They do have that right, but not the ability. Perhaps one of the most important lessons of the age of information. Don't be too harsh on the Diggers; they just want to be Mr. Universe.

Aren't those the Lost numbers?

While I certainly agree that 90% of Digg uses screaming bloody murder are doing for no good reason whatsoever, I think that there's a higher percentage there that realize exactly what that code is good for.

Digg, like Slashdot, is driven at its core by a large number of very technically savvy people. However, sadly, my compliments to them end there. This situation, at its core, was freaking ridiculous. Irongut's post, as well as Elysium's here, pretty much echo my thoughts on the matter.

The DMCA is the core of the issue at hand, and it was clearly violated. Continuing to break that law on the spurious claim that it is illegal by its nature is moot. Ultimately, posting it was retarded. Reposting it en mass in this manner was idiocy at its finest.

Good read.

It's kind of interesting, watching people argue for DRM. That's not an attitude I see very often.

Fundamentally, the RIAA makes money by providing copies of media. But the problem is that, in the digital age, the marginal cost of making new copies of media is very near zero. The cost of creating the content is as high as it ever was (though it's never been as high as the RIAA says: these guys make Sony look truthful). Whatever the cost, once it's been created, making each new copy costs just a cent or two.

The RIAA/MPAA business models are based around scarcity, and that scarcity is gone. It poofed around the time CD burners got cheap. In sane world, the content industries would have to adapt to a new business model. The fundamental tenet of captalism is creative destruction; when business models stop working, companies are supposed to either adapt or fail.

But our government has become beholden to corporations. The RIAA has managed to hijack the guns of the US Government to try to preserve their obsolete business model. They're trying to keep media scarce so that they keep making the boatloads of money they have been. (and continue screwing their musicians; they are among the most ethically bankrupt organizations in existence.)

The US Government is now pointing its guns at you and telling you that some numbers are illegal. This is, in a word, insane. Henceforth, the number 1814 is against the law and you can't use it or tell it to anyone. Equations using that number are also illegal.

Why? Because the RIAA's business model is in jeopardy. Your clear rights to tell anyone any number you like, and to do any math you choose, is being preempted for the 'greater good': that of them continuing to rake in heaps of cash for providing a service that no longer has value.

As Bruce Schneier has said, trying to make some bits not copyable is like trying to make water not wet. It's resulting in incredibly stupid consequences.

I don't think it is quite so cut & dry. Digg's entire reason for existence depends upon both allowing relatively unmoderated contributions from users, and, giving users the perception that they're participating in something a little bit subversive. I'm not saying this to argue that they should not have removed those articles, but just to say that they seemed to have a choice between shooting themselves in the foot or risking a legal fight with AACS. I just don't think that is a simple decision. (Incidentally, I think I tend to fall on the side of civil disobedience when it comes to DRM, but without any pretensions that it means I'm noble).

This reads a bit like a not-so-subtle "don't try this here, kids!" warning. The main difference, again, is that Digg claims to be user-driven and GWJ does not. If they moderated they way you guys do, Digg would have no reason to exist.

To me there are very separate issues here:

1: Can businesses survive with DRM? This has nothing to do with law, this is a marketplace issue. To suggest that DRM doesn't work for viable businesses is ridiculous. How many people in the world buy Microsoft software? Enough to make Bill very very rich. How does the OED survive as the definitive source of information on the English language? DRM (or the volume of paper required). How do Medline, Lexis, and innumerable other professional data sources survive? Restricted access.

2: Is the DMCA a good/constitutional law? I believe its a piece of sh*t, frankly. On the other hand, I'm not naive enough to think that everyone who bitches about it has noble purposes, but just doesn't have the money or inclination to pay for their music. The way in which laws are overturned is through the courts and the political process. The endless hacker ethic of breaking it to prove a point serves SOLELY to prove to congress and the courts that its protections are NECESSARY. It does nothing to actually change it.

3: Is the rule of law worthwhile? I'm a libertarian. An actual card carrying one (I have a CATO institute copy of the constitution on the back of my toilet). With that disclosure I think 90 percent of the US legal and tax codes are total garbage. I also believe, strongly, in the rule of law and the rights of property owners. It is the law, and people who break it should recognize they are breaking the law. While this may seem to be a "casual" law, like the speed limit, you don't see too many people driving 100 miles an hour, getting caught, and then posting highly publicized diatribes about why the speed limit is a terrible law and therefor they should be allowed to ignroe it.

4: Does the "public" have some rights on a community-content driven website. Absolutely not. By choosing NOT to moderate Digg heavily, they offer a service to an audience. Just as I would remove a paintbrush from the hands of my 3 year old if he breaks the rules and paints the walls, so Digg can -- and indeed should -- take the keyboards away from their users who break the rules. Indeed, if Digg did *not* do this, then the public would have LESS faith in the process that creates Digg (if they even do anyway). I can assure you that the Digg folks do more moderation than you think, just to keep the Spam at bay.

Anyway, just my opinions.

I don't believe it was really about the key at all. The people that are actually going to use it for something knew it long before it was posted on Digg. It was much more a revolt against the fact that the users felt that they were being censored. On a site that makes so many claims to be democratic, it may not be a good idea to simply silence your subversive members with no explanation.
I feel for the moderators as they are caught between a rock and a hard place. They can let users post whatever they want and possibly get sued and taken down, or they can remove offending content, and possibly piss off the user base that made them (remember that Digg is a bit different then sites such as this, in that nearly all of their content is user submitted). The decision was there's to make, but I can't condone the way they handled it. They deleted posts and banned users that not only posted the code, but also users who where posting that Digg was deleting posts and banning users.

It amazes me that in this day and age a DRM system this easy to crack was considered good. I mean, we used whole code books in World War 2 for communication. And they were easy to swap out for new ones if compromised. "Those who ignore the past are doomed to repeat it" indeed.

Actually, Blu-Ray was cracked back in January if I remember right.

If you don't digg the numbers every 108 minutes, the sky will turn purple, the RIAA will stop dropping music shipments on the island, and everyone will be stuck listening to Charlie do a one-man rendition of his band's former hits. Forever.

Hey, I used the 'my house'-brand of logic more than once myself. The point Chris and others make so eloquently is that if you build your whole site around user empowerment and a 'my house is your house'-attitude, the rules change a little.

I don't think anyone earnestly doubts that this 'revolution' was born from convenience, which really isn't much baser than with most such movements. They were users, turning Digg's very own concept and service against the site out of much the same motivations that led them to participate in Digg in the first place.
Welcome to Web 2.0. The masses are back, and they are still unwashed. Surprised?

I should note that I'm not overly sympathetic towards the Diggers. I'm just saying that any Web 2.0-style site owner who did not expect this should have spent some time managing a forum before wasting other people's money on his project.

This is pretty much spot on. The fact is that Digg isn't at all consistent with enforcing ToS. They leave up plenty of links to stuff that violates ToS, and reasoning for those is the same as here. The only difference is that in this case, there was a C&D letter issued, and it was widely publicized.

However, with that said, Nemesis makes a good point. You really can't through the internet a completely open forum and expect them to play 100% by the rules. There are simply too many people who will take any chance to abuse anonymity they can.

Sorry, my last comment was too snarky. I just... I don't see how you can define this issue as as you have. It's kinda like claiming the civil war had nothing to do with slavery.

When you factor out the DRM and AACS issue in this case, you are trying to eliminate an important part of this whole affair. Both Elysium and Certis said that it is to the site owners to decide whether submitting a news/forum/whatever item is compliant to their ToS.
The catch in this case, and that is why the people got upset, is, that the post in question did not violate their ToS in the first place. In fact the original post was available for quite a few hours (which is clost to forever on that site) and received the highest amount of diggs to this date. Thus the comparison to porn, racial slurs or even moderation of the site to filter spam does not apply here.

It was not until the C&D letter arrived that the post was taken down without further notice. Basically the AACS decided, that a simple hexadecimal number is a violation of the DCMA and the corporation behind digg followed suit and did not even have the guts to tell their userbase about the letter until quite a few hours later.
Interestingly enough google received the same letter, yet they decided not to remove any of their search results from the index. This C&D will not stand in court and they know this. Digg should have known better as well, or at least voiced their concerns to their userbase in the first place. That way they would not have faced the opposition they did on May 1st.

Yes, there is nothing at stake for the digg users and it was convenient for them to start their little in-fight. But the same convenience allows users of countries with more restricted access, to voice an opinion they could not otherwise. I am quite startled that you value the concern of users supposedly violating a ToS out of convenience higher than the fact, that a dubious corporation decides what you are allowed to talk and write about on the internet.

Rabbit: As for DRM a necessity, NemesisZero stated the most important facts already: MS is alive because of the business and the OEM sales of both windows and office products, not because of DRM. The fact that they are currently moving their office service to windows live is a clear indication that they expect a drastic change in their turnover rate in that area, probably because of the viable alternatives currently available.
ITunes is not as important as they are because they endorse DRM, but because the DRM they implemented is lax enough so that most users would not even notice it.
Same goes for games: There is no quantification of sales gained because the publishers use a DRM system, but there sure is a quantification of lost sales, because their DRM was too restrictive (StarForce).