A wide-scale user revolt is disrupting popular social news networking Digg. It’s a protest over Digg acquiescing to MPAA pressure and deleting a 15,000+ dugg story about a crack for the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray DRM system.

Now, every single story on the front page contains the cracked number in some way.

The madness began after not only was the initial story deleted, but the user’s account was deleted as well. Other people who submitted stories linking to the number also got their accounts deleted and their sites received takedown notices. Even people who submitted stories about the deleting of other accounts, stories which did not contain the number, also got deleted. That’s when things really got bonkers.

Users are hiding the number in all sorts ways. One story claimed that a new Jules Verne manuscript was found, entitled, “09:F9:11:02:9D:74:E3:5B:D8:… Leagues Under the Sea.” Others link to pictures of the number. A new one says Jesus has “the secret key.” Others coyly ask, “anyone know what this number is?” Diggers are digging the stories like crazy, trying to keep the number on the front page and thumb their nose at Digg and the MPAA.

Screencap of the chaos, inside…

Fostering internal civil disobedience cements Digg’s status as a democratic news site. The question is whether it can endure what it created. Will all the stories get removed? Will all the users that submitted them get banned? Will Kevin Rose get his panties sued off if they don’t fully comply with the MPAA’s directive? Will people ever understand that trying to ban something on the internet only ends up making it propagate like meth bunnies?!?!

It’ll probably be all over by morning, with only a top-ranked Digg story to recap the memories. — BEN POPKEN

RELATED: The New HD-DVD/Blu-Ray Hack: What It Might Mean For Us [Gadget Lab]

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