Digg.com users are protesting the removal of a story exposing the HD-DVD encryption key. The story is said to have received 15,000 diggs. Over the past few hours, numerous stories and comments crying censorship and reposting the key appeared after Jay Adelson posted this official message on the digg.com blog:

I just wanted to explain what some of you have been noticing around some stories that have been submitted to Digg on the HD DVD encryption key being cracked.

This has all come up in the past 24 hours, mostly connected to the HD-DVD hack that has been circulating online, having been posted to Digg as well as numerous other popular news and information websites. We’ve been notified by the owners of this intellectual property that they believe the posting of the encryption key infringes their intellectual property rights. In order to respect these rights and to comply with the law, we have removed postings of the key that have been brought to our attention.

Whether you agree or disagree with the policies of the intellectual property holders and consortiums, in order for Digg to survive, it must abide by the law. Digg’s Terms of Use, and the terms of use of most popular sites, are required by law to include policies against the infringement of intellectual property. This helps protect Digg from claims of infringement and being shut down due to the posting of infringing material by others.

Our goal is always to maintain a purely democratic system for the submission and sharing of information - and we want Digg to continue to be a great resource for finding the best content. However, in order for that to happen, we all need to work together to protect Digg from exposure to lawsuits that could very quickly shut us down.

Thanks for your understanding,

Jay

Later Kevin Rose capitulated, saying digg was done deleting stories.

If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.

Digg is a user driven social news site where a community of users submits content for other people to read and Digg desired stories. Stories that receive large numbers of Diggs get promoted to the front page for “millions of visitors to see.”

Digg.com thread: here.