonder if others are now going to post cracks and serial keys on Digg? I’m sure some people from Netscape might do it to take down Digg :p

“You know that your social site is working when your users do things you didn’t imagine and hadn’t designed for, right?”

Exactly. And Kevin Rose understood this did the right thing. Took the site down rather than deleting the whole HD-DVD content.

I am not sure if law officials insist Digg to remove all the content. Who cares. The key will be there all over the internet by now. Why the hell they don’t invest more money on technology than attorneys?

Just goes to show the power of the consumer and market audience. If Diggit did not do what they did, people would discredit them and maybe even move on and then Diggit would loose out. This way they keep everyone happy

agree!!!! 100%

yeah it was cool - keep digging guys

Itz Nice to see this discussion.. i agree 100%

Really nice! The comments and the community article is good.

I think this is really the first sign of life in a community online. The community acted together in a way larger and in the face of its creators. Go diggers.