People are calling the “Digg riot” unprecedented. Unprecedented? I remember seeing this movie before, with DeCSS as The Information That Wanted To Be Free and the Slashdot crowd as the pitchfork-wielding mob of “passionate activists.” Where did that absurdly reductive equation of code with speech get us? Nowhere. Seven years later, the same battles are being fought. If the Slashdotters and Diggers of the world spent their time engaged in real activism, instead of getting their kicks being part of a mob, maybe we’d have seen some progress on DRM issues by now. But that would involve doing more than just clicking on posts while you’re in your parents’ basement waiting for torrents to download.