"Digg buried by users in piracy face-down."

Interesting. Both the power of a website's community over its owners and the issue that moved them to wield their power.

Pleading for the Digg hive mind to practice self-moderation, CEO Jay Adelson responded on the company blog at 1PM Pacific Time: "We all need to work together to protect Digg from exposure to lawsuits that could very quickly shut us down."

Diggers continued their revolt, however, overloading the site with the thousands of places where the [HD-DVD] encryption code can easily be found online, until servers started spouting 404 errors and moderators finally gave up trying to control the rabble about eight hours after Adelson's plea.

TechCrunch writes: "Digg surrenders to mob."

What's the difference between a "hive mind" and a "mob"? Is it all a matter of whether it thinks what is good? But those who would like to preserve intellectual property rights have to worry that that mind -- hive or mob -- is generating the new idea of the good.