The biggest battle in recent online history is taking place right now. And it's all over this number:

09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0

Spread it far and wide. It's big media's deepest secret - the HDDVD decryption code.

Update: Despite Reddit being able to have the number published on their site for nearly 24 hours, Digg has undertaken a massive censorship campaign to keep people from posting numbers on their site.

It's being called "The Day Digg Died" and the day that takedown notices flowed like wine. Even boingboing, the Internet freedom fighter has been largely silent on the topic for some unknown reason. I wrote Cory Doctorow about a T-Shirt I had made with the code on it, and he advised me to take it down and cancel all orders for it.

The Digg admins were deleting stories as fast as they were getting submitted. They banned stories that contained the number, hinted at the number, criticized Digg, or even just questioned the censorship that was going on. Eventually, they just started banning users. I was banned for digging up stories regarding Digg's censorship.

And still no answer from Digg. It is likely that Kevin Rose will go on as if nothing happened. We'll see in the next diggnation I guess, although I don't think I can bring myself to watch it anymore.

Score 1 against social bookmarking and freedom of information online. All over a simple number. I don't need the number and I don't think I'll ever use it. But now I will always remember it because of what happened today.

Reddit put a communist flag on their logo, presumably as a jab to Digg who can't seem to handle a little freedom of information.