OnHollywood: Kevin Rose--'If they sue us, they sue us'

Digg founder Kevin Rose addressed the user revolt at his site during a panel discussion this morning at the AlwaysOn OnHollywood conference.

For background, a Digg user posted a HD-DVD hack code, Digg took down the story after receiving a cease and desist letter saying that the encryption key infringed on intellectual property right holders, Diggers revolted and Rose issued a mea culpa:

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.

During the panel Rose outlined the process by which he and Digg CEO Jay Adelson changed their minds about removing the posting of the key. "We talked to our attorneys to look at the risks, and they essentially came back and side if you keep it up you run the risk of being sued. It's kind of a gray area. We decided to take down and the community completely rebelled....then thousands of new strings of number showed up all over the site. We sat down and talked internally and Jay and I said let's go for it, let's fight it. The community powers the site. We reversed the decision. If they sue us they sue us."

Lawyer and blogger Denise Howell gives her take on her ZDNet blog.  

Rose was participating on the panel, "Breaking News and Analysis 2.0," with Arianna Huffington, co-founder and editor of the Huffington Post, Alan Citron, general manager of TMZ.com and moderator Kara Swisher, co-producer of D: All Things Digital. Huffington and Citron talked about fusing the best of traditional and new media.

"If you give people something fresh and from the heart, people will pay attention. This is where the Web really shines. There are so many layers in the traditional press...and they are working within the line, with rules established in the old media world. It's healthy to layer in additional types of coverage," Citron said. TMZ is famous for breaking stories like Mel Gibson's anti-semitic remarks and Alec Baldwin's phone rant to his daughter. Citron attributed TMZ's celebrity watch success to having a really hardcore journalistic focus.

Enough said. Old journalism, new journalism--it's about digging for the stories and journalistic integrity (for which there isn't a standard, but you know it when you see it) and Digging, the power of the community.  

Andy Plesser of Beet.TV allowed me to hijack his camera man Dave Kavanaugh to shoot a quick video interview with Kevin Rose: