In the world of user-generated content (or crowdsourcing, if you will) today was historic. The storm clouds gathered this morning when I started receiving meta-content and flickr photos about what was brewing on Digg.com.

What happened was an all-out cyber-revolt, with the three most visible and popular usergen sites in the crosshairs — Digg.com, Slashdot and Wikipedia. It shows both the power and the danger of crowdsourcing, and the fickle balance between the mob and the operators.

How did it start? Users at Digg.com submitted stories related to the discovery of a key, a string of 16 bytes, that were related to the decryption of the new HD-DVD technology. It looks something, but not exactly, like the following: