This week’s comic comes from the guys at Little-Gamers.com. For those of you that aren’t “Diggers”, the founders of Digg.com (which is based around user-submitted content) received a huge backlash from the community yesterday. Users were being banned for submitting anything that revealed the cracked HD-DVD encryption key.

Digg’s initial stance was to ban and delete all links referencing the code (which is shown in the above webcomic). Jay Adelson of Digg came out and said this on the site’s blog on May 1st.

I just wanted to explain what some of you have been noticing around some stories that have been submitted to Digg on the HD DVD encryption key being cracked.

This has all come up in the past 24 hours, mostly connected to the HD-DVD hack that has been circulating online, having been posted to Digg as well as numerous other popular news and information websites. We’ve been notified by the owners of this intellectual property that they believe the posting of the encryption key infringes their intellectual property rights. In order to respect these rights and to comply with the law, we have removed postings of the key that have been brought to our attention.

Kevin Rose, to the delight of fanboys everywhere, changed the company stance today. The founder of the website, in an act of sheer courage and dedication to his community, posted a powerful blog post announcing they will allow content containing the HD-DVD crack to be submitted. They will stand up the bigger company that has threatened his very website. Democracy wins!

If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.

Check out the full blog post right here. And much love for Kevin Rose for standing up for the Digg community.

Hit the jump for more of my thoughts.

The announcement by Rose to not censor the community reveals an enormous shift in the characteristics of poweful companies with much at stake. The whole “Web 2.0″ craze that at first seemed like a cheap gimmick has revolutionized the internet, and the landscape of corporate America.

The power has been put into the users hands for many of these websites, and the site founders must remain at the full compliance of their community if they wish to survive. In the past, companies tried to sway their customers in certain directions, but the advent of these new websites has shown that the people are the ones that now sway the companies. This is how capitalism is meant to be. The companies are at the will of the people, not the other way around.

Money is pouring into YouTube, Digg, Reddit, Bebo, Twitter, Newsvine and so many other “Web 2.0″ sites, and these companies are becoming stronger players in corporate America (especially YouTube/Google). They’re gaining influence in the business world, which in turn, means that us, the internet users, have a much more powerful voice.

The announcement that Digg will not stand down to the companies invested in HD-DVD proves that the internet community’s voice is more powerful then ever.

Next step for Diggers and the Web 2.0 community — obliterating all DRM.

Democracy lives on.