Digg Controversy

So it looks like someone earlier today (or maybe it was last night) posted the "secret number" that is the key to unlocking HD DVD content. Digg then (allegedly) went and took down the post, and deleted the user, causing outrage among their user base. It's pretty hard to argue that a number is copyright protected, so not sure if they have some sort of legal reason, but obviously this sent the world (well, lots of geeks used to the freedom of speech type concepts) into a frenzy. At one point today, every single post on the front page held the number. I'm not sure if Digg has continued to delete the user accounts and posts of everyone (if they have, they're slowing down, as there's still plenty of posts on the front page now), but everyone's a little shook up.

How this all plays out in the next few days will be pretty interesting. I've always been under the impression that Digg content is driven by their users, with no interaction from the people running the site, and judging by the outrage, a lot of other people were under the same impression. We'll have to wait to see whether or not this has a negative (or positive with all the publicity) effect on the number of hits the site gets.

UPDATE - Digg has officially responded