Cries of censorship are filling the article lists at social bookmarking site Digg.com. Apparently, someone posted the URL to an article containing the HD-DVD Processor Key (numbers you can use to crack the copy protection code), and Digg removed it from their site because it promotes copyright infringement. They, like Gather, have statements in their Terms of Service stating that users shouldn't post things that infringe on copyrights.
Users, however, are claiming that Digg is censoring articles, and have been posting article after article containing the key numbers in one form or another.
Digg's position seems pretty reasonable to me -- posting the processor key is encouraging people to break the law. Why would anyone want that on their website?
These blog articles by Muhammad Saleem may help explain the situation as well:
The Reason Why Digg Removed That Story
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He states:
"...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. We hear you, and effective immediately we won't delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be."
You can read his full blog post HERE.
If Gather wanted to disallow any reference to "Pirate Princess" they could do it without violating anything but the sensibilitiies of their user community. Presumably, after a hailstorm of criticism, the offended users would run wailing to another site to continue their social networking. In other words, it's a business decision on the content to allow. Anyone who thinks otherwise should seriously consider getting a life.
I'd just turn over all the user information to the people they're infringing on... bwa ha ha ha
Censorship or not, I think posting things that can help someone do illegal things is just asking to be moderated or censored.