Kevin Rose

Welcome to the wikizine dedicated to keeping up with the latest news, discoveries or musings by and about the founder of Digg.com, Kevin Rose. A former TechTV personality, university dropout and former high security clearance... [more]

Welcome to the wikizine dedicated to keeping up with the latest news, discoveries or musings by and about the founder of Digg.com, Kevin Rose.

A former TechTV personality, university dropout and former high security clearance government worker, the 30 year-old (as of 2/07) Rose has most recently landed in the middle of "the number controversy" -- or what the New York Times called "open revolt on the web." Over the course of several months, the cracked anti-piracy code for HD DVD was crawling its way across the web as people posted it on various sites – followed by a trail of cease-and-desist letters trying to force posters to remove the code. The response of internet users was to post the code more openly, far and wide, eventually involving sites like Google, Wikipedia, and Digg – Rose's site. When Digg first received their own cease-and-desist warnings, Rose decided to comply. But so much fury ensued on his web site – including a glut of new material posted to Digg with the code in it -- that Rose turned his lot in with his users in the following statement:

"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."

Since this battle is part of a much larger war over "fair use" definitions, digital sharing rights, free speech and digital copyright, Rose is likely to find himself popping up on the hot seat for a while. Read about it, post about it, share opinions here. Any other intriguing bits about Mr. Rose are also welcome on this wikizine.