Kevin Rose is a hero and Digg users should be buried

I support Kevin Rose as an Internet hero.

If you're the least bit interested, by now you've already heard the backstory. An Internet revolt hit Digg this week and hit it hard. Poor Digg went from innocent bystander in the debate over Digital Rights Management (DRM) to an active participant in a matter of hours, and not by their own choice. It was the will of their community.

A quick summary of what happened: Someone cracked the AACS scheme used to encrypt data on HD-DVD and Blu-Ray disks. Someone posts the hex code to Digg. Hollywood sends out cease-and-desist orders to remove posts citing the encryption key from websites including Digg. Digg initially complies with the order, removing postings and banning users. According to a statement by Kevin Rose, founder of Digg, "We had to make a call, and in our desire to avoid a scenario where Digg would be interrupted or shut down, we decided to comply and remove the stories with the code." Civil disobediance erupts and washes over Digg's front page claiming censorship and posting the hex code over and over. Within hours, every popular article on Digg is about the code, and administrators find themselves unable to keep up.

Here's the heroic moment: In the midst of this civil disobedience Kevin Rose decided to side with the vision of Digg, at risk of losing it all.

But now, 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.

If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.

Digg on,

Kevin

This is no small thing. Conservative estimates last year put Digg's worth at $200 million, though by some estimates it may be worth as much as $500 million. That was last year. I'm sure it's worth much more now. To be willing to risk all of that on the idea that Digg is ran by its community is heroic. That is the vision, after all. Community submitted news stories, ranked by the community, and moderated by the community. It is entirely community. Unfortunately, as Wired put it, "Live by the community, die by the community." The heroic moment is when Kevin Rose agreed.

I haven't seen anything this inspiring in some time, considering the woes of the world. Kevin Rose is a hero because when put to the test, he sided with his original idea even after the idea became more than it originally was. While other Web 2.0 companies cave to other interests as soon as the money starts rolling (MySpace comes to mind), Digg has remained true to itself through its founder.

Unfortunately, the situation isn't all-inspiring however...

Digg users are assholes

Kevin Rose is the hero, not Digg users. Digg users are assholes. They proved that pretty clearly.

Rose came up with the idea for Digg back when he was hosting Screen Savers on TechTV (I was a fan then and I am now). Digg was founded as a tech news site in response to Slashdot, where content is controlled by the editors. Rose had met with the Slashdot people while working on Screen Savers and asked why they couldn't just let the readers decide what content they want to see on the home page. For whatever reason, Slashdot rejected the idea that is now the core feature of Digg. A short time later, the first version of Digg appeared based on this idea that news could be social. The other essential idea is that, when given the responsibility of controlling what news is placed on the front page, users would act responsibly. For the most part this has been the case, and Digg is generally seen to be successful. As such, Digg has become an important mark in the history of the Internet and the publishing of information as a whole.

How sad is it then that when put to the test, Digg's user base ends up behaving like a bunch of children crying over their toy being taken away. DRM is a hot controversial topic in tech. Many tech enthusiasts are against it. Naturally some person would eventually post the code, but it's not the end of the world if Digg removes it. The response was very childish. How so? Instead of revolting against the MPAA, instead of revolting against DRM in general, instead of pressing Congress or traditional media to get policies changed, users revolted against the very site that is more in line with their way of thinking, ie. openness.

I mean the whole idea behind Digg was that users could responsibly control front page content. You don't even see user controlled front page content at Wikipedia. That's controlled by a few select editors. Slashdot is controlled by editors. All the other news sites are also controlled by editors. Why attack the very guys that are most on your side? The blog posts as this all went down reflect the childlike response. It was a schoolyard frenzy. "Look at what we're doing, ha ha" and a bunch of patting themselves on the back. Did anyone stop to think that they were potentially destroying one of the most open networks available? It's kind of absurd to think that this was supposedly done out of the notion that content should be more open. It came off looking more like a temper tantrum.

A lot of asshole behavior is what I saw.

Kevin Rose is the only hero in this. When he stood up and said, for better or worse, and with millions on the line, we will side with the users, that's pretty amazing especially since the users turned out to be assholes.