Digg.com's critical mass of devoted 'diggers' decided to revolt against the Website for deciding to comply with digital rights management interests and pulling down users' posts with code that would enable access to copyrighted HD-DVD material. The world of 'Web 2.0' customers ended up deciding that they had the right to have access to stories, regardless of which side of the law they lay!
This unprecedented display of power is at once both a testemant to the power of democracy and the unintended effects of unfettered 'people's wishes'. It highlights a very real legal (and almost ethical) question whether populist people's choices can overrule the letter of the law.
This issue is not about the spirit of the law or esoteric debates on the many shades of jurisprudence that might be open to interpretation. Users were, simply put, handing out free keys to the bank's vault ... and daring and defying the law to restrain their power.
Whew! Web2.0 ...
- Is the customer always right? Should Digg.com have bowed under pressure and reversed its initial decision to take down messages with the 'crack code'?
- Do such mass-populace community-based Web presences have any sort of sustainable advantage in the face of a fickle mass (one that finds solace in a collective anonymity that affords it the ability to flout the law)?
- Is this a mere communication of 'a sequence of numbers and letters', protected under the First Amendment? (since there was no actual delivery of hacking software or decryption tool)
- Or, is this collective voice of the community actually a clarion call to rethink how current laws are written?
Are these users time-travellers helping define the future by defying the present?
What do you think? Is Web2.0 too hot to handle?
sai @ obviousideas dot com
1 comment:
Digg.com should not have bowed down to user pressure. This event signals reflects the larger underlying risk of building Web2.0 companies on the foundation of a fickle user-group.
The fadish approach to newer Web2.0 companies provides both a differentiating factor and a real risk of rapid-death ... due to the unmitigated power of the masses.
In this case, the customer is not right. Digg.com should have gone ahead and banned all postings that challenge current IP laws.
Brute force & anarchy cannot replace debate & decent dialog as the norm to seek changes in common law.
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