Friday, May 04, 2007

MUTINY at Digg.com!


Avast!


In an incident that resembled a digital version of the the sacking of Maracaibo, Digg.com bit off more than it could chew when its attempt to comply with the demands of the movie studios antagonized its users into open revolt.

NYT: In Web Uproar, Antipiracy Code Spreads Wildly
Sophisticated Internet users have banded together over the last two days to publish and widely distribute a secret code used by the technology and movie industries to prevent piracy of high-definition movies.
The broader distribution of the code may not pose a serious threat to the studios, because it requires some technical expertise and specialized software to use it to defeat the copy protection on Blu-ray and HD DVD discs. But its relentless spread has already become a lesson in mob power on the Internet and the futility of censorship in the digital world.
An online uproar came in response to a series of cease-and-desist letters from lawyers for a group of companies that use the copy protection system, demanding that the code be removed from several Web sites.
Rather than wiping out the code — a string of 32 digits and letters in a specialized counting system — the legal notices sparked its proliferation on Web sites, in chat rooms, inside cleverly doctored digital photographs and on user-submitted news sites like
Digg.com.


Yet another example of the futility of trying to clamp down on web users who are damned and determined to do what they are going to do.

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