09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0

09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0

This little number has caused quite a storm over the last few days. The short story is this. This Hex code is the key to unlocking and copying HD-DVD disks. The powers that be are unhappy that the code has been leaked and have been sending cease and desist letters those who have published the code on the web. Digg.com is a social news site and is completely user driven, which as you might have already guessed, is a great thing, but in practice can be dangerous. Once this handy little code was released to the Interweb public it spread like wildfire. The problem that Digg had was that they received one of these handy cease and desist letters and decided to comply with the request and take down all submissions that had to do with the HD-DVD hex code. Well, the users of Digg had a HUGE problem with this censorship. You see, Digg.com built itself on the notion that the community was for the users, by the users, with no outside editorial control. The users are responsible for submitting, promoting, and burying stories. It’s original intent was to give the tech community a place similar to Slashdot.org, but without CmdrTaco and his staff having the last say as to what will appear on the front page of the site.
So what did the Digg community do to show it’s disdain you ask? They flooded the site with VERY creative references to the above mentioned code. At one point, the front page of Digg had only stories related to the code on it, THE WHOLE FRONT PAGE! It had to be one of the most active topics Digg.com has ever seen.
Kevin Rose, of Digg.com, posted a blog entry saying that due to the backlash of it’s users, he gets the message that the Digg community would rather see Digg.com go down fighting than to comply and face legal consequences.
On one hand I say AWESOME, fight the man and whatnot, but I’m not sure I would have responded the same way if Digg.com was my site.

To be continued………………..