Influx

Last week’s Digg community meltdown, apology and retraction appeared to be new, but that’s not the case.

The idea that those who try to restrict information on the Internet end up generating unintended consequences has been around for a few years. It’s called the “Streisand Effect”, named because of the case where the famous singer tried to prevent a photographer from putting the location and photograph of her Malibu home on his website. The fuss ended up drawing everyone’s attention to her home and the photograph spread around the web like a wildfire.

Other cases include; the raid on P2P site Pirate Bay, Scientology story leaks and a complaint against Fox’s Married with Children.