When Users Take Over the Asylum - Digg and DRM
05/02/2007, 1 year 4 months ago
I'm sure that most people have heard about the brouhaha over at Digg yesterday, but if not, the BBC News has fairly unbiased synopsis of what happened. Mine, I'm sure, will be much less unbiased. The entire Digg community seems pretty proud of themselves today, having shown "The Man" who was boss, and crowing about the news coverage that the stunt has generated.
What really happened, however, was that a mob overtook an online community to suit their own purposes. And I'm sorry, kids, but it was no Boston Tea Party. It wasn't even new.
Back in 2001, a little site called Epinions decided to remove the rights of contributors. Content writers were no longer able to edit or remove their reviews, and the community retaliated, posting inflamatory reviews that were, for the most part, obscene as part of a mob movement they called EBD, which stood for "Epinions Bl*ws Dogs." The Powers That Were back-pedalled, gave users their rights back, and all was relatively happy again in the Epinions universe. Epinions was 2.0 before there was 2.0, with user-generated content, a community rating system, and they even pay contributors according to a super-secret algorithm that's never been shared to prevent gaming the system.
The difference between yesterday's Digg fiasco, which actually brought the site down for a period of time, and the Epinions EBD incident was what was being protested. With Epinions, users were protesting losing intellectual property rights to their work. What were the users of Digg protesting?
This isn't the first firestorm on a social community; MySpace users have been protesting the banning of widgets that advertise other companies, and users were able to at least get their Photobucket videos back after a brief ban based on Photobucket slide shows containing ads.
The problem with both of these issues is that Web 2.0 users seem to forget that online communities don't exist solely for their benefit. There are two big issues at play when it comes to these sites are money and laws. When it comes to prohibiting other sites from advertising, why would it make sense for another company to get free advertising on your site? Server space and bandwidth aren't free, much as the general MySpace user would like to think it is. Someone has to pay for that, and if the users want free service, they are going to depend on the site's advertisers to foot their bill.
When it comes to the Digg situation, they were stuck. No one wants to censor their members. But when it comes to a threatened legal action, what would the users rather have happen? Digg delete an article or have the site shut down and dragged through the court system. No matter what your feelings on DRM, posting the code was a violation of U.S. copyright law. Providing links to that code puts Digg in an unenviable position. Sure, the MPAA most likely won't take the time and energy to go after individual posters, but a large site providing several links? All anyone has to do is look at what the RIAA has been doing when it comes to shared music files to see where the court system ends up.
So while Digg users are waving their pom poms at each other, all they really proved was that if enough people decide to act like petulant children, they can cripple a site that they enjoy using, put them in possible legal jeopardy, and force the tech folks at the site to try to deal with the site load. What they forgot is that Digg is a real company with real people working there who had to deal with the users' collective temper tantrum over a posting that really shouldn't have existed in the first place.
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“Well, it wasn’t really looting, because someone else broke out the window…”
What do you expect from Digg users? Petulant children is an apt description.
Great article Cyndy! I like the petulant children touch too. All I can say is it couldn’t happen to a finer group of almost-human beings
As a little update, the Beeb has an article that says those folks may still be in trouble. DRM Group Vows to Fight Bloggers
I can see where you’re coming from here:
“So while Digg users are waving their pom poms at each other, all they really proved was that if enough people decide to act like petulant children, they can cripple a site that they enjoy using, put them in possible legal jeopardy, and force the tech folks at the site to try to deal with the site load.”
I would also note that the techies who run websites and make money off the projects depend on the petulant children to provide the content that brings in viewers.
I must have missed the part where flaming the site was content. And if whatever money they DO make goes toward paying lawyers and not salaries, what do you think happens to the site? Or do you assume that bandwidth and servers and tech support don’t cost money.
It was childish, no two ways about it. It had nothing to do with free speech (which is actually only a guaranteed right of citizens to speak out against the government, not people to post hacks on a site owned by a private company, a fine legal point most Americans seem to miss) and everything to do with throwing a tantrum.
In addition, every single person who signs up for a Digg account agrees to the Terms of Service, which include (under #2, so even if you got bored reading them, this section was near the top):
“DESCRIPTION OF SERVICE
Subject to full compliance with the Terms of Use, Digg may offer to provide certain services and content, as described more fully on the Site, (”Services”). Services shall include, but not be limited to, any service and content Digg performs for you, as well as the offering of any materials displayed or performed on the Site (including, but not limited to text, user comments, messages, information, data, graphics, news articles, photographs, images, illustrations, software, audio clips and video clips, also known as the “Content”) on the Site. Digg may change, suspend or discontinue the Services including any Content for any reason, at any time, including the availability of any feature or content. Digg may also impose limits on certain features and services or restrict your access to parts or all of the Services without notice or liability.”