Does 09-F9-11-02-9D-74-E3-5B-D8-41-56-C5-63-56-88-C0 look familiar to you? Well if you are into entertainment and technology it should. That one HD DVD encryption code has been all over the web for couple of days now and on Monday Digg took the initiative to delete any post that had that code after they got a warning notice from the HD DVD authorities.

By taking the post down Digg stays free from getting charges legally and in return it ticked off a lot of Digg users. Digg forgot the potential of its users and with an hour or less after Digg took down the initial post with the encryption code, multiple posts with that code popped up on the front page with over 2000 diggs each, talk about community power. The Digg community revolted together and Digg was offline for a short while.

Kevin Rose, founder of Dig, wrote this:

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

Digg forgot that it was the user comunity who made Digg who they are today, and challenging them and bowing down to big companies would definitely destroy them.

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