Speak Up Project

Have you ever heard of Digg? If not, it’s about time you did.

Digg is a social news website that empowers users to choose the content they want to read. If you like a story, you “digg” it and it moves up the chain. Only the best stories make it to the top pages for each category. Digg has been a powerful tool for infogeeks and technophiles all over the world.

Over the last week, an individual had cracked the code put in HD-DVD players that decrypts the data. This means that software can now easily be written to circumvent copy protection digital rights management. The key was owned by the MPAA according to US law. Due to this, the key has been deemed as an illegal number. Despite all this, the key was published all over the Internet.

When the key was published, Digg users did everything in their power to distribute the key and promote it to the front page. It worked. DCMA takedown notices were issued to Digg and their users promptly demanding the keys to come down due to copyright infringement. Users did not abide and Digg was left in a difficult position.

A few days later, Digg founder Kevin Rose made a statement about the position they were forced into. To quote his words:

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.

Here’s an image of what the Digg pages looked like. Click here.

Digg decided not to err on the side of caution and listen to their users. As one of the top visited websites on the Internet, this move means so much for the pacing and direction of our Internet than we have seen in a long time. By giving in to the democracy of the issue, Digg users won over the law and Digg decided not to take down the stories with the HD-DVD key.

Today a story surfaced in the Times Online about the efforts being made to take legal action against bloggers who published the key. Bloggers on the Internet have been claiming that such a matter is an issue of free speech. Despite the legal implications they are fighting for their right to spread the information.

The matter is still unresolved, and people are finding more and more reasons to confront this issue. The question is, what really is free speech? When laws are being broken, and people are suffering at the hand of “free speech” what should happen? Does free speech receive a definition that’s all too liberally applied? It’s for us to decide.