For those of you not intimately involved in social media, there was quite an event unfolding this evening on the popular social news site Digg.
It began with a story containing a HD-DVD key, which according to the DMCA is illegal. Digg, as a business, acted to remove that post.
Cue Russell Crowe yelling "unleash hell" because that's exactly what happened. Posting multiple stories and voting them up as quickly as possible, under the pretense of a revolt revolving around free speech and rallying against censorship, many Diggers made their voices heard.
Where do I as a person stand on this issue? Well...Digg is a business, Digg.com is owned by Digg, and the DMCA, while arguably an inane law, is still a law. Digg did what was right, and now Diggers are showing the world what many outside the cynical community already knew: it is time to grow up.
Does that mean that dissenters should have their accounts deleted? For simply dissenting, no. For posting illegal material? Yes. Hopefully this will all blow over soon so Digg can go back to just hating us SEO types and burying useful information without actually reading the content.
JoeSinkwitz
Update: Digg decided to ignore the C&D, for better or worse. Personally, I don't think it was a good idea to take that stance, and think it is even worse that he publically took that stance, given the ammunition the opposing lawyers will now have.