Community Pressure

The AlwaysOn OnHollywood conference is underway, once again at the infamous Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood. I'm sitting in the Bloggers Bullpen, armed with my brand new Canon Rebel XTi, feeling clumsy with my first digital SLR as if I've never used one.

What happened to the skills I picked up using a SLR for years traveling through Africa, Europe and SE Asia? They don't seem to be helping me with Canon's new menu structure as I consistently click useless photo after another. Perhaps I should just set it to automatic until someone translates their manual into something my right brain can easily decipher.

I only caught part of the opening morning panel that included Arrianna Huffington, TMZ.com's Alan Citron and Digg's Kevin Rose (Kara Swisher moderated). Dan Farber writes about Kevin Rose' feedback following community revolt on his recently.

Dan gives us some background which I seemed to have missed: "A Digg user posted a HD-DVD hack code, Digg took down the story after receiving a cease and desist letter saying that the encryption key infringed on intellectual property right holders, Diggers revolted and Rose issued a mea culpa."

They ended up voting to support their community rather than giving into the big boys and lawyers. So Web 2.0 of them. I just hope that regardless of what is the right way to go with this, that the pressure of a community alone doesn't drive every management decision and end up being the death of them. That said, in this case, lawyer Denise Howell seems to think that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act may very well come into play and praises Digg for standing their ground.

Credit: Dan Farber