Last month, the AACS licensing authority sent legal
threats to various websites and blogs, demanding that they remove the AACS processing key as well as any links pointing to a certain
thread on the Doom 9 forums. Digg.com initially gave
in to the AACS LA's demands. However, after receiving a flood of complaints from their readers, they decided not to delete stories or
comments containing the processing key. Here's part of a blog post made by Digg
founder, Kevin Rose:
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.
The AACS LA might as well throw in the towel. While legal threats may slow it down,
there is no way they're going to prevent the key from spreading. I think at this point, the only thing left to say is "09 F9 11 02 9D 74
E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0".
