HD DVD hackers and anti-drm groups digg community have organized an attack on Digg after the site's decision to remove content related to HD DVD hacking. The hackers posted the encryption keys they found to break HD DVD's DRM. The Riot was so strong at one point that the front page was featuring only posts with the encryption keys. Almost 50 000 Diggs have been registered for HD DVD hacking related posts.
The least we can say is that we had a good example of what is the social web or the web 2.0. Site editors and webmasters just can't do what they want with the content of their sites anymore. This is especially true when you do rely entirely on your users to create the content available on the site. Digg's owner, Kevin Rose, did not say why he took the decision to remove the content from the site. People are expecting an answer from him and the sooner is the better. What king of pressure does he have from Toshiba, AACS, Sony, HD DVD group? We will probably never know. UPDATE: Kevin Rose posted something new about the decision to remove the keys:
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.
The AACS issued new keys recently to stop the leak from WinDVD but this move shows that what the hackers are doing at the present time is hurting AACS to the bone. Otherwise they would certainly not push Digg to do such a bad move.
The power of the masses is incredible. The social web is really getting strong and the big companies will have to start learning about it and to deal with this new reality. One thing is sure though: It's now Digg.com: 0 and HD DVD hackers: 1.
I truly can't say that this is the "final nail in the coffin" for HD DVD as that was put in some months ago to the now defunct format. As HD DVD passes into that good night, I'm sure there are at least a few holdouts out there that (1) purchased an HD DVD player, (2) wish they hadn't, and (3) now are trying to get some use out of it before jumping to Blu-ray. For those folks, NetFlix will soon no longer be an option for HD DVD content. As of December 15th, the online mail order rental service will no longer be carrying any HD DVD videos. Reportedly, at that time, their queue will revert to the standard def DVD format. At least for now, it's either Blu-ray for their hi def fix, or not, as the choices from this company. In other news, for under $130, at least they can upgrade to the current Blu-ray format, which should keep the grumbling to a minimum.
