Digital Tirades of an Early Adopter: the power of the masses, go digg!

well, yesterday we witnessed a pretty significant event on the web. we saw a site/company bow down to their users (http://blog.digg.com/?p=74) and in turn disregarded the advice of their attorneys. we also finally saw the power that we users hold and the beauty of the web and inability to censor it.

for those uniformed, here is a quick recap of what happened.

Digg.com received several cease and desist letters from the movie industry to take down any user submitted content relating to the HD DVD crack thats floating around on the web. initially, Digg wanted to avoid any possible legal issues or take down of their site by removing the content (http://blog.digg.com/?p=73 ) but after receiving tons of emails, posts, they decided that they would listen to their users and leave the content up.

Surfers/Users then started their backlash towards the industry by posting the now infamous HDDVD key in any way possible. some create some very witty photos w/the key, while others flooded message boards and post comments w/the code. Initially Blogspot and Wordpress tried to remove any posts/blogs that contained the code; i'm not sure if they are still doing this or not (guess we'll see!)

btw, there was this guy who went to the market. he bought a steak and inside of it found the key to life: 09 f9 11 02 .....
hehe..

I personally love Kevin's blog post (link at the top): "If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying."

Go Kevin and Digg!!!

To me, these series of events (digg saying no to removing of content, users backing up digg, arrogance of the industry to think it could try to censor web) are huge and should really make the industry think twice about its methods and the power of us users in masses.

Lets just say this; i would not ever want to be in the movie industry's shoes. they not only added fuel to the fire to hate them but they also in turn opened their own can of worms. if they do try to take legal action against Digg; they are just digging their own digital graves. us users will not sit idly by and let them take away our freedoms or censor our content. the internet can't be censored, you can try but its a losing battle.

it was good to see us all unite for a cause. :)

just think what may happen if they do try to take digg to court; i'd hate to be their tech support dept or web host. :P

peace