This first post is about something that happened yesterday that reminded me about always looking for the most reasonable and basic concept.
Digg was actually brought to a mayor question, but a very basic one. In terms of being the creators of a new project with no previous reference of which “rules” to follow but the ones from traditional media (limited to ethics and terms of the use of content) this new “media” was to build their own. The thing with new rules is that they’re not always accepted by everyone.
A new story was published on Digg. One that became very popular quickly because it had the key-code for the HD-DVD encryption. So technically speaking, this represented no violations for Digg’s terms of use, though, they received a cease and desist letter to remove that content so they started to remove the posts. Soon enough, people started posting different news with the same code over and over till Digg’s homepage had the code all over it.
So putting it into Kevin Rose’s own words:
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.
This means that they actually complied to their users by keeping the content instead of removing it. So basically they’ve decided that complying to their new rules was more important that complying to old ones so to speak.
If something actually happens to Digg for not complying to the cease and desist letter it would only mean that maybe its not time for making new rules. Or maybe it is. Probably it will all be settled by some kind of agreement but it’s definitely not gonna be the last headache for Digg’s founders.
This is a crystal clear example of the problems that new projects encounter as to creating their new pads and rules. I get a lot of this with Dixo, a project of mine (which I’ll be referring to continuously) that everyday encounters new problems with old media procedures. A few of them because it was built by people who have been working on radio and TV, but mostly because of the difficulty that represents to explain new media to a country that has such a massive influence from old media.
In Mexico, more than 70% of the total budget destined for marketing and publicity is strictly for radio and television. Then there’s a few percentage destined to prints (ads and magazines), and a very very small one for the internet. Most of this due to ignorance of the media agencies. Fortunately I’ve ran into some brands that are actually interested in new media and it’s reach. (I’ll be referring to them later too).
So… Sticking to our rules is really the right thing to do? Maybe it is yet to see but as Kevin puts it, “if we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying”
Everybody is doing it so: 09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0
WHAT TO DO NOW?