The Digg HD DVD Debate – Intellectual Property and Rights Management
by Thea - May 2nd, 2007
The most circulated cyber news piece of late revolves around a cracked HD-DVD encryption key being posted on Digg, and the head Diggers’ decision to bury all related posts per a cease and desist order even though the posts did not violate their terms of use. This story has been picked up by Forbes.com, and BBC News, as well as the usual suspects CNET and Slashdot.
On Tuesday, May 1, after being inundated with anti-Digg posts and link backs to the HD DVD hexadecimal code, Digg surrendered to social media democracy and reluctantly gave the power back to the posters by not only ignoring the cease and desist order, but by using said code as the title for a post on the Digg Blog and stating “If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.“
To his credit, Founder Kevin Rose was not left with much of a choice. The Digg community was outraged and the amount of posts received were much more than the Digg crew could handle. The sheer numbers proved to be too much for them to police. Digg conceded; as Kevin Rose writes “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.” Digg was caught between the proverbial rock (suffering at the hands of the same social community it had fostered), and a hard place (suffer in court by the likes of the AACS, MPAA and others). But this may not be such a bad thing after all. Digg’s situation is just the latest in a crop of DRM (Digital Rights Management) and Copyright infringement stories.
Viacom has a major suit against Google for allowing users on The Daily Show and video clips from MTV. Some observers have said that the YouTube founders, forseeing the impending legalities ahead, sold out before to Google to avoid going to court. Others suggest the impending legalities is exactly why Google snatched up YouTube when it did: As unappetizing as court may sound, if you could afford the court battle and had the chance to set a legal precedence and go down in history (with or without flames) for doing so, wouldnt you?
Although it was not an easy decision to make, Digg has placed itself in that exact position and now has an opportunity to set legal precedence in the ongoing Freedom of Speech/Censorship paradox that constantly plagues internet sites and any mediums that try to be whole heartedly democratic without being served court papers everyday.
Jordan Glogau and I have had quite a few discussions regarding intellectual property before. When it comes to our personal beliefs:
Jordan takes the traditional stance…
“Just because its easy to copy digital Intellectual Property doesn’t make it right. Whether its physical or intellectual, it’s still property and the creators deserve to get paid for their work.”
And I, well…
“We are 3 blocks from Canal St. I just purchased the DVD of a movie that hasn’t been released yet for $5 and this designer knockoff was only 30 bucks. God Bless America!”
One of the main reasons DRM is so hot button right now is because of the quality and ease of new technology.
Jordan adds:
“With a book you first had to actually copy it or typeset it. When copiers came along you still had to stand at a copy machine to make copies and chances were that it was not nearly as good as the original. That’s simply not the case with a digital copy. It’s just as good as the original.”
But when it comes to rights management in the social media space regarding our clients, because we are SEOs, we are very by the book/white hat about things. The worst thing you can do is get a client banned on MySpace because you just HAD to change the unchangable meta data and really, REALLY needed to make javascript work in the profile.
Because the internet is always evolving in such a ‘you aint seen nothin’ yet!‘ manner, sometimes it’s hard to keep up. We here at ECommerce Partners are constantly keeping up with the latest news, trends, programming codes and internet laws as they become available. We would be honored to set a legal precedence in a historic court battle; but we much prefer to serve our clients and offer the best eCommerce solutions and SEO/SEM services available.
