Tech Link (Web): Blogger: Digg Banned me for Typing a Number

This is a big news today, well, at least, over at Digg community. Apparently, Digg admins became trigger happy with the ban gun and have deleted several news posting related to some sort of security features. Check it out to understand more about the issue..

A Digg.com user is claiming he got the boot from Digg for posting the HD-DVD AACS Processing Key number to the popular news aggrigation and filtering site. The processing key, a string of numbers only a hacker could love, is key to unlocking copy-protected High Def movies. In other words: it's a DMCA no-no for you to know, citizen consumer.

The number was initially published a couple of months ago, and a Digg.com user posted it to that site yesterday. It promptly, and mysteriously, disappeared. Digg user "chesterjosiah" reposted the story and went to bed. Overnight and today, the story grew to garner more than 15,000 diggs, making it among the most popular stories to ever appear on the site. And then, it vanished, along with chesterjosiah's account.

It's odd for a story to disappear from Digg. Digg works by social aggregation: if something's popular it gets modded up while unpopular stories get modded down. But in this case, Digg.com's editors stepped in and axed both posts. Not that that helped anything.

Instead, Digg's front page is rife with HD-DVD decryption posts, and Digg finally was forced to post an explanation, in essence stating we're sorta kinda terrified of entertainment industry lawyers:

This has all come up in the past 24 hours, mostly connected to the HD-DVD hack that has been circulating online, having been posted to Digg as well as numerous other popular news and information websites. We’ve been notified by the owners of this intellectual property that they believe the posting of the encryption key infringes their intellectual property rights. In order to respect these rights and to comply with the law, we have removed postings of the key that have been brought to our attention.

The post was mum on the banzoring, but it did allude to Digg's terms of service. Digg users reactions to the explanation have been largely apopletic, with a little bit of indignance thrown in for good measure and, of course, a fair number of commenters just went ahead and reposted the key itself.


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