Can social news sites survive the very openness that makes them thrive?
Devotees of “crowdsourced” media sites love to equate social editing with democracy, and they’ve got at least one part of the comparison right: social editing is every bit as raucous, messy and enthralling as the electoral process. For the latest proof, look no further than the much-debated DVD hack posted at social-editing titan Digg.com. In case you missed it, last month a user posted a link to instructions on cracking the digital copyright protections encrypted into HD-DVDs. Digg removed the link, then was so swamped with users reposting the story that the site temporarily shut down. After some soul-searching about the rights of free-speech versus those of privacy and intellectual property, Digg allowed the link to go back up, and the site’s founder, Kevin Rose, wrote in Digg’s blog that, “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… If we lose, then what the h
