An amazing day over at the popular news rating site Digg. In response to participants posting the DRM keys for HD-DVD (recently made widely available on the Internet by hackers), and fellow users 'digging' these, the team behind the site started deleting the posts and suspending user accounts. They did this due to a 'take down' notice issued by what the Digg blog refers to as 'the owners of this intellectual property'. This is a body known as the AACS licensing authority.

There then ensued a huge increase in the number of postings of the encryption key, and the number of diggs quickly spiralled out of control, reaching more than 50,000 as of this posting. When the company's founder, Kevin Rose, realised that it was going to prove impossible to delete the posts and suspend even more accounts, essentially destroying the essence of Digg itself, he threw in the towel, and probably settled in for a meeting with the company lawyers.

This seems to be a clear illustration of this: a core of activist posters and commenters are what drive web 2.0 sites. Without their support, good will, and leadership, a site will die.