Digg bows to users over HD DVD crack

Digg has announced that it will bow to user pressure and allow the publication of articles that mention a key capable of cracking the Advanced Access Control System of Blu-ray and HD-DVD movie media.

The news aggregator service had been censoring its users after receiving a cease-and-desist letter from the Advanced Access Content System Licensing Administrator (AACS-LA) under the terms of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (PDF).

Digg then blocked any articles on the topic from appearing on the site. Kevin Rose, Digg's founder, posted a note on his blog to explain the decision.

"We had to decide whether to remove stories containing a single code based on a cease-and-desist declaration," he wrote.

"We had to make a call and, in our desire to avoid Digg being interrupted or shut down, we decided to comply and remove the stories with the code."

The 32-digit number that disables the digital rights management on the new formats is in wide circulation on the internet already, and the AACS-LA campaign has generated huge interest in the blogosphere including a song on YouTube. 

The code is being posted as widely as possible to make the AACS-LA campaign ineffective.

"After seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you have made it clear. You would rather see Digg go down fighting than bow to a bigger company," wrote Rose.

"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."