Real information

Ok, I was a bit snippy about multiples yesterday. Sorry all you good guys. :) It’s just that “unleashing of the using words like harassment, stalking, etc. to justify that I feel stupid” bit that gets me right now. But it’s true, parenting blogs and geek blogs and blogs blogs blogs have drama. So, mea culpa.

I really don’t want to respond to Terra’s half-truths, “proofs” etc. etc. She’s gone off her rocker again – accusing her friends of caring too little, her “enemies” of caring too much, and some weird shit about Morne and Magdalynn – and we walked away from that a long time ago. But the way she uses information bothers me. [Edited to add: because that's what she does to people - yells so long and so hard that others start to believe it.] So here’s some for you; you decide, if you are in that select group that reads both blogs. Naw, I won’t link, but we all know a search engine works. :-)

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has been around on the ‘net a long time – I remember them from the days I was on Usenet. These guys are pretty much the good guys: they watch legal cases and get involved where law’s being made around Internet issues – both privacy and freedom of speech. They believe strongly in the rights of individuals.

They even have a whole section on how to blog without getting fired, that is, anonymously.

Here’s a piece of press release from their site. The rest is here.

EFF Defends Right to Read Public Web Pages Without Getting Sued
Brief Supports Past Court Opponent DirecTV

San Francisco – The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a brief this week in support of one of its previous court opponents, DirecTV, arguing that a federal appeals court should throw out a lawsuit against the company for accessing a public website.

DirecTV is being sued by Michael Snow, the publisher of an anti-DirecTV website that contained warnings to DirecTV employees that they were not authorized to enter. In its friend-of-the-court brief to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, EFF argues that the federal Stored Communications Act, on which Snow’s suit relies, only protects websites that are configured to be private.

“If you want to keep your website private, then you should protect it with a password,” said EFF Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston. “The law doesn’t allow web publishers to sue when people they don’t like visit their site. Otherwise, any company could publish terms of service forbidding competitors, consumer watchdogs, journalists, or even government officials from scrutinizing a public website.”

Because, you see, a website is not a private space. Unless you lock it. It’s sort of like – publishing! Yes, that’s why the little wordpress button says “publish.” No, really!

What is, of course, a very big legal issue with blogs is what you publish *about* people. Now I am not going to be so nuts as to say that Wes and Terra using words like “stalker” or whatever is anything really libellous. That was be silly drama.

But they may want to consider the question. A good look at the actual law on what you publish publically about people might be an eye opener.

Addition: Oh yes, the technorati question.

I believe a search *right now* on technorati still shows Terra’s old posts with “Shandra Magdalynn” in them. (Google updates faster.)

But just in case that goes away I pulled a screenshot. Click away. :)

Your friendly web editor.