TechWag

Interesting supposition out on Slashdot this morning that the entire take down process at Digg last week was really caused by lawyers not understanding how to deal with people. Many links in the article point off to Engadget and to EFF as a way to explain the near riot that Digg had to deal with. Although we are still wondering why Reddit users were not as passionate about the whole thing.

The New York Times wrote an excellent summation of the whole thing now that the dust up is starting to settle down, in their article they state (and you should read the whole thing to get a clear picture):

The broader distribution of the code may not pose a serious threat to the studios, because it requires some technical expertise and specialized software to use it to defeat the copy protection on Blu-ray and HD DVD discs. But its relentless spread has already become a lesson in mob power on the Internet and the futility of censorship in the digital world. Source: NY Times

But EFF takes it a step deeper in explaining what the rights and limitations are of the whole process here on their web site.

Then everyone else has to weigh in on the subject, John Dvorak states:

When an attorney sends out threatening letters to people these days, especially to bloggers and other Internet mavens, these documents get scanned and published online to be widely distributed. Most of these letters are written to sound intimidating, often with a lot of language that’s mean-spirited. People, sometimes by the millions, read these and get angry not at the lawyer, but at the company that hired the lawyer. This can lead to a public-relations disaster. Source: Market Watch

The idea of Web 2.0 is user generated content that is contributed to web sites, forums, and a whole host of other sites because user stories tend to be compelling if the user has actually had either a good or bad experience with a technology, issue or company. Companies have been dealing with the viral word of mouth that the Internet brings to the table for at least a decade now.

The music industry has also reaped the benefits of the way that they approached their customers, and the file sharing community. While we don’t know how it would have ended up if things had been done differently, the Internet is a process as well as a forum for thoughts, opinions, and both the highest and lowest common denominators in the global society.

Not everyone is honest, not everyone tries to do the right thing all the time. The AACS key could have been limited as a cultural curiosity for the uber geeks, we mentioned that and others mention that it could have been that way. But the heavy hand of the system that has been created via the DMCA, Copyright, and a host of other provisions in the legal system has set up an adversarial role rather than an accommodating role.

Because it is adversarial, problems like the Digg AACS fiasco will keep on happening until the whole process is changed. If Dvorak and others are correct, then it is the system that will have to be changed, and one where Public Relations becomes the final arbitrator of what the companies lawyers send out to folks.

Tags: education, business, Politics //