Digg.com - Offline, HD-DVD's, Rumors and Revolt

Many Digg.com users are posting a revolt against the site because of a move that has caused many to believe that Digg.com is censoring their work. Many of those who are participating in the revolt do not know the full story.

Digg.com noticed that many articles that were being posted were directing people to codes that would break the encryption programs on HD-DVDs. Digg.com then went through a process to find these articles, and delete them.

A revolt among members began almost immediately. Many users complained because of censorship, and that they were not breaking any rules by posting these links. The decision was then made by Digg.com to take the site down to figure out what to do next.

At about 1:30 am this morning, the site was taken down for a matter of minutes. When the site returned, members were greeted with an announcement by Kevin Rose, the founder of Digg.com, that they would no longer take anymore links down that pointed to articles about how to break the code for HD-DVD's.

During the time when the site was down, many members and users believed that there was something else going on. Word passed in some areas of the Internet that Digg.com had been taken down by the US Government. This was not true.

The site was taken down by ownership as a finalized decision was made about whether or not these links infringed on copyright laws. Once the decision was finalized, and a lock was taken off for these types of articles, the site was restored.

In the statement to Digg.com users, Rose states that he has seen the comments from Digg.com users, and realizes with this issue that the article links should stay up. He believes that if other companies are going to come after Digg.com, he would rather have the site go down fighting.

This is just another example of how nervous minds can make a normal operation seem like it is more then it actually is. There are many examples of this in the past.