Let's see if I can recall the timeline of events properly:

• A universal encryption key that allows the unrestricted playback of any HD-DVD manufactured to this date was discovered by crackers on the doom9 forums. Huge blow to DRM.
• This key was posted on several Blogspot blogs.
• AACS Licensing, the creators of the HD-DVD DRM scheme, send a DMCA takedown notice to Google over the blogs. Hilariously enough, they publish (most of) the key in the text of the notice.
• The DMCA notice appears on chillingeffects.org and then in a news story on digg, where it reaches the top 10.
• The digg story quietly disappears.
• Another digg story is created, accusing digg of censorship and exhorting people to spread the key as wide as possible. This story also hits the top 10 and peaks at 16000 diggs, quite possibly a site record.
• The story disappears (a little too late.) The user who submitted it is banned.
• Outraged digg users begin spamming articles about the key and digging them as much as possible.
• A post on the digg staff blog admits that the stories were deleted due to fears of DMCA reprisal, and exhorts users not to post any more of them for the good of the site.
• digg is roundly criticized by its users for taking draconian action before actually recieving any legal threats. The spam continues unabated.

Last I looked, every single article on the front page of digg and every single article on the top 10 was related to the key. They also all have over 2000 diggs; where the average for a front page/top-10 story is more like 500. digg has apparently disabled the submission of new stories in response, but has not taken action against the existing stories. It's complete chaos.

I think this is "internet war" caliber, but who would have thought a site would go to war against its own users?

(P.S. Let's not post the key in this thread, in case Squeeks fears the DMCA despite not being American.)

Seems like I totally missed these events until you pointed them out, but thanks for giving me the answer to what these "I'm naming my first born [insert key here]" posts were all about.

Sorry to double-post, but I just noticed that the top post on digg is a blog post by the creator of digg containing the previously mentioned key and the message "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."

I think they might walk out of this unharmed, or even stronger than they used to be.

>>3
Ding dong, AACS LA lawsuit alert. If they get sued, chances are they'll go down for good.

They didn't delete those posts just for fun, you know... I know that I would have deleted them had it been my site, and I personally think that the users who posted them are quite some assholes.

Posting something which could get the site owner sued by a multinational body with hojillions of dollars and could easily rob him of his base for living is just evil. If you want to have free speech, have it on your own web site, where the one who might get screwed is you.

>>5
I dunno, I think it's cool what happened. Digg is a commercial site, you know. If Digg won't stand up for its users' right to free speech, then they want it replaced with a site that will... I think that's what the users' actions show, and that seems pretty cool to me.