Filed under: Internet, Security, News, P2P
HD-DVD key fiasco is an example of 21st century digital revolt
Cory Doctorow's class blog for his USC course, "Pwned: How everyone on campus is a copyright criminal" was served a DMCA takedown notice and, on the advice of counsel, removed the offending digits. They were posted to Wikipedia, then removed and locked from reposting. Then the diggstorm came. A slew of digg stories containing the forbidden digits have been posted, made the front page and been removed, only to start again.
Witness the modern equivalent of the 95 thesis' Martin Luther nailed to the door of Wittenburg church. We, digital citizens --commonly referred to by the vulgar term of 'consumers' -- have had enough of content lock-in. We've bought and re-bought entertainment media -- repackaged and regurgitated digital vomitus -- until we're blue in the face. We've been told time and time again that DRM is for our own protection, and we're finally and inconsolably fed up.
As Joe Rogan's character on Newsradio once quite accurately quipped, "Dude, you can't take something off the Internet.. that's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool." The content providers have attempted to do exactly that, remove pee from the proverbial swimming pool that is the Internet and, as we've witnessed so many times before, they've failed miserably.
The bottom line remains, we as consumers, want our content free (as in Freedom) and if we don't get it, we'll take our content free (as in beer).
I don't know if this is a labor of love or merely the brainchild of four very gifted games designers, but Level Up is a really weird mash-up of gaming elements that you have probably never seen in a Flash game before.
Let's start with the premise itself: Groundhog Day meets Memento. The game experience revolves around 'days': you explore the world and the clock slowly ticks towards the evening. You bounce around picking up gems and talking to the denizens of 'Level Upland'. Eventually you feel tired and head back to ...
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Danny said 5:08PM on 5-01-2007
"The bottom line remains, we as consumers, want our content free (as in Freedom) and if we don't get it, we'll take our content free (as in beer)"
Hahhahhaa! Wonderful!
Reply
Sam said 6:23PM on 5-01-2007
I even got deleted and blocked from digg just because I posted a story about digg deleting the HD DVD key story!
Read the full story here http://mirror.sam-network.com
Reply
HexCode said 6:57PM on 5-01-2007
eCard of the Number (3rd ecard on the page)
http://www.brainwrench.com/ecards/categories/protest.php
Reply
DeMarko said 7:39PM on 5-01-2007
it's true, and bonus points for NewsRadio reference
Reply
Voodish said 1:48PM on 5-02-2007
Love the Artwork
Will DIGG get DUGG as a result of all this?
http://www.voodish.co.uk/articles/is-digg-going-to-be-dugg/
Reply
Nigel Stewart said 7:59PM on 5-01-2007
I was banned from digg as well. What is going on with our once great online culture?
Original post here:http://www.nigelstewart.org/archives/2007/05/digg_has_messed.html
Reply
Joe Metzger said 9:30PM on 5-01-2007
Amazing. Digg exists because of the users on the site. You would think they would take care and not get themselves in this situation.
If one day the users were to up and leave to somewhere that respects and appreciates them, well, Digg would only have themselves to blame.
Reply
Lee said 10:22PM on 5-01-2007
Message #2 is precisely the reason why I am angry with digg. This is NOT the first time they have done this to users where they ban anyone that questions their authority and lack of judgment. They had pulled this crap time and time again and it totally went under the radar because not enough people cared. This time it bit them in the ass, and they were LONG OVERDUE for this. I hope the site never recovers from this. Digg is a farce.
Reply
Mrfreezie said 10:39PM on 5-01-2007
I cannot believe you mentioned news radio. I was watching a season of that today, and I heard that "that's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool." I was laughing pretty hard at that. But then to see it again is weird.
Great, great, great article. This man deserves a raise.
Reply
Adam Jacob Muller said 10:57PM on 5-01-2007
0x09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
Reply
titan said 12:20PM on 5-03-2007
I sort of agree with what you have said. I wrote an article on the digg revolt and how it can be paralleled to society as a whole.
http://titanmiller.no-ip.org/anewera.html
Reply
ap said 2:09AM on 5-02-2007
Anyone read the digg blog lately? :D
http://blog.digg.com/?p=74
The community has spoken.
Reply
Rizal said 8:30PM on 5-02-2007
www.hypesphere.com the only new place for freedom of speach
Reply
k.r said 9:24AM on 5-02-2007
I think stuff like this has been happening increasingly more since the transfer of ownership of youtube to google. I can't believe how many sites out there are now streaming movies and television shows.... I think people are starting to spit in the face of corporations and basically saying, we don't want your format we want media digitally delivered to us.
Reply
Racetrack-Owner said 10:45AM on 5-02-2007
The slashdot posting on this topic made an extremely interesting (and unusually salient) point: they're essentially trying to censor a number. It's pretty amazing when you consider it in those terms. Here is the article:
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/01/1935250
Some of the commentary was quite good too. Many people are posting other numbers that can be used to derive the key. Are these also DMCA violations?
Aside: Technically Martin Luther never actually nailed anything to the church door. In those days monks and other scholarly types posted their arguments on a public bulletin board, signifying their preparedness to defend their position. This is where Luther posted his condemnation of the Papacy. A very entertaining book on general medieval history is "A World Lit Only By Fire." Highly recommended even if you're not normally into history.
Reply
agot said 12:11PM on 5-02-2007
The revolt worked - and it looks like you can commemorate the uprising with a t-shirt, LOL. Isn't there a tech conference coming up we should all wear this to? http://www.cafepress.com/saggingsquirrel
Reply
agot said 12:17PM on 5-02-2007
The revolt worked - and it looks like you can commemorate the uprising with a t-shirt, LOL. Isn't there a tech conference coming up we should all wear this to? http://www.cafepress.com/saggingsquirrel
Reply
Voodish said 2:33PM on 5-02-2007
^^^
I posted that yesterday, but it didn't arrive here until today, doesn't really have any relevance today, this article is more up to date:
http://www.voodish.co.uk/articles/what-does-the-future-hold-for-digg/
Even that is a bit old now too, sorry
Cheers
Dan.
Reply
James said 1:52PM on 5-02-2007
Heh. Excellent. This is perhaps the most concise summary of the reason DRM cannot and will not ever work -- 16 bytes. Can anybody beat that?
Somebody needs to team up with one of those start-ups that turns email into snail-mail free/ad-sponsored, and get people sending thousands upon thousands of postcards with just these numbers on them to the upper-ups of the RIAA. It should be like that scene in the first Harry Potter movie. Man, that would be awesome.
Reply
Chris Carey said 3:33PM on 5-02-2007
Can the Digg mob stop the War in Iraq?
With the Digg mob standing up to the DCMA it made me think...If hundreds of thousands of people can see when something is wrong and stand up for our rights in regards to freedoms of speech when it comes to HD-DVD backup & archive why couldn ’t that same power of the people be harnessed to send a clear message to congress on the War in Iraq?
http://www.digg.com/world_news/Can_the_Digg_mob_stop_the_War_in_Iraq#c6473676
Reply