You may not be aware that for the past day an war has been raging on the Internet. Specifically, the fight over the HD-DVD key. Rudd-o posted this article covering the battle. He sat at ground zero.

In a nutshell, Digg got a story that had a key that allowed people to make a copy of virtually all DVDs published to date. It got to the front page. The HD-DVD consortium sent Digg a cease and desist letter. Digg pulled the story. HD-DVD is also a sponsor of Digg. The Digg users saw the story pulled and assumed that Digg was censoring them. In protest, a storm of submissions developed with people encouraging each other to digg anything that had the HD-DVD key.  I shot a few diggs for all my peeps at digg. Funny stuff. Digging cuz i give a damn.  Kevin Rose, owner of Digg, finally waved the white flag. Free Speech and Piracy wins.

<h2>HD-DVD lost the code and won the format war.</h2>

The real outcome of all of this I believe is that Sony loses the HD war. HD-DVD wins. Blue Ray Loses. With the ability to copy HD-DVD content, users will flock to HD-DVD when they need to make that decision. Just like they did with VHS over BetaMax. Less than 1% of all users will ever copy a HD-DVD I’m betting, but it will take over. Didn’t cost them anything either, just the legal fees for the cease and desist letters so they can put up a “reasonable effort” at protecting the content. It was the smartest move they could have ever made to win the format wars.