BARBARA'S TCHATZKAHS

I had a chance to participate in a mini-conference on victims of cybercrime recently. The over-riding complaint was the unwillingness and inability of police to take victims of cybercrime seriously. Particularly female victims; who are often portrayed as 'just women out for revenge.' Some of these women were subsequently physically attacked and only then did law enforcement take them seriously. Cybercrime is progressing faster than the law and the police know how to deal with it. So often rather than admit they 'don't know what to do' - police blow-off the victims. This is dangerous. I don't know what the solution is but if you're a victim of any crime, including cybercrime - go to the police and demand that they make a report. Ask to see the supervisor until you find someone willing to make a report and GIVE YOU A COPY OF THE REPORT. Maybe the shooter in Pittsburgh could have been stopped if someone had taken his online threats more seriously... IF Y...

By Eric Goldman Davis v. Google, 09 CH 15753 (Cook County Ct. complaint filed April 9, 2009) Venkat sent a very interesting lawsuit this morning that raises some complex policy issues. The complaint alleges that Sean Healy created a blog at unknowncolumn.blogspot.com and posted defamatory content about speedskater Shani Davis' mom, Cherie Davis. [I believe the post in question is at http://unknowncolumn.blogspot.com/2006/02/memo-to-cherie-davis.html -- I'm not going to link to it, but it did show up as my first search result for "Cherie Davis"]. The complaint further alleges that Healy is now deceased, so he can no longer remove the content on Cherie's demand, and he did not have a "probate estate" to take over his blog. As a result, Cherie feels like she has nowhere to turn to clean up the alleged defamation, so she is suing Google's Blogspot for a takedown injunction. On the face of it, the lawsuit is clearly preempted by 47 USC 230, and Google oug...

Blogger.com rarely, if ever, takes down a site. Even a blatant, outright, slanderous personal hate sites . But they will call blogs that publish one negative thing against the Obamessiah "Spam Blogs" and get rid of them faster than white slacks after Labor Day. Shame on you, Blogger!! And Shame you Obamaniacs... if your man can't stand the heat tell him to get the heck out of the kitchen! ~~~~~~~~~~ Here's one blog that's moved: Many anti-Obama blogs were locked down on 6/25/08 by Blogger, supposedly due to their policy against "spamming." This is an outrage, but we're not going down without a fight. We've set up our new place on WordPress. Coincidentally, we also called the new blog NObama Blog because we really, really like the name.