Digg the trouble taking down pages can cause, or why the idea of

From slashdot we hear that trouble is/was brewing on Digg.com over posts that commented on, linked to, included, wrote about, discussed, etc. the HD-DVD encryption keys. Digg initially began to pull all the stories, including its entire front page.

"Diggers" did not go for this, and protested in several ways. Now Digg the Blog
has an entry from founder, Kevin Rose, who explained his initial decision and then talks about how Digg will "go down fighting" and not "bow down to a bigger company," by complying with the cease and desist order. His sort of fatalistic "If we lose, then what the hell, at least
we died trying" statement is a bit doom and gloom, but I think it is an honest response.

From the EFF's Fred Loehman, we discovered an LATimes blog post in BitPlayer that explains some of the reasons that you or even my mother (my poster girl for computer users who don't know too much about how computers work, but get real pissed if they don't work...) might pay attention to this seemly arcane dispute.

Software maker Corel took measures against hackers of CDs and now there will be measures against the HD-DVD hack. These measures mean headaches and updating for all users, from "crooks" to legitimate users, like my mom or you. Corel is going to make current software break on purpose if upgrades aren't installed, so that the particular hack won't work anymore. Your blu-ray might come back and bite you -- or your player.

The process of revoking software is a blunt instrument; everyone using WinDVD and PowerDVD will be affected, regardless of whether they traded bootlegged high-def movies, made back-up copies for personal use or merely played the high-def movies they bought or rented on their PCs

Source: opinion.latimes.com

This reminds me of a particularly bad teaching strategy often employed by inept or new teachers and political entities we won't bring into the current discussion, who visit group punishments on a class when a one or two students have transgressed and done something the teacher doesn't like. I will state for the record that based time I put in as a substitute teacher in inner-city public schools in the 1970s--"it won't work the way you want it to work." It usually turns all the people that were for you, or were neutral on an issue against you.

Furthermore, today we live in society where the Internet is an extension of our nervous system, in particular, our brain and memory. Yes, I know this is a brilliant insight, but please give credit to McLuhan who was so smart that he figured this out before the mundane technology of the web even existed.

Anyway, in simple terms, think of the borg from Star Trek. The borg is a hive mind, a collective consciousness of thousands of voices; individuals who don't even realize they are not connected to one another. So when one borg learns something, they all know it.

I'm not going go down the "good/bad" road here, but how different is the Web today from the borg hive mind when some factoid meme gets posted and picked up. Whether it is that Anna Nicole Smith has died, the hack code for HD-DVDs, or some poor schlump who calls someone a "macaca."

What is surprising to me is the cluelessness of people, from Seigenthaler Sr. and the Bobby Kennedy flap to corporate executives who attack leaks with the cudgel of lawyers, "cease and desist orders" and money. The worst element however, are our legislators who either knowingly act to stifle individual rights and free speech because they owe corporations for campaign donations or perhaps worse, act without getting informed about issues.

If you don't see what the harm in a bunch of stupid bad laws that most people will just ignore, check out Lawrence Lessig's analysis of the detrimenal impact on our culture of government by laws that a bunch of laws we all come to ignore is having. He says,

"You must ask whether the values built into our society--to ignore the rule of law--are the values we want to raise our children to understand," he said.

Source: news.com.com

And I ask, whose interests are our courts and our elected legislators standing up for when they interpret and write laws that appropriate the cultural capital of our society and award it to the highest bidder?

NowPublic

Tags: blu-ray | corel | Technology | Computer | discs | enables | high-definition | locks | movie | WinDVD

Mark Glaser in MediaShift wrote about this problem. Good comments in his story:

People have long shared recorded art, with no copy-protection or encryption schemes for LP records, cassette tapes, audio CDs or VHS tapes. Only in the digital age, with the ease of copying files and sharing them online, has the entertainment industry become obsessed with protecting their products — at the cost of alienating and suing their customers.