Internet Anarchy over “Free Speech”

I’ve never seen anything like it before in my life. It’s a large scale internet revolt. In-case you haven’t yet heard, the hex code to break the HD-DVD encryption was publicized on wikipedia and digg (among other various places). Both places removed it. The result? Check out Digg’s home page as of about five minutes ago and then Digg’s home page as of right now:

It shut Digg down! It’s everywhere. It’s hidden all over Flickr in various images such as these:

People are hiding it in tons of wikipedia articles that have nothing to do with it to make sure wikipedia can’t keep up. Someone even registered the domain name! It’s being blogged about everywhere in articles such as this.

My thoughts? I honestly wouldn’t even care except that I have never seen anything like this before in my life. The great strength of the internet is information sharing. The scary weakness of the internet is information sharing. In a matter of minutes (literally), this thing has spread so far no one can stop it. Is this actually a good thing? What if it was the “noc list” so-to-speak? What if it was the secret to your company’s livelihood (and therefore the source of your paycheck)? What if it was your personal bank account information?

I believe in freedom of speech and I love the concept of internet communities and information sharing, but there is obviously a line somewhere. Everyone would agree it is drawn before our personal bank account information, but not before freedom of the press to speak out against an oppressive government.

Where exactly is this line drawn? Be careful not to jump on a bandwagon too quickly without considering the implications…

The Aftermath:

After the revolt blew over, Digg.com founder Kevin Rose wrote: “…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. If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.”

I respect Rose’s choice to fight it; although it would seem very sad to me if the company truly did ‘die trying’ to defend freedom of speech for the very users that were the cause of their downfall. More on the subject at Forbes…