Portable Planet

Digg has become quite a turbulent website these days.

It all started when users started posting the encryption key which can be used to decrypt the HD-DVD discs and copy the contents.  Digg, not wanting to be fodder for legal action, kept taking the postings down.

“We’ve been notified by the owners of this intellectual property that they believe the posting of the encryption key infringes their intellectual property rights,” co-founder Jay Adelson explained on the site’s blog.  ”In order to respect these rights and to comply with the law, we have removed postings of the key that have been brought to our attention.”

That just made users madder.  By last night, repostings of the key were so rampant that the “All topics” category contained several pages of the most popular articles recommended by readers populated only by links to sites that contained the code, as well as bashing the MPAA.

So Digg stopped trying to reign in the masses.

“We had to decide whether to remove stories containing a single code based on a cease and desist declaration,” declared co-founder Kevin Rose.  ”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.”

“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.”

A post on Digg that links to the blog post currently has almost 17,000 Diggs.  The users have spoken, and their voices has been heard loud and clear.