09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0, Swarms, Outrage, and the socialbookmarkosphere
by tdaxp ~ May 2nd, 2007
Two front-page stories on Slashdot (Censoring a number and Digg.com attempts to suppress HD-DVD revolt), on six front-page stories on reddit (Digg exiles! Welcome to Reddit!, Digg is on a campaign of widespread user and story censorship, Digg founders took HD DVD Sponsorship — Digg fighting user revolt over HD-DVD code ban, Digg shuts down story submissions, Digg users are showing the true power of users on user run sites, Wikipedia bans HD DVD code and related discussion pages)
The swarm has worked, at least partially. Digg founder Kevin Rose wrote on the company blog:
Digg This: 09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0
Today was an insane day. And as the founder of Digg, I just wanted to post my thoughts…
In building and shaping the site I’ve always tried to stay as hands on as possible. We’ve always given site moderation (digging/burying) power to the community. Occasionally we step in to remove stories that violate our terms of use (eg. linking to pornography, illegal downloads, racial hate sites, etc.). So today was a difficult day for us. We had to decide whether to remove stories containing a single code based on a cease and desist declaration. We had to make a call, and in our desire to avoid a scenario where Digg would be interrupted or shut down, we decided to comply and remove the stories with the code.
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.
If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.
What is the long number in the title? And why is this on tdaxp Read below the fold to find out…
The number is actually a key to allow people to use HD DVD disks they may buy. Historically, large media companies try to limit the usefulness of new technology, because technology is inherently disruptive and posses a risk to them. So, for instance, the Motion Picture Association of America thought that VHS was a terrible idea and should be criminalized. Fortunately, Congress and the Courts were on the side of the consumers on that issue. More recently, the MPAA opposed allowing people to record DVDs in the same manner that we can record TV with VHS. Again, the Courts agreed with consumers and disagreed with the studios.
Unable to criminalize consumers actually using the movies they buy, the studios resort to technical tricks which just make it hard to use the movies. Because of the computer code surrounding HD DVDs, typing in the number 09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0 allows users to get around the troublesome software and record their own movies.
Eventually, some stories mentioning the number made it on digg, a popular social bookmark site (thanks for the list, Jayson!).
I’m less interested in the number (not having an HD DVD player) than I am with the reaction. Blogs were “outraged” by this, just as they were by the JL Kirk, NationMaster, and Wiley Interscience affairs. However, because HD DVDs effect even more people than negative reviews of Tennessee job placement agencies, negative reviews of online databases, or critical interpretation of journal articles, the swarms’ reaction is even bigger. The reason is that while censoring of blogs outrages bloggers (a vocal but small minority of internet users), censoring online bookmark sites outrages even more people. The group of bloggers is maybe 5% of the internet population, but the group of social bookmarks is huge. Indeed, with social bookmark integration with popular webbrowsers (see Delicious for Firefox, Digg for Firefox, Reddit for Firefox, etc) it is possible within a few years a majority of internet users will also be social bookmark users.
Outrage is not a rational reaction, but whether a consequence of perceiving two things: that your own group is weak and that another group is attacking it. By successfully (for a while) forcing Digg to censor its own users, the MPAA convinced social bookmarkers that they were weak and being attaked. They became outraged. And now a number that I did not care about for quite a while — 09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0 — is all over the news.
JL Kirk eventually was mentioned by Instapundit, and John Wiley & Sons met The Volokh Conspiracy. Now the MPAA, and 09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0, know reddit and digg.
[1] http://www.tdaxp.com/archive/2 008/06/19/the-foreign-polic...
May 2nd, 2007 at 12:00 am
Do you understand that the color scheme used on the page makes it unreadable?
May 2nd, 2007 at 12:00 am
Is anyone else having simplyjat's problem? For me, the page is black-text-on-white-background in both IE and Firefox.
(My guess is that simplyjat didn't wait for the page to load, or something timed out, but I can't be sure.)
May 2nd, 2007 at 12:00 am
ry,
Your interpretation is that “intellectual property” drives innovation, however, this might not be an accurate view. Much of the great inventions in history were done with out I.P. protections. If you are speaking of new drugs, much of the cost stems from the heavy regulation (and much of that regulation is in the efficacy trials as opposed to testing for toxicity.) For the pharma issues, Alex Tabarrok (economist, GMU) has written extensively on the topic; try here http://www.independent.org/aboutus/person_detail.asp?id=505 and here http://www.fdareview.org/
For I.P. in general, the patent lawyer Stephen Kinsella has written quite a bit arguing against patents and “Intellectual Property”. Try these links: http://www.mises.org/studyguide.aspx?action=author&Id=301 and http://www.kinsellalaw.com/index.php
Regards,
TDL
May 2nd, 2007 at 12:00 am
I dunno Dan. I'm real leary of this whole 'hijack the content' movement. I've actually read the license agreement that scrolls up on VHS tapes and on my DVDs. I don't own the content. I've paid a one time fee for rental of it, and that's it.
I find that most people that're torrenting and ripping stuff find it to be all plus, until it hits them in the pocketbook. I don't think people will make your beloved Elder Scrolls, with million dollar production costs, unless there's a payoff some multiple of production cost. And the new 'revolution', as techcrunch is calling it, is going to cut the multiple below critical.
same is happening in pharma and the call for ending ownership. People aren't going to stay in it, with the mental and emotional and time suck that research and development is, if there isn't that $60k/yr paycheck attached. Sure, lots of it is poor decisions(do we need another psycho tropic or marital aide? not really), but you're going to need us for stuff like resistant microbes. And we're not going to be there for altruism.
Same for content makers. Why spend 200million to make a blockbuster when you're only going to make that much back, MAYBE, since people can rip it and give it to their friends for pennies?
May 3rd, 2007 at 12:00 am
ry,
I used to work as a programmer in the content-creation company, and one of my tasks was to make our demonstration product unusable unless the user bought a license. It was a good job, I liked it, and I would have done the same.
When it comes to MPAA copy protection, there's the added factor that the protection only needs to be broken once, and that the protection hurts the least savvy customers the most. But that's mostly a side issue.
The Constitution allows these monopolies to exist for a limited time to advance progress — they are a necessary evil, like taxation. Taxes and intellectual monopolies are systematic ways of depriving individuals and groups of property. They deprive others of wealth and create artificial revenue streams… but, they are necessary. I don't advocate the abolition of taxes or the abolition of intellectual monopolies. But they are in the same realm of good as life, liberty, or property.
That said, the post's main goal was to demonstrate how outrage and swarming increasingly works together online. And it has.. these social bookmark service — “that digg or delicious thing” — which catch even extremely intelligent and well-read bloggers unaware [1], managed to reverse digg's policy.. there's now even a Financial Times article [2] (found on the Drudge Report's front page) about it.
TDL,
Thanks for the links!
[1] http://zenpundit.blogspot.com/2007/05/six-degrees-of-participation-tech-guru.html
[2] http://www.ft.com/cms/s/08b10610-f8cd-11db-a940-000b5df10621.html