click on the box for picEveryone knows what it is. T shirts are on the way. It's Sixteen hexadecimal digits that unlock most currently released HD-DVD movies from the AACS content protection system. These sixteen digits that have been seen by millions, posted in blogs all over -- and in many cases, removed only to be reposted -- that they're hard to avoid.
IT all started with this man, Cory Doctorow with his blog "Pwned: How everyone on campus is a copyright criminal" was served a C&C and caved in. They were posted to Wikipedia, then removed and currently the blog wiki is locked. Then it was time for digg. For a few days now the number had been floating around harmlessly. Than a post hit the front page and was taken down and a user ended up getting banned. (probably more at this point)
Now the funny thing is by trying to supress the numbers, all that happened was that more people actually saw them. Lets look at it like this 1 story is off the front page usually within the hour at peak times in the day. By causing this coup it has been on the front page in every story all day long. Perhaps kevin knows what he is doing. Perhaps he is playing nice with them while fully expecting this to happen? By now more people have seen this key than they would have and i bet someone out there will digg up the stats to back up this claim, look at normal top story topics in a day vs Digg all day on may 1st 2007. I will almost put money on the fact that more people have seen this story.
UPDATE 1:45 A.M Eastern.
Digg has decided they had enough, take a look for yourselves.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/84796146@N00/480981075/
UPDATE: 2:36 AM Digg is back up, and the numers are still rampant with pissed off diggers.
UPDATE 2:45 Kevin, the founder of Digg.com made a statement
"
Today was an insane day. And as the founder of Digg, I just wanted to post my thoughts…
In building and shaping the site I’ve always tried to stay as hands on as possible. We’ve always given site moderation (digging/burying) power to the community. Occasionally we step in to remove stories that violate our terms of use (eg. linking to pornography, illegal downloads, racial hate sites, etc.). So today was a difficult day for us. We had to decide whether to remove stories containing a single code based on a cease and desist declaration. We had to make a call, and in our desire to avoid a scenario where Digg would be interrupted or shut down, we decided to comply and remove the stories with the code.
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.
Digg on,
Kevin"
could this be the beginning of something great?? =or the death of a great site. only time will tell.
