I have to hand it to him, Kevin Rose has khram of ox. The founder and now field general for Digg, has decided, in principle, to take on the most unreasonable and aggressively litigious organization (MPAA) head on in a fight to the death.
In case you have been doing things like GOING OUTSIDE, or INTERACTING WITH PEOPLE, you may have missed the Great Nerd Revolt Of 2007™ where the famously anti-establishment Digg community went icky-balooky after the moderators of the site removed a post containing an alpha-numeric code that can crack encryption on new HD-DVDs.
Long story short, after Digg removed the post at the request of the MPAA, all hell broke loose on the Digg site, and the nerds raged against the Digg Machine and screamed bloody-censorship-murder, calling for the head of their idol Kevin Rose. Mr Rose, nothing if not in touch with and sympathetic to his user base, soon had a change of heart. Not only did he/they restore the original post, but Kevin went and posted the code himself on the Digg blog.
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.
Well played sir. God damned ballsy, but well played.
Don’t underestimate the significance of this battle. Someone has to lose here.
In one corner you have the MPAA. Like the RIAA, these guys are unreasonable, aggressive, lawsuit happy, copyright protecting vigilantes. They smell blood and they attack…with little or no sympathy or regard for the target, even playing dirty when they have to or want to. Copyrights are protected at any cost, and if they stand down on this one, it will set a dangerous precedent that will hurt their future attempts to fight battles like this. Their credibility and their ability to fight will be destroyed, and this war will take a giant turn against them.
In the other corner you have the Digg community, the David to the MPAA’s Goliath. The loosely assembled, but rabidly “anti-man” contingent that prides itself on unifying and organizing to leverage sheer mass against all comers. Led by the aforementioned Kevin Rose, Digg has been ground zero for the anti-MPAA/RIAA movement, and to date, it’s battle experience has been mostly limited to taking distant snipes at the copyright organizations, working hard to slowly and consistently discredit them and poke holes in their cause. This will mark the first time (that I can recall) where Digg is going to look into the eyes of the beast and fight it out for real.
Like I said, SOMEONE has to lose here. SOMEONE has to back down. It may not be a giant and dramatic flame-out ending, but this little number has sparked what could become a very important moment in this long war.