UPDATE: No access to custom areas of the site…

Digg will be down for a brief period, while we make some changes.
While not digging, the digg crew recommends…

Has anyone been watching the situation at Digg?

For those not in the know, the HD-DVD crack recently became public. A significant number of Digg users are aghast that Digg, for reasons of which I will not speculate, has elected to ban users who circulate the crack on the site - a mere 16 seemlingly random digits that help unlock the copyright-protection features of the format. Digg users claim that it is a free speech right to publish the code on the site, and are committed to grinding the website to a halt through any means. Others seem to be of the herd mentality.

At this writing, every link on the site is related in some shape or form to the crack. No other content is available (or at least ranks high enough) to be accessible from most areas of the site.

Talk about shooting yourself in the foot, on several fronts.

The crack is public. If you want it for some sort of actual use, write it down. If you’ll need it in the future, it’ll be easy to find. Is this revolt really on principle? It’s like a hunger strike in that your odds don’t improve the longer you stick to your strategy. What good is a hijacked site? And low worthless is your time to be spending it circulating a hack that everyone in the world already has access to?

Some are saying Digg is dead. No more news, it’s a stand on a principle. Until Digg acquiesces to its users (regardless of the legal exposure to the site and its management), the site is worthless. Other users who care not to use their “news” sources as their protest grounds may have to abandon the site during the fracas. Will they return?

Might this be the first failure in Web 2.0, or will Digg survive?

I needed to do a couple site things, the CSS in FireFox 1.5 wasn’t so nice, and the old layout didn’t get along with some browsers.

So now the site looks like this.

Thoughts? Not angry enough?

-Midnight

Midnight and I talked last night about the del.icio.us service. I never spent a whole lot of time on the social networking front, but it is a very interesting concept. So I showed it to a friend and he said, “Have you been living under a rock?”

Then he showed me the http://www.last.fm/ website. Check it out.

What a spectacular innovation.

Tech blog & news source Newtwork Pipeline reports on FCC Chief Kevin Martin supporting the concept of a tiered internet. This comes shortly after announcing that the FCC does in fact have the power to enforce net neutrality.

Which is it, Mr. Martin? Net Neutrality, or Tiered Internet Extortion? Pick a side, champ. The article referenced above buries Martin’s support of the Tiered Internet near the bottom of the article, after trumping up Martin & the FCC’s ability to enforce neutrality and Whitacre & AT&T’s promise that they will not screw the customers who don’t pay for top-tier by downgrading their existing service. NP commentator/blogger Preston Gralla makes it crystal clear what Martin & the telcos are cooking up.

Is this a case of government helping big business to make more money? Are they working for a “market-based solution”? Or am I just a “whiney liberal” who thinks $50 a month for broadband service is expensive enough as it is, and that this Tiered Internet concept is yet another way Big Business & bed-mate Government Agency are trying to screw us, the consumer?

If net neutrality is wrong, then I don’t want to be right.