Digg's Battle Over DMCA
In what's been described as an "all-out cyber-revolt," the web is buzzing around the debate over legal issues surrounding Digital Rights Management and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, again brought about by user-generated content.
The community of users of the popular news aggregator Digg combined forces in an effort to publicize a string of numbers, known as a processing key, which can be used to circumvent the encryption of HD-DVD discs protected by the Advance Access Content System. Digg Founder, Kevin Rose, initially decided that the site would comply with cease and desist letters it received, ordering take-downs of all instances of the of the key-string on the website.
After users revolted by driving every story with the key number on the website's front page, Rose immediately responded, and declared that "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."
Berkman Fellow, Dan Gillmor, director of the Center for Citizen Media commented that he "deeply admire(s) what Kevin Rose at Digg is doing," and that "the insanity of the legal framework on which the film industry is relying here has never been clearer."
Wired magazine noted that Rose's decision could lead to an all-or-nothing mindset for social network sites when confronted with copyright infringement allegations. While Berkman Fellow, Ethan Zuckerman provides us with the technical logistics and history of the AACS processing key.
The community of users of the popular news aggregator Digg combined forces in an effort to publicize a string of numbers, known as a processing key, which can be used to circumvent the encryption of HD-DVD discs protected by the Advance Access Content System. Digg Founder, Kevin Rose, initially decided that the site would comply with cease and desist letters it received, ordering take-downs of all instances of the of the key-string on the website.
After users revolted by driving every story with the key number on the website's front page, Rose immediately responded, and declared that "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."
Berkman Fellow, Dan Gillmor, director of the Center for Citizen Media commented that he "deeply admire(s) what Kevin Rose at Digg is doing," and that "the insanity of the legal framework on which the film industry is relying here has never been clearer."
Wired magazine noted that Rose's decision could lead to an all-or-nothing mindset for social network sites when confronted with copyright infringement allegations. While Berkman Fellow, Ethan Zuckerman provides us with the technical logistics and history of the AACS processing key.