The Internet Vs. The Magical Hex Number

A great thing happened on the internet yesterday - the digg community retaliated against censorship, and in effect against the MPAA.

Some Background
A cease-and-desist letter was sent to a website that dealt with the cracking of the AACS encryption used on HD-DVD and Blue-Ray disks. Nothing big in that regard, except that the C&D letter contained the actual key used in the infringing material. As is the case with anything on the internet, the key was out, and there was no way to stop it from being spread (DeCSS, I'm looking at you!). In this age of social networking, such information would undoubtly make its way to sites such as Reddit and Digg. Of course, Diggnation, the podcast associated with Digg.com, is sponsored by HD-DVD.

The Fallout
As the key spread, articles were submitted to Digg like normal. The only odd thing was that posts relating to the magical hex number started to get deleted. Then users began to get banned. In an social circle were almost everyone is against censorship (not necessarily for piracy, just for fair use and against being censored), the digg community rebelled. Comments and stories containing the hex key flooded the site, and were being deleted by moderators in record time.

At one point, the entire front page of digg was nothing but stories about the number.This had gone far beyond just a number that the MPAA would like to have kept quiet, it had turned into a situation where people were being censored in a venue where there was normally nothing to stop them. Digg runs on the fact that the users decide what is a good story, what is a bad story, not the moderators (who, incidently, only step in to delete posts against their ToS). The C&D letter contained the key itself, and since legal documents are public domain, the number would never be completely locked away again.

Domain names were registered, cups, hats, and all sorts of materials ended up being host to the magical hex number. Because of digg, the key that the MPAA wanted kept quiet was everywhere now. In true internet fashion, like its predecesor DeCSS, the magical hex key has become an staple of the internet. Hell, the number even has it's own song now!

Digg Gives In
Last night, Kevin Rose made a post on his blog saying that digg will stop deleting posts and comments regarding the number. Digg may go down in flames or be buried under huge legal bills, or it may turn out just fine. Today, most of the posts are no longer about the number, but about how digg was deleting the posts and ultimately how the user community won.