Just incase you’ve been hiding under a rock the past couple of days and haven’t heard the news – the Internet has been revolutionized and rebooted due to seperate events that are being proclaimed as the dawn of the new Internet.

*YAWN*

The first of the two events was the Silverlight announcements by Microsoft at MIX’07 (more on this later) and the second was the temper tantrum by the slaves errr .. users over at Digg.com when Rose and company yanked a post containing an illegally obtained hexidecimal number and banned the user who posted it.

The number posted was the key for unlocking DMCA protected HD-DVD media which the folks involved in this draconian protection scheme obviously wouldn’t want in the hands of the great unwashed mases. So out went the take down letters to Digg.com who on the advice of their lawyers complied.

This is the sort of thing that happens just about everyday somewhere on the web except this time the stardard action of complying ignited a firestorm of pounding keyboard and Google engulfing hyperlinks. All for the purpose of what? – the so-called freedom of information – give it a rest – seriously.

I’m not going to get into an arguement of the moral or legal ethics of DMCA or the actions of orgainizations like RIAA and MPAA. As far as I am concerned organizations like those should be dumped on an island somewhere and force fed Doris Day movies and Donna Summers disco music. What I am amazed at is the reaction of people I thought were reasonable thinking folks.

While Digg.com’s move in the beginning might have been questionable it really had no choice given the legal climate of protectionism; but to suggest that the move was to squelch the freedom of information is ludicrous. Sure the set of hexidecimal digits might now be in the public domain by the shear force of posted material but here’s a hint – it doesn’t change the legality of how that number was obtained.

But now we have people proclaiming that this whole event has been a revolution or how this event has changed the internet with only a couple of realistic opinons being heard through the din of the Web 2.0 rah-rah’s. Tony at DJI; relishing in the irony of the situation, suggested that Kevin had made his bed and now he needed to lie in it. Then from Neomeme we get the reality of the situation for Digg.com – that being the sound of the cash register with every page view.

The fact is this whole episode has absolutely nothing to do with freedom of information; forcing the government or corporations to cough up supposedly secret documents is freedom of information, making sure that innovation and thought isn’t stifled is freedom of information. Sure some would argue that releasing this set of numbers is setting information free but the problem is that it was obtained by some method of hacking the code; which by the nature of any EULA is illegal.

This illusion is furthered by Kevin Rose’s post about how now Digg.com will be fighting the good fight come hell or high water. Talk about pandering to the masses but at least Digg.com’s legal groundwork for their defense should they end up in court over this and they are back in the good graces of the natives.

As for this being an event horizon for the Internet – not likely. Tomorrow the natives will go back to their digging of anti-MS, linux rulez posts, Mr. Rose will start shopping for a new Beemer and the lawyers will collect some more fat fees.

*YAWN*