Owners of popular social networking website had to kneel before the wishes of their users when they caused an uproar by deleting articles which published ways of breaking into the copyright protection of HD-DVD and Blu-ray discs.
Trouble started when Digg owners removed posts, which pointed visitors to a community news Web site that had published a key that could crack the AACS (Advanced Access Content System) used in HD-DVD and Blu-ray discs to protect the content from copyright infringement.
Digg owners were following the "cease and desist" letter sent by Advanced Access Content System Licensing Administrator (AACS), which asked websites and blogs to delete any posts making the crack key public. In the letter AACS said, "Sites were providing and offering to the public a technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof that is primarily designed, produced, or marketed for the purpose of circumventing the technological protection measures afforded by AACS".
However users bombarded Digg with duplicate posts linking back to the article, so much so that the website crashed at one time. Finally Kevin Rose, the founder of Digg, conceded defeat and said that the posts will not be deleted.
"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", he wrote on the website.
