Mob Rule: Can you Digg it?
By Raghu Kakarala on Thursday, May 3rd, 2007Yesterday was either a watershed day in user generated content or at least an important footnote. The popular user-ranked news website Digg received a “takedown” notice after an article on how to crack the HD-DVD encryption specification was displayed on their website. After receiving the notice the company’s CEO decided to remove the article and suspend the user accounts of those who attempted to repost the article. He explained his motivation to do so as being for the rule of law and not as a direct attack against the Digg user community.
The community disagreed and proceeded to en mass post numerous articles with the encryption specification which by that point had already appeared at numerous locations across the web. The result was that the users had essentially hijacked the website from having any other news appear. When faced with either deleting a significant number of its users from the system or allowing the posting of the content in violation of the “takedown” notice the founder of Digg, Kevin Rose, decided to cast his vote with his users. To the possible detriment of Digg, he has decided to fight any legal action that occurs even if it means the end of the company.
So was the action of yesterday one of democracy on the web or one of mob rule? I am not a fan of overly restrictive copyright rules, and the information was freely available on the internet at numerous locations other than Digg, but Kevin Rose had no choice. Once you cast your company as a community that is primarily run by your users you have to accept that you live by the sword and die by the sword. Perhaps the users of Digg understand that, and are willing to see Digg die what they see as a noble death fighting for what they think is right. But Digg itself had no choice in the end, in the face of a swift and powerful user run protest it could either fight for its users or cancel all their accounts.
The possible repercussions of this on unmoderated user forums, discussion boards and other community based sites may start to be felt in the coming weeks. Or maybe the Digg user community is particularly strident. But its something to note, and could go down as a seminal event in user generated content on the web and who is responsible for the ensuing content.
This is an interesting dilemma. Replace ‘how to crack the HD/DVD encryption’ with ‘how to share child pornography’ or ‘how to smuggle drugs across the U.S. border’ or ‘How to commit a terrorist act’ and what do you think the response would be. On one hand, it seems like none of this content should be allowed to be posted. But, if Digg hasn’t set forth any legal restrictions to content and has stated that they are not responsible for the content, then legal action should only be taken by law enforcement against the posters. On the other hand, Digg should reserve the right to remove content if they have indicated that they may do so. In the long run, Digg can be caught up in the Patriot Act where they will have to provide law enforcement with the names of all posters of this type of content.