“Indiggnation” and Afterthoughts

A few months ago, a secret decryption key for HD-DVDs was leaked onto the internet. Just recently, however, numerous websites that contained the key have received takedown notices for allegedly violating “intellectual property” rights. That seems like a simple enough matter to deal with, despite the fact that copyrighting a series of random numbers and letters is seemingly inane (the sequences happens to be “09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0,” by the way).

But for Digg, a popular community-based social bookmarking/news syndication website that has become symbolic of “Web 2.0”-ness, the problem was slightly more precarious. Digg’s reaction to the C&D letter was to systematically eliminate all references to the hexadecimal key, which entailed deleting various news posts and, eventually, banning users who violated their wishes. While, journalistically, this could ostensibly be viewed as censorship, it made sense for Digg: HD-DVD was one of their sponsors. Plus, Digg isn’t in the utmost sense a “newspaper”—it’s run by its users.

That’s where the problem begins. One of the main aspects of the “Web 2.0” phenomenon, if such a thing could be said to tangibly exist, has been the visible transfer of editorial power from top to bottom. Websites like del.icio.us and, perhaps most famously, Wikipedia, operate based solely on this model. When the implicit agreement between the laissez-faire oligarchical administration and its community base is violated, only one thing can possibly result: rebellion.

In the wake of Digg’s administration taking a proactive role in censoring its syndicated news, users flooded the website with references to the HD-DVD key (some in rather hilarious fashion, such as a YouTube song). The maelstrom of protest was so intense that it was not only covered by the mainstream media, but it ultimately forced Kevin Rose, the founder of Digg, to reverse his earlier decision¹ :

[A]fter 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.

Digg on, Kevin

The Web 2.0 model of power distribution, which has resulted in a shift from top-down administration to a bottom-up community-based apparatus, inherently reduces the power of those responsible for engineering their own communities. This, in essence, is populism working at its purest.

I think that an interesting parallel can be drawn to the recent burgeoning discourse of the 2008 U.S. Presidential Elections and the issue that Digg faced. Obviously, anger regarding the MPAA and RIAA’s draconian DRM policies play a significant role in all of this brouhaha, but I’d like to keep those issues separate from this post (at least for now). The fact is, this is about bureaucratic isolation, regardless of what the issue or catalyst for rebellion is. Digg, like other institutions, has an obligation to its users — after all, they’re who generate the content. The same is true for all governments and companies. When these institutions fail to respect the implicit agreements made between themselves and those they serve/rule/etc., rebellion (in whatever form) is the only inevitable outgrowth, whether it be an authoritarian Stalinist system or a local Taco Bell. The Bush administration’s rampant cronyism, corruption and isolation has largely fed into what Barack Obama has dubbed “New Politics”: a turn largely against lobbyist support, unilateralism (be it national or political) and elitism, with a large emphasis on grassroots political support.

This isn’t just an issue of populism either. The largely rational, humanist agendas promulgated by what I’m calling the “Web 2.0 ethos” is also visible in many of Steve Jobs’ recent publications on current and upcoming Apple corporate policy. The first of these, his “Thoughts on Music,” was intially received as pandering or simply PR-propaganda. While the former may be true — how could we ever know what goes on in Steve Jobs’ mind? (though I think that he genuinely believes in what he says and does) — the latter was proven to be undeniably false, given the recent slew of non-DRM music now available on the iTunes Store. Even more recently, Mr. Jobs has published an article relating to Apple’s environmental policies, entitled “A Greener Apple.” This is largely a response to GreenPeace’s protestations that Apple has been consistently shitting on the environment, when in fact it simply had not published a plan, or even a plan for a plan, on how to discontinue this alleged behavior.

I suppose what I’m getting at is liability. People claim that we live in a world dominated by evil, cloistered institutions that lurk in the shadows of the night, plotting and scheming on how to further collectively screw the public. This may be true in some respects, but how far can they go before we react—nay—rebel? Everyone acts within certain boundaries, and no one is all-powerful. Some leaders, like George W. Bush, might react in a way that is not positively-viewed by the rest of the Enlightenment-subscribing world, while others, such as Kevin Rose, forge on by respecting the wishes of those that gave them power and voice in the first place. The “Web 2.0” phenomenon has brought the populist efforts observed in the recent 2008 Presidential Elections (and elsewhere and at differnet times in history) to the Internet; what more could we want? The avenue for humanist, rational, Enlightenment-based synergy will empower anyone with a computer to oppose the authoritarian tactics of certain unnamed corporate and bureaucratic entities. Moreover, the power to act collectively and decisively is at our fingertips, but now we have the most significant key to making those things matter: power.

1. Posted on Kevin Rose’s blog ↩