As many of you know, a few days ago the social Web dealt a blow to the efforts of the trade organization Advanced Access Content System Licensing Administrator (AACSLA) to keep its encryption code secret. This encryption code is used to prevent piracy of high-definition movies. Lawyers from AACSLA had been notifying various Web sites to remove any references to this code, claiming that its publication violated AACSLA's intellectual property rights under the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act

On Tuesday, Digg users played a major (but not solo) role in defying this attempt, violating the Digg terms of agreement in the process. They posted stories about the code, digged these articles in significant numbers, and peppered their comments with the code. Digg responded by deleting the stories and throwing participants off its site. Finally, late on Tuesday, it surrendered and let its users proceed unhampered.

A May 2 article in The New York Times referred to the activity on Digg as "mob sentiment."

Tell me I'm bad, but I've gotten a kick out of the folk song with lyrics made up entirely of the 32-digit code. If you're not a folky, try this rap version.

So here is yet another battle in the war between the entertainment industry and its audience. Score one for the audience this time, even if most people will never use the code to commit piracy.

What does all this tell us about the social Web? Obviously a lot, but here are a few thoughts.

For starters, participation is powerful. Power is not always good, but it can get the job done. What happened earlier this week effectively put an end to AACSLA's attempt to suppress the code. That's big.

On the social Web, censorship is essentially futile. There's always a way to get something out there and spread around. This is also significant.

Also, this story reinforces the fact that the passive, surfing Web is dead.

What might this mean for Library 2.0?

For one thing, our surfing spaces are archaic. They should go the way of dot matrix printers. There is no Web 2.0 without user participation. Can libraries, as increasingly Web-based environments, thrive without user participation? There are those who believe that library Web sites are themselves archaic by their very existence. They say that we need to be pushing out all our content to our users. I'm more in favor of a mix-and-match scenario, rather than one precluding the other. This is coupled with my strong feeling that we rely much too much on our library sites to attract user eyeballs.

The Digg situation also shows that radical trust is not always earned. Library 2.0 is about taking risks, and this is one of them, maybe the biggest. I'm not quite as starry-eyed about radical trust as some others.

I'm most concerned about what might happen when libraries or campuses host social spaces. We'll need to be realistic about what will happen. And in spite of carefully-crafted user agreements, things will happen. Academic environments place high value on respect, for each other and the law, and some of the content on social spaces won't comply. There will be culture shock. The temptation to ban, to suppress, to delete, will be tremendous. This will be one of the most interesting developments to watch as libraries and campuses become more socialized.