What is freedom of internet speech? Well, now you can call it a revolt, rebellion, a mob of discontent tech savvy youngsters, or even a mouse disguised as an elephant. No matter what it’s called, unlike traditional media, social networking or community-based websites have often prided their movement as free and open place for users to post their own opinions without the fear of reprisal.

On Tuesday, San Francisco-based and one of the most popular social networking websites, Digg has suffered a rash of an angry mob attack on its website for removing posts related to a software key that allows anyone to crack the encryption built-into the HD-DVD and Blu-ray discs, which prevents users from making disc copies.

The chain reaction started after Digg’s users became so discontent with the social site decision to remove the crack key posts on its website. The action taken by Digg comes after it had received a cease-and-desist letter from AACS (Advanced Access Content System Licensing Administrator), an organization dedicated to protecting media content via encryption technology, which prevents users from copying the next generation of DVD discs. The letter sent by AACS demanded that posts containing the crack key should be removed immediately.

Whatever has prompted users to resurface crack key on Digg again after months of being buried within its archive is still unknown, unless it’s a modified crack. Last month however, AACS said that it has rendered the crack key useless by allowing encryption to expire at one point. So, assuming that the crack key is useless, then why AACS is making all the fuss about it, by sending a serious cease-and-desist letter.

“In response to attacks against certain PC-based applications for playing HD DVD and Blu-ray movie discs, Advanced Access Content System Licensing Administrator, LLC (“AACS LA”) announces that it has taken action, in cooperation with relevant manufacturers, to expire the encryption keys associated with the specific implementations of AACS-enabled software.” AACS said (on April 16).

Meanwhile, Digg’s users on the other hand kept reposting the same information about the crack key every time Digg’s moderators deleted them, which also led its server to crash Tuesday night.

As pressure kept mounting on Digg, the messages from the angry mob kept popping up on its front page until Tuesday night, when the Co-founder Kevin Rose has decided to intervene by posting on Digg Blog, where he said ”In building and shaping the site I’ve always tried to stay as hands on as possible. We’ve always given site moderation (digging/burying) power to the community. Occasionally we step in to remove stories that violate our terms of use (eg. linking to pornography, illegal downloads, racial hate sites, etc.). So today was a difficult day for us. We had to decide whether to remove stories containing a single code based on a cease and desist declaration. We had to make a call, and in our desire to avoid a scenario where Digg would be interrupted or shut down, we decided to comply and remove the stories with the code.”

Surprisingly however, within that same post on Digg Blog, Rose made a decision which overturned the entire situation, in that he said “But 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. 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. If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.”

As the Digg story continues to receive mass coverage from online media outlets, one question keeps repeating its self, what does it all mean? From my vantage point of view, it really doesn’t mean anything other than; it’s not a freedom of internet speech, because not everyone has participated, and the few (the mob) again decided for the masses, nothing new here.

While the entertainment industry strives to generate more revenue for their investors, penniless teenagers on the other hand want their share of freebies, like free tickets to the movie theaters.