Rose defended Digg's turnabout during the OnHollywood digital media conference Wednesday morning in Los Angeles. He said that Digg's administrators would continue to remove links to pornography, hate speech and pirated software, but that they would look the other way when it came to the code that might help people crack HD DVDs.
"We always look to the community to provide direction for us," he said in an interview. "It was clear they didn't want us to back down."
That stance perplexed movie studio executives, who wondered how Rose could allow the code to be posted but block links to pirated versions of Photoshop.
"What the heck is the difference?" said Alan E. Bell, executive vice president and chief technical officer for Paramount Pictures. "These are very profound issues that are just as important as the ones the users of Digg.com voiced in their e-mails."
Other studio executives played down the importance of the code's spread, noting that it has been bouncing around the Internet for months.
Avery's software group can disable security keys that have been compromised and distribute new ones, preventing people from using them to make more unauthorized copies of movies.
Still, the entertainment industry's efforts to wipe the code off the Web clearly backfired.
One Digg member, Grant Robertson, said the incident reminded him of a quote from "NewsRadio," the 1990s TV show: "You can't take something off the Internet. That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool."
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joseph.menn@latimes.com
alex.pham@latimes.com
Times staff writer Dawn C. Chmielewski contributed to this report.
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Begin text of infobox
Digg Inc.
What it does: Digg is a website that displays links to popular stories or postings based on how highly its members rank them.
Headquarters: San Francisco
Founded: 2004
Chief executive: Jay Adelson
Employees: 25
Members: 1.2 million registered users
Traffic: 15.5 million visitors (April)
Funding: $11.3 million raised from Greylock Partners, Omidyar Network and private investors
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Source: The company
