The recent incident on Digg, when the staff preemptively took down some posts that gave and linked to the HD DVD cracking code, is well known by now. For quick background, check out Wired’s early coverage, the EFF’s excellent legal primer, and of course the now infamous Kevin Rose post on Digg’s blog informing the community that Digg would not continue to take down posts containing ‘the number.’Details are still a little vague on whether Digg actually got official take down notices, or whether they were just following advice from their legal team, though the latter seems more likely. Although it angers them, the geek community around circumventing DRM schemes and intellectual property rights online seems to have accepted that websites need to comply with the law, even when they don’t agree with it. The state, simply put, is still Weberian and controls the means of physical force. It still has the power. Or does it?
Digg’s decision to keep the numbers up heralds a decisive recognition of user power over what amounts to real force online–patronage. We have been hearing about the power of the group and the wonderful nature of socially generated media for years now, but this look like the first time that it has been put to this kind of test against the power of the government (or is it the company?). (I am probably wrong about this and there are many earlier examples to choose from, but I’m new at this and this particularly case has been getting a lot of media attention.) Digg’s decision (Kevin Rose even posted the numbers himself) has the subtext that a Digg user revolt (as we saw) is a more powerful threat than legal threats.
It will be interesting to see what happens to Digg in the long run on this. The MPAA and AACS realize that there is no way they can prevent the spread of this number. It is everywhere: blog posts, photos on flickr (that evil search engine bots can’t read), and music videos on YouTube (ditto). But Digg was the most high profile offender, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the industry chose them as a their target. It would certainly be high profile, as Digg started the social news revolution, and is populated by a fiercely loyal community (though not one that would sit back and watch as the site did something they didn’t like).
But all in all, the threat from its users was more immediate. Lawsuits take ages to play out and Digg can probably reach some sort of deal, so they will at least be able to stay up while this all plays out. In contrast, if it had done what it had been doing (taking down posts and banning users) they were going to be shut down with days (or hours).
The users have the power in this one, at least for now. But if history is any guide, the industry will retaliate. Everyone is certainly worried about this eventuality, including Wikipedia admins. But if a state can’t protect its citizens’ intellectual property, is it still the same kind of state? Are we moving further into the era of citizen and private corporation mediated laws?
-Alex Rosen
