How to Piss off A Digg User

Here’s a lesson in how to piss off your users. Apparently, Digg has removed stories involving a hack to HD-DVDs. From the digg blog:

"This has all come up in the past 24 hours, mostly connected to the HD-DVD hack that has been circulating online, having been posted to Digg as well as numerous other popular news and information websites. We’ve been notified by the owners of this intellectual property that they believe the posting of the encryption key infringes their intellectual property rights. In order to respect these rights and to comply with the law, we have removed postings of the key that have been brought to our attention."

Unfortunately, the blog doesn’t allow comments, so digg users have chosen to scream "fuck you" the only way they can, throwing it in their face over, and over and over again. Now the entire front page has been taken up only by stories revealing the hack. And that’s just a small selection. My entire digg feed is filled with these stories. Not sure what the right move for digg is here, but it sure is interesting to watch…

*Update* Deleting of stories has stopped, and Kevin Rose of Digg has responded:

"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."

Well, there you go...