Several weeks ago, the popular message board Reddit announced that it was making a policy change to ban all "suggestive or sexual content featuring minors.” Owned by Advanced Publications, Reddit has made a name for itself in part by its hands-off, pro-free-speech, let-the-users-decide, and self-police approach. In fact, before the policy change, the only rules of the site were no spamming, no cheating, no personal info, nothing illegal, and no interfering with the site's functionality . Small wonder, then, that this decision brought about a dramatic reaction from the Reddit community, although one could argue that child-porn is illegal, so technically there has been no rule change. Be that as it may, some saw that this decision went against the very nature of Reddit, while others were completely on board with it. One user claimed passionately: "For better or for worse, Reddit has moved from a non-interventionist to a policing organization."

No doubt, Reddit’s hands-off policy towards the content posted on its site is markedly different than that of Facebook which is promoting a sanitized alternative to the darker corners of the Internet within its gated community. As exposed in ad nauseam in a recently leaked document called the Abuse Standard’s Violation, Facebook has banned a lot of content ranging from camel toes to women breastfeeding. Tarleton Gillespie rightfully contends that, through the arbitrary rules delineated in this document, Facebook is able to play the custodian and is ultimately the arbiter of public discourse. The fact that private corporations are able to assume the important role of determining, or helping to determine, what is acceptable as public speech is frightening, for sure. Mostly because, as Gillespie notes, sites like Facebook are relatively obscure about how they manage their custodial duties and they rather not draw attention to the presence of so much obscene content on their sites, so they regularly engage in censorship to expunge it.

This post, with the Reddit case, sets out to explore the other end of the spectrum.

To be sure, this difference lies in the fact that the two sites provide very different types of services and thus have very different user base, but what brings them together is our concern for freedom of speech on the Internet. This is a valid concern, but unfortunately, the concept itself has degenerated into a gimmick, a tagline of some sorts, used by the sincere and the criminal alike, used for different purposes, for sure, but used nonetheless.

In a manner of speaking, Reddit presents a test case for the possibilities of what freedom of speech could bring about. Users are able to open subreddits on the topics of their choice and they are able to vote a particular post up or down which, ultimately, earns the owner of a particular post “karma” points. It is an organized chaos, if you will, a veritable democracy, not unlike the boards of 4chan or Something Awful, and it turns out, it harbors a very dark side of the participatory web.

A cursory glance at the darker Reddits posted on the site, however, clarifies what appeared to be a dramatic change in policy that took effect several weeks ago. For the last couple of years, several scandals brought attention to some of the questionable content housed by the site. As diligently documented by various sites, in particular Gawker, Reddit users kept creating subsections that promote pedophilia and other content such as raping and battering of women, pictures of dead kids, killing black people (replace this euphemism with the "n" word) and/or women, “choking a bitch,” and other equally jaw dropping topics that make you feel like you are staring point blank at the heart of darkness as depicted by Joseph Conrad. The only thing that keeps the general public from accessing this juicy content is a cute little Reddit mascot that asks you if you are 18 and are willing to see adult content.

The pedophilia sections of Reddit were first brought to attention of the mainstream media back in October 2011 following Anderson Cooper’s detailed coverage of the darker side of these message boards. The Jailbait reddit was the home of more than 20,000 users who posted pictures of scantily-clad—but clothed nonetheless—teens—many of which were stolen from people's Facebook profiles.

In response to Cooper's prime time coverage, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian defended Reddit's content claiming that Reddit doesn't host the material, but rather, that the website is merely a repository of links that go to other sites on the Internet, and as such, it functions like Twitter which also has links to such contents. Ohanian argued that, instead of making allegations against the site accusing it of peddling pedophilia, Cooper could have served the public better if he had encouraged parents to explain to their kids that every time they post a picture somewhere, it is public by default and thus will run the risk of being misused by ill-intended folk out there. There is some validity in this argument. We must teach our kids the necessary media literacy required to navigate the cyberspace with all its glory and pitfalls.

Alexis Ohanian claims Reddit is just a repository of links

What is striking about the Reddit case, however, is that it demonstrates that public discourse is rigorously negotiated both within the Reddit platform and beyond it. In this sense, treating these sites as isolated pockets of communities residing in different locations on the Internet would be taking a reductionist approach to the problem. Unlike Facebook’s invisible hand sanitizing its corporately owned public space, Reddit resembles an early Greek democracy where the Gods are mostly indifferent, or worse yet, abusive as it allegedly has been in the case of the r/lgbt reddit. Perhaps elaborating on the incidents that led to the policy change a bit further will clarify this point.

Cooper’s coverage of the Jailbait subreddit was undoubtedly shocking, but what led to the r/Jailbait’s closure was a different incident. A redditer, who went by the moniker TheContortionist, posted an image of his then underage ex-girlfriend technically in the nude. Unsurprisingly, the image was voted up with the clamors of "request-for-more" until the user gave in and posted another one in which the teen was clearly engaging in oral sex. Shocked Reddit users exposed TheContortionist's post by voting it up to the front page of the site until finally, after a good six hours, the admins were forced to take it down. These images weren't just posted on the forums, but were allegedly distributed through private messages. Faced with public outrage, Reddit reluctantly closed down the entire Jailbait section claiming that it was "threatening the structural integrity of the greater Reddit community."

Although Jailbait was banned, Jailbait alternatives quickly sprung up under various other names. It was only a matter of time that another incident, this time in the "preteen_girls" subreddit, were to cause yet another public outcry. r/preteen_girls mostly featured images of 11 year-old girls in bikinis with sexually explicit captions. It was here that one of the users posted a screenshot of a naked underage girl from a banned film which quickly evoked the outrage of yet another message board residents. That message board was Something Awful (SA). The SA Goons (members of the SA forum) launched a campaign to label Reddit as a vibrant pedophile scene, urging users to contact churches, schools, local news, and law enforcement to put an end to this. And they won the battle. Reddit responded with an explicit ban of "suggestive or sexual content featuring minors.”

Does this decision mean that Reddit has transformed from a non-interventionist organization into a policing one as claimed by one of the disappointed redditers? This is an important point to consider.

According to Reddit, the content it houses is self-policed, and as with similar sites, they really can’t regulate the quality of the content, nor should they need to under most circumstances. In essence, this is not very different than how Wikipedia and many other sites that rely on user-generated content operate. Except, the "self-police" part seems to be markedly dysfunctional in Reddit partially because users have little power over the content of the site except to notify a moderator and, predictably, moderators sometimes can be capricious, random, and inconsistent. Thus far, the site has been evaluating child porn content on a case-to-case basis, but the word on the street is that the admins don't take much action when its users report these images or perhaps they are not swift enough when taking action. The jury is still out on that…

Democratic, for sure… But a laissez-faire approach to public discourse could have frightening outcomes in terms of freedom of speech if the “self-police” part does not work efficiently or the policing faction is abusing its powers. Abuse report, after all, is a click away and most sites give the right of way to the person who is reporting the abuse rather than examining the content in question. To be clear, when I am referring to frightening outcomes, I am not referring to the tasteless, offensive content that is being generated by our fellow kindred all over the planet. I mean the possibility that allowing illegal content being posted, or at least not taking swift action against it, could lead to inviting more government intervention in a space that we, the Internet denizens, hold sacred. The Reddit case, in this respect, presents a case study through which we could examine some of these issues.

When making this statement, I have the following in mind.

A month has passed since the Internet won its battle against the highly controversial bills, SOPA and PIPA, which were supported primarily by the media industry in its pursuit to crush the illegal transmission of copyrighted content. Advocating an Internet Blacklist Legislation and eliminating the safe harbor clause of DMCA, these bills threatened the very integrity of the Internet. The protest day was glorious and made unlikely bedfellows of various groups on the Internet. Reddit was one of them, so was Facebook. The day after this momentous victory, FBI raided the offices of the cyberlocker Megaupload and incarcerated its founder Kim Dotcom on racketeering, copyright infringement and money laundering charges. Two weeks after, Reddit child porn scandal erupted. Unrelated? Perhaps superficially, but the outcomes of such cases may lead to the same door. They bear the potential to invite excessive government regulation into a space we netizens hold so dear.

Similar discussions have taken place on virtual worlds whose destiny is closely tied to that of the Internet at large. The well-known law scholar Jack Balkin, for example, argues that design and play in virtual worlds should themselves be considered exercises of the right to speak and, thus, have constitutional significance. Accordingly, he posits that much of what goes on in virtual worlds should be protected against state regulation by the First Amendment rights of freedom of expression and association. But the increasing amount of criminal activities and various communication torts that take place in these spaces, specifically copyright infringements, theft, and fraud, make the First Amendment doctrine less likely to be sufficient in fully protecting freedom in virtual worlds. Injured parties end up resorting to real-world courts to resolve their differences which ultimately ends up inviting government regulation into these spaces. In a similar fashion, Greg Lastowka and Dan Hunter state that virtual crimes will be of increasing concern for the communities engaging in the design and experience of virtual worlds as they resist external attempts at legal regulation (pg. 124).

Clearly, my goal is not to equate camel toes, breastfeeding, nudity, or offensive content with virtual crime because while the former is a valuable part of public discourse and, therefore, should be considered as protected speech either on Facebook or elsewhere, the latter, which in the aforementioned cases amount to copyright infringement, child pornography, money laundering, are indeed crimes. Make no mistake, governments would be swift to take action against them and the lobbyists would be there to coax them in the right direction. In fact, these considerations were (and still are) the driving forces behind SOPA, PIPA or ACTA. On the outset, these bills aim to quash copyright infringement but are threatening our freedom of speech in the process.

It is concerns such as these that dictate some of the hard lines that social media sites draw when regulating users' freedom of speech. That hard line is being negotiated among the netizens, activist groups, scholars, companies, lobbyists, politicians, and what have you. It is also being negotiated on a national and international scale. Reddit’s approach could be just as detrimental for the future of freedom of speech as Facebook’s. After all, how many times can you push against a door until it finally busts open and leads you to a path from which there is no return?

PaleFire (the author) has graciously granted the Alphaville Herald permission to reprint this piece from Pandora's Box

When I approached Peter Ludlow at the Society of Cinema and Media Studies in May 2010, I never would have guessed that my research would cause so much concern among anti-griefing organizations, and by that, I mean specifically Kalel Venkman.  Here’s why I am writing this post now, even though I have been conducting my research on griefers since 2006. Apparently, warning notices were sent out to the "Proactive Security" group about me today:

A Reminder - do not interview with Defne Demar

She claims to have only weak ties to the Alphaville Herald, the griefer apologia tabloid run by Pixeleen Mistral, but the truth is that she's in so deep with them she's almost out the other side.  She's working on a book for Peter Ludlow, whose only aim is to glorify griefers.  Anything you give her will not be used for good.

Best advice is to refuse to talk to her, or mute her if you'd rather not be bothered by this person. You all know me well enough that I never say something like this lightly.

Kal

Let’s back up a bit. When I started my research on Second Life, I was a graduate student writing my dissertation on cross-media storytelling. I thought it would be neat to include the disruptive narratives that griefers in Second Life generate as an example of vernacular creativity. At the time, Voted5 had just got banned and all the usual suspects were hanging out at the #SL IRC. So I hung out at the IRC, but also went to SLCC 2006 to establish some contacts and meet the community at large. All were welcoming and friendly.  I am grateful to have them as my friends. I started hanging around in Baku and try to connect with the W-Hat - with mixed success. No surprise there.

Some acted like horses ass, pretended that they were giving me “false” information, while others (like Masakazu Kojima and Decomposing Monstre) were genuinely interested in giving me information about how they build/create/generate stories in this virtual environment such as Second Life. 

I went back to SLCC in 2007 and 2008 and gave papers on the griefing subculture. Right around the time when I was ending my field work, I was able to establish contact with the PN and talked to their leader, Frizzlefry, who again was (and still is) genuinely interested in answering my questions about their organization and their raids. He introduced me to a bunch of their members in their IRC so I can talk to all of them.

Around that time (June 10, 2008 to be exact), I e-mailed Kalel Venkman to ask for an interview and he told me to e-mail him my questions and he’d be happy to answer them. I sent him my human subjects consent form (as required by the IRB-the human subject’s bureau) and waited for him. He sent me the following e-mail the very next day explaining the goal of his organization and some comments about the PN, but failing to give me an interview. I am posting this very first e-mail with some of my comments:

“You have a considerably long paper trail behind you, and that is something quite difficult to forge.  While I may not have any great trust of you at the moment, I do not have any great DIStrust of you either, and your approach to the subject matter appears quite scholarly. I do have over-arching concerns for the safety of the people with whom I relate on a daily basis, so you'll forgive my caution, I hope.”

So, I thought, great! He acknowledges that I have a valid research agenda and that I am *not* pretending to be someone else that I am not, but he is a bit careful. That is to be expected. The e-mail continued:

“I would be willing to share information so as to assist you in building a more balanced picture of events, but may have to omit details on occasion where safety or security would be compromised in the telling.  If we approach such information in our discussions, I will let you know rather than simply fabricate information.  In return, I hope that you will respect my need to keep some things in reserve.  The PN do not operate in the virtual world alone.”

I thought, perfect, as I do want to take a more balanced approach and I don’t need the security details anyway. I want to hear about how the PN is related to the Internet at large. Of course, he is going to withhold some sensitive information. The e-mail continued to explain his organization and how the griefer collective re-imagines/reinvents the history of Second Life:

“Also, I have been running a fairly successful organization within this virtual environment for over two years now, and have acquired what I believe may be some interesting insights into the social dynamic of the metaverse within which we function.  I believe that the principles involve essentially transcend the specific platform and may be applicable to other MMO environments as well.  You may find some of my observations useful in your dissertation.

One thing I have noticed in particular about griefer groups, and the PN in particular, is that they have a very patchy, distorted perception of their own history - often rewriting the parts they find distasteful or unpleasant to suit their egos, and sometimes confusing the disinformation they disseminate with the actual events.  They are frequently unable to communicate with one another except through the use of common memes, and this has a tendency to obfuscate communication to the point where critical information is either not conveyed, reimagined or forgotten.  In particular, they seem to be able to clearly remember events going back only about four to five months at most, living almost completely in the moment.
- Kalel” 

But he never responded to any of my e-mails after that. Realizing that he wasn’t interested in an interview, I stopped trying to contact him.

I graduated from my program in 2009 and it is around that time that I met Peter Ludlow.

When I approached him at the aforementioned conference, we had the idea to write a book that covered the phenomenon of griefing across the Internet. Peter said that it would be best for me to also “work” for the Herald and post some blogs. That I did. I posted some news reports on hackers in general but mainly focused on the book.

My goal with the book, at least in the Second Life section, was to tell the “untold” history of Second Life before it was too late - before the key players disappeared into thin air - before the history was forgotten. By that, I don’t mean the PG13 history of Second Life, the one sanctioned by Linden Lab. I wanted this to be the community’s story. Here’s a brief description of the book’s scope:

“Griefer Wars will begin by examining the early instances of the disruptive activities that took place in online communities such as LambdaMOO and Sims Online and investigate how Internet message boards (Something Awful Forums and 4chan) helped organize these solitary incidents into various movements that extend beyond these boards. In particular, the book will be discussing the presence of such movements in virtual worlds such as EvE Online and Second Life.”

With this goal in mind, I dusted off my previous interview scripts and re-started my field work. I reached out for old contacts and established new ones. I met a bunch of people from the Woodbury crowd (whom I never met before), met more from V5 and PN. I was able to reach out to some of the previous leaders of these groups (Verbana and ^ban^, for instance) and their officers who used to be in the inner circle of these groups. For the PN, that meant the Ghost Shirt Society (GSS) who really knew the ins and outs of their organizations and the psyops that had been conducted in the past.

It is around that time, I figured, contacting Kalel may be a good idea because in the e-mail that he had sent me in 2008, he told me that “[he] would be willing to share information so as to assist [me] in building a more balanced picture of events…” Despite many people’s warnings, who told me that this was a bad idea, I took the man for his word. After all, I wanted to relate a “balanced account” of the events that had occurred. Little did I know that he was not all together there after the infamous Wiki leak.  Here’s my e-mail dated May 17, 2011:

“Greetings Kalel,
I had contacted you several years ago in the hopes that we could chat about JLU while I was writing my dissertation. Let me remind of you what I was doing at the time: I wrote on transmedia storytelling for my dissertation but looked at the development of spatial stories that emerged as a result of the activities of griefers. I graduated in 2009 but I am in the process of writing a book with Peter Ludlow on the phenomenon of griefers, but we are taking a broader approach to the topic. In other words, not only will we be looking at Second Life, but also other virtual worlds, various message boards, and other social networking sites. I am in the process of writing the Second Life section. I personally would like to take a well-rounded approach to the topic. So far I have spoken with some people from the PN,Woodbury, and I am in the process of scheduling interviews with some of the Linden Lab employees. In the hopes of hearing the JLU side of the story, I decided to send you another e-mail. As I see it, this project is an ethnographic research on Second Life as we are documenting some of the happenings that will be lost forever once the platform dies or evolves into something else. So I deem this project to be very valuable. But I would rather not tell a sided story, hence my e-mail to you. I am not affiliated with anyone or anything other than my research and I think JLU may have been short-changed in the process. Will you help me write your story? Or know of someone else who would be willing to chat with me?
Let me know.”

Response was a series of frantic, threatening e-mails. I am not going to quote them word for word, but rather, give you the gist of the madness that was coming through his e-mails. He told me that any material from the BrainiacWiki is copyrighted and that if I included any of that information in the book he’d be filing a DMCA challenge - and that they will wait until the book is in print and released before doing so. He told me that we may not quote him, anything from the Krypton Radio web site, or any web site he personally owned or edited. 

He also spoke on behalf of other people: That he will also be notifying as many people as he could that Ludlow is doing this (For the record: I am not working for Ludlow; I am working with Ludlow), and that I would be receiving a number of other written notifications not to quote or include the writings of others in this work. Of course, none of these things happened. People were fairly open and understanding and I was respectful of my boundaries.

He also vengefully claimed that not only would he not be imparting any information to me, but that I was forbidden from using any information that he owned in my work. 

Here is when it really got interesting: He was telling me that I may not reprint articles from the Herald that contained his intellectual property.  

He also told me that I was dishonest with him in the first time when I e-mailed him in 2008 because I hadn’t told him that I was working with Ludlow. Then he proceeded to accuse Ludlow of being an IP thief because moved his servers to Canada after Kalel filed the DMCA. None of which, of course, was even remotely true. I didn’t start working with Ludlow before 2009; Ludlow didn’t mastermind the leaking operations, nor did he move his servers to Canada to avoid lawsuits, and he is not a thief of any sorts. I wish he was, really, for my sake, for the sake of the book, for the sake of my career. If we were to tell the story of the Philosophy professor going rogue, engaging in leaking operations, stealing intellectual property, putting babies on stakes, I would get my tenure - like now! But no, unfortunately, we have to deal with the boring story we have.

After the series of e-mails Kalel sent me (which were mostly gibberish and had no value to me whatsoever), I realized that he wasn’t going to assist me in writing a “balanced” story of the events after all. 

Baffled, I responded by telling him never to threaten me or any other researcher this way again and that “I was merely extending my courtesy to [him] to allow me to write a better account of what JLU was and what its mission [was].” He sent another gibberish e-mail talking about copyright/DMCA etc., at which point I was getting tired of his e-mails and openly asked him: 

 “Kalel, I am not sure who you think you are interacting with right now. Clearly you have made a lot of assumptions about me and you don't even know me yet. I am not the alt of anyone, nor am I the spokesperson of anyone. I am not doing anyone else's work either… My question to you is simple: Would you be interested in interviewing with me and give me information about your organization and its role in Second Life? This would be your chance to tell me your side of the story as well. This is important to me because I strongly believe that Second Life is about to die as a platform and someone needs to document its history.”

And I stopped contacting him afterwards. But I thought that there maybe, just maybe, are some rational people among the ranks of JLU. I wasn’t mistaken: Greenlantern was kind enough to talk to me but was too scared to tell me anything BUT the press release.  I kindly thanked him for his time and logged off. 

Just to set the record straight since Kalel has accused me of this in his note to the Proactive Security folks: I don’t harass people over e-mail, IM, or in-world. If the Proactive Security people think that I am logging onto Second Life and repeatedly soliciting interviews from a list of people and harassing them, they are sorely mistaken. And they will wait for a long time for this to happen. I don’t beg for a date, I get asked on a date.

I wasn’t initially going to post this. Kalel getting bend out of shape over me is no-news, really. He should have better things to do with his time, like fighting crime, right? But several days ago, Angel Fluffy responded to a message that I had sent him four months ago. It was apparent to me that he was no longer in Second Life nor was he on Skype. He probably logged onto Skype after many months and saw my message and replied to me in the affirmative, saying that he would talk to me. But then he suddenly backed out. I can only assume that, from the notices that went out to the Proactive Security, that he believed Kalel’s mad fabrications. Fair enough -- again, not an important incident in my life. 

I am almost done with the Second Life chapters. And I must confess, the section does not paint a very flattering picture of the anti-griefing organizations in Second Life. But, let this be noted: this is not because I didn’t try to include their side of the story, but rather, they refused to talk to me on account of their insecurities. 

Let’s be clear: I never misrepresented myself to anyone. I never “falsely” claimed to be a researcher. Peter Ludlow is not an IP thief. He wasn’t even around when the Wrong Hands leaked the Wiki, his paper was merely reporting on the news story. In fact, Brainiac, from what I gather, had been leaked many times by various other groups (not just the Wrong Hands) prior to the last incident. More important, Kalel should thank his stars that Pixeleen isn’t taking him to court for filing frivolous DMCA complaints. But this may, of course, change in the long run. Who knows? Time will tell.

But, I do believe that we have to look what’s really at issue here as we’re building this brave new world in cyberspace.

There is one rather minor conclusion and another, a larger one, that relates to digital culture in general. Both of these should be addressed here: 

The most immediate conclusion is regarding the griefer pathology. I’ve been doing research on griefing since 2006. But never, prior to my interaction with Kalel, did I understands the damaging effects that griefing could have on a person’s psyche. After the series of paranoid e-mails I received from him, it was clear to me that the Wrong Hand didn’t just breach the JLU’s security (which was a joke to begin with), but also, effectively turned the JLU into a paranoid collective. It used to be a group that fought for peace, order, and society, that’s for sure. But now, it cloaked itself in secrecy, painfully trying to hide its scars by flinging false accusations to where they don’t belong. Perhaps it was in this respect that the Wrong Hands was most successful. 

The other issue to be noted here is a larger one that pertains to society as a whole.

The frivolous use of DMCA/intellectual property claims to stifle creativity, but in this case, to avoid accountability, silence freedom of speech, and jam open discussion. The copyright war that is being waged today (not just in the case of Kalel, who lost his battle with the Alphaville Herald) is a war of prohibition. Characterizing the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) as “Orwellian,” Lawrence Lessig (2004), a law professor, openly claims that this law is frequently invoked to control the spread of information. “The DMCA was enacted as a response to copyright owners’ first fear about cyberspace. The fear that copyright effectively was dead” (Free Culture, 157). It is a way to stifle creativity, valid research, and dissenting opinions. And it criminalizes the society. I would argue that the issues that are taking place in Second Life are merely the mirror image of this problem. Make no mistake, popcorn farts or not: this is the Wikileaks generation. The US government couldn’t stop it; I doubt a group wearing spandex will.

Not too long ago Peter Ludlow noted that the recent prominence of Internet activist groups such as Wikileaks is symptomatic of a new generation of hacktivist culture that is quickly transforming from a small underground subculture into mainstream culture for a younger generation. Calling this new generation of hacktivists “Generation W,” Peter Ludlow observed that this group grew up in the era of George W. Bush’s neo-imperialism and its attendant war against transparency, and not surprisingly, is taking Wikileaks as its model.

There have been tell tale sign of this too. Case in point, Operation Payback is a Bitch was launched first against the media giants and (accidentally) resulted in leaking confidential documents of a law firm (ACS:Law) which had been engaging in shady business dealings over copyright issues. This leak not only resulted in exposing the confidential e-mails of the law firm, but also (perhaps sadly so), leaking the names and information of all the alleged porn downloaders who, I suspect, would have preferred not to have their private matters splashed all over the Internet. Later the same operation was used against oppressive governments of Africa in support of the activists who were protesting on the ground.

The question is this: have these attempts been successful enough to be taken seriously? Or are they the temper tantrums of a group of juvies pissed off at their parents? If they are grounded on occasion and we wait long enough, will they eventually settle down?

It turns out the group of boys upped the ante last week. Andy Greenberg of Forbes announced that a new initiative has been launched by the hacker collective that we have known to love as Anonymous: HackerLeaks. The goal of the group is remarkably similar to that of WikiLeaks: it invites users to submit hacked data for analysis and publication. HackerLeaks operatives will receive documents through anonymous submission channel, analyze them, and then distribute them to the press.

It works, however, differently than WikiLeaks in fundamental ways. Instead of waiting for insider whistleblowers, the hacker movement Anonymous hopes that a few outside intruders would be engaging in the leaking.

Legal repercussions of such an enterprise set aside, I question the success of this initiative in the long run. Its failure may not come from the legal front (though I am not sure how long “We’re not hacking, we’re merely publishing” excuse will hold), but rather, that we are living in an age ruled by the attention economy as described by Michael H. Goldhaber. In other words, the main issue, today, is not the scarcity of content or data, but that of attention.

How do you distribute data to the press to get “maximum exposure and political impact” in an era where “leaking” operations are quickly becoming the norm rather than the anomaly? Already, other leaking sites have popped up. How much data can we absorb and get worked up over? These are the challenges that are facing HackerLeaks.

Even Julian Assange had his own set of problems when he started his operation in 2006. He immediately sought to bring in Daniel Ellsberg as the public figure of the group, but Ellsberg declined claiming that such an enterprise was untenable (at the time).

One of his first important leaks, the video that showed the US Apache chopper opening fire and killing a group of civilians, including a couple of employees of Reuters news agency premiered at the National Press Club in Washington on April 5th. Much to his dismay, the video entitled “Collateral Murder” had little impact, if any.

Disappointed with the results, he made a deal with major newspapers, The Guardian, The New York Times, Der Spiegel with the release of the Afgan and Iraq war logs and the US diplomatic cables. Outside of his agreement with these newspapers, Assange offered an exclusive interview to Channel 4, CNN, and Al Jazeera just to publicize the leaks that were about to take place. By forming alliances with the main stream media outlets (which he doesn’t think much highly of)he was able to succeed in getting the impact he wanted in this attention economy.

Not that Anonymous lacks the media exposure by any means. Anonymous operations that have involved attacks on MPAA & RIAA to defend The Pirate Bay, or the ones on Visa, MasterCard, and PayPal in retaliation for their severing ties with WikiLeaks, as well as attacks on the governments of Tunisia, Iran, and Egypt have consistently kept them on the news for the last couple of years. Indeed, they have established connections with the media. But they have not consistently occupied the front page of mainstream media outlets as Wikileaks have. So the question remains… will HackerLeaks be successful in the long run?

Kiss bassist Gene Simmons announced he is fighting back against the “popcorn farts” – that would be Anonymous – for having launched Operation Payback. Anonymous, with its latest operation, has  declared war against the media giants. But the content czars are not going to surrender. In a panel on building successful brands at MIP2010 Gene "the tongue" Simmons endorsed an aggressive stance against copyright infringement: “Make sure your brand is protected…Make sure there are no incursions. Be litigious. Sue everybody. Take their homes, their cars. Don’t let anybody cross that line.” Surprisingly (shocker, I know), Gene Simmons’ Web sites (GeneSimmons.com and SimmonsRecords.com), toppled under a DDoS attack the very next day.

You gotta admit: It’s a heck of an enterprise to take on the media – but Anonymous did.

Last month saw Web sites falling one after another as the hactivist aesthetic was played out. The justification was simple: entertainment companies are cracking the lawsuit whip *not* to protect their intellectual property (which actually belongs to the artist), but rather, to exploit people with forced  out-of-court settlements. It appears that the media concerns don’t intend to share the money from this exploitation with the artists either – entertainment industries are not interested in stopping piracy, but exploiting it. Curiously, the porn industry is leading the anti-piracy efforts and quickly got on the waitlist of designated targets.

A recap of the issues can be found here and here. Meanwhile, some people praised Anonymous for their hacktivist efforts, while others condemned it, claiming that "stealing" other people’s property is unacceptable. But is making a copy theft – or something else – and has the legal system caught up with the implications of teh interwebs – and Anonymous?

At this point, knee deep in the Internet, bytes coming out of our ears, and armed with gadgets, we need to acknowledge the impossibility of protecting property online and understand that while content can be (and will be) stolen, creativity cannot. But that’s not the concern of the entertainment companies, it is the bottom dollar that counts.

The obsession with copyright is the residue of the semi-expiring print era that has been dominating society for the past several centuries. Let’s remember that the concept of “copyright” and “author” emerged with the invention of the movable type which later became the printing press. It would be a safe bet that the novel was the genre that legitimized the “author.” Maurice Couturier (1991) explains that in the 18^th century, readers were too close to the oral era where the storyteller was often both the author and the narrator of the story. So why would the novelist to sign his work when it was supposed to be written by a character?

As print culture matured with the sense of ownership that copyright legitimizes, the practice of anonymous publication eventually faded away and the “author” was born. When the good folks in the 15th-16th century were writing manuscripts, intellectual property was the last thing on their minds. But I digress… The moral of the story is that, change is happening, whether we like it or not. And the “popcorn farts” have raised the flag… The question now is, how will the entertainment industries respond without alienating their audience? To put things in perspective, let me mention that authors have been meddling with these issues in their own way by experimenting with giving away content, much to the dismay of their publishers.

William Mitchell, published his book City of Bits with MIT Press in 1995, and since the subject-matter of the book primarily dealt with the digital revolution, he decided to provide a free online access to the full text. He was confronted with skepticism by MIT Press who told him that this decision would weaken the sales of the printed book. City of Bits’ Web site had a link to the online order form that provided the reader with the option of choosing either version.

Surprisingly, although the Web site offered a free version of the full text, the online version stimulated the bookstore and the mail-order sales rather than weakening them. Mitchell explains this curious outcome by suggesting that the hardback and online versions added value to the text in different and complementary fashions, so the readers of the Web version were not necessarily potential customers for the hardback.

In 2001, Douglas Rushkoff made a similar attempt with his novel, Exit Strategy, published previously in England under the name Bull, in which the characters are caught up in the dot.com bubble – which bust in 2001. Experimenting with the idea of an open-source novel (which, I argue, had failed to meet the criteria of “open-source,” although, admittedly, the project was an intriguing experiment in and of itself), Rushkoff posted the novel online and asked his readers to annotate the manuscript assuming the role of an anthropologist under the premise that the entire text was written in present day, but then hidden online, only to be discovered 200 years from now.

Traditional publishers – according to Rushkoff -  could not understand his willingness to devalue his “copyright” by posting it online—for free.

Other voices of skepticism viewed Rushkoff’s project as an “online scam” and even the journalists who came to interview him could not see it as anything but a covert business plan, suspecting that there must be a catch. Ultimately, no traditional US publisher dared to make an offer on a book that was slated to be released online, for free, before it was released in print. Yahoo Internet Life agreed to host the project while a small publisher, Soft Skull, agreed to publish the resulting novel. Rushkoff donated all of the profits from the sale of the book to the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Free Software Foundation. True, this is not PIRACY. But Some authors are giving away their content for free, which demonstrates that when users obtain something for free, there are still other things to buy, a point that Chris Anderson argues quite effectively in Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business.

To make this point crystal clear, Steve Lieber, discovered that the good folks at 4chan had scanned and uploaded every single page of his comic book Underground – from a Twitter message. But instead of screaming piracy, Lieber paid a brief visit to the 4chan forums to engage the fans who liked his work so much that they put in the effort to share it with the world. Rumors has it that Lieber cracked jokes while he was there and lived to blog about it. According to Lieber, there was a massive spike in the sales after 4chan got a hold of his content:

Note the difference between a glowing review from BoingBoing – one of the more “traditional” new media websites – and the “humungous” influence of the new new media outlet that is 4Chan. Is this a barometer for how content will be marked in the future? Some say it could be.

Om Malik’s recent blog post briefly examines why mainstream media outlets are failing – repeatedly – and makes a convincing case that there is no new media– it’s all about new consumption.

Here’s my favorite excerpt from the post: “Generation D, where D is for disruption, is adapted to route around the old models: old models controlled by old men.” Malik’s argument is that media industries are failing to see the big picture and understand what he characterizes to be the “new Internet people” which, I am assuming, probably includes the popcorn farts, IRC dwellers, 4chan, torrenters, YouTubers, and… well… participatory culture in general.

The manifesto of the aforementioned operation is quite interesting in that it reveals how anarchic behavior may ensue when policies, in this case those that relate to copyright issues, are inadequate to respond to the needs of the contemporary age. Quite interesting that such criticism would be voiced by a group that was born out of the message boards of 4chan infamous for its crass humor and profanity. But at the same time, you don’t have to be a genius to see the obvious. In the absence of functional regulators or laws, related parties are ravaging the loot while waving the banner of "doing good." And the manifesto announced by Anonymous, cited in full in Slyck in its entirety, demonstrates this chaos. The relevant section is as follows:

“There have been a massive lobbyist-provoked surge in unfair infringements of personal freedom online, lately. See the Digital Economy Bill in the UK, and “three strikes” legislation in the EU which both threaten to disconnect internet connections based on accusations supplied by the music and movie industries. In the USA, a new bill has been proposed that could allow the USA to force top level registrars such as ICANN and Nominet to shut down websites, all with NO fair trial. Our tactics are inspired by the very people who provoked us, AiPlex Software. A few weeks back they admitted to attacking file sharing sites with DDoS attacks.”

The problem, perhaps, is not just the inadequate copyright laws, but also the inability of the industry to adapt itself to the contemporary needs of our culture. In a recent interview with TorrentFreak, Fritz Attaway and Craig Hoffman, the two of the top suits of MPAA, admits that the large part of the problem "is developing new business models that consumers will access legally and find that experience superior to illegal access." While the two are optimistic and believe that the industry is doing an excellent
job in attaining that goal, the latest events that transpired prove that we have a long way to go.

In the meantime, the groups are seeking justice in any way they can and no one is too sure who is the sheriff in town is or even if there is one. As is the case with most cyber-protests, it is not even clear who the victim is.

To fight back against the anti-piracy lobby, Anonymous did what it does best: to initiate one of the largest cyberwars to date and, to maintain momentum, says Tom’s Guide, the group sought out more members by sending out flyers and recruiting people through Facebook, Digg, Reddit and other sites and made sure they had access to the tools they needed. Who is on the menu? The aforementioned associations, MPAA and RIAA, The British Phonographic Industry (BPI), The Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT), Stichting Bescherming Rechten Entertainment Industrie Nederland (BREIN), ACS:Law, Aiplex, Websheriff, and Dglegal. Ultimately, what happened on the Internet, did not stay on the Internet. The initiative ended up being far more consequential than it initially was thought to be, exposing scams, personal information of hundreds of people, ACS:Law’s dirty laundry, and… well… the names and information of those who illegally downloaded gay porn… or porn… Come on… admit it… we’re all one big happy family here ;-P Well, you get the idea.

The stench of the mess is so potent that it may require some radical cleaning up that requires
more than fining people and putting them into jail.

The story starts like this: The Operation Payback was initiated when RIAA had hired AiPlex Software, an India-based company working on behalf of Bollywood studios, who admitted to using not-so-kosher techniques to fight piracy including launching DDoS attacks. You see, Aiplex is not the first or only company resorting to strategies like this. Seeing that their very own tactics were being used against their beloved p2p sites, Anonymous decided to take the matter into its own hands. And, as they promised, Anonymous took down the Web sites of RIAA, Aiplex, and ACS:Law, the law company that was hired to hunt down the infringers. So they did.

The real damage to ACS:Law, however, came after the DDoS attack when, in their haste to put everything in order, they exposed the backup of their confidential files containing the e-mails of its only lawyer, Andrew Crossley, in addition to thousands of personal records that were handed over by ISPs, including Sky, BT and Plusnet. And this information appeared on the website, unencrypted. Ooops, sorry!

This unfortunate faux pas led to the company’s gory tactics being revealed to the hacker world who eagerly downloaded all this good information. Apparently, ACS:Law had been extracting money from the alleged infringers by encouraging out-of-court settlements. The firm’s confidential (and now not-so-confidential) business plan shows that, while the amount of money demanded in the letters varied depending on the rights holder, the number of letters sent out by the law firm has turned its business into "a numbers game," so the payments of between £300 and £500 quickly added up into a handsome sum.

Crossley, whose clients were mostly in the porn industry, came up with what seemed to be the perfect scam: track down BitTorrent infringers, convert their IP addresses into real names, and blast out warning letters threatening litigation if they didn’t cough up some cash. Except that the scheme had its flaws.

Unless you are aggressively following the threats, people don’t take you seriously and if you are too aggressive, they bond together and resist collectively (both of which were the case here). Not to mention, the average file-shares don’t have extra of cash laying around to begin with, otherwise they would buy the movie in the first place. On top of this, according to a the same leaked business plan, only a fifth of money collected from damages paid was given to the rights holders, turning the law firm, which keeps 80% before paying ISPs and IP tracking companies, into cash cows.

And so last week, the Internet witnessed ACS:Law going down in a spectacular fashion.

But not before shaking down other companies. Everything seemed to come down like a house of cards. British Telecom (BT), the owner of PlusNet, admitted to sending to ACS:Law unencrypted personal data of 500 users who had been suspected of illegally downloading porn following a court order. But because they sent the data unencrypted (hoping that the unprotected files would be securely stored by ACS:Law), they breached the Data Protection Act, in addition to violating the very same court order they
were following because the order had specifically stated that PlusNet should send this data in an encrypted form.

The story doesn’t end here.

After the collapse of ACS:Law, Gallant MacMillan (another law firm famous for hunting down infringers) rose up to the occasion to take over where ACS:Law has left off… and declared that it will use whatever method necessary to bring down the file-sharers and went to court to subpoena the IP addresses of additional suspected infringers. Seeing what had happened to BT, the ISPs weren’t so hot in delivering this information when presented with flimsy proofs. Guess what happened to Gallant MacMillan and its client, the Ministry of Sound? Yup, you guessed it! Their sites went down, though they had a little bit more dignity than ACS:Law when doing so. If you are interested in the details of the entire operation, you can find them here.

Already, the data leak is bringing important questions into the limelight, questions that exceeds copyright issues, but also, as you can suspect, verges upon privacy violations. Privacy International lost no time is expressing outrage by the breach and decried it as a “travesty of data security.” The quality of the standards set forth by The Digital Economy Act of England, while deemed to be satisfactory, is questioned as a result of all the dust that Anonymous brought up following its DDoS war.

Even if ACS:Law’s evidence (sending warning letters by turning ISP into customer names) would be sufficient under the current regulations, it would still may not be considered as acceptable evidence in court. Privacy International is already seeking legal advice about the possibility of bringing charges against BT for contempt of court. If found guilty, the firm could face a fine of up to half a million pounds if it is found in breach of the Data Protection Act.

Anonymous may very well have had the noble intentions expressed in their manifesto… and/or the reason could be as petty as one of these organizations getting in the way of them downloading illegal content and they just got mad. But does it really matter? It is a precarious juncture, really. While we see the undeniable power of networks when mobilized, we also see that no one really is in charge… the group has a mind of its own. The hive mind is powerful, yes, but can we call its operation successful in anything other than causing mayhem? In other words, was there a long-lasting purpose other than taking down the entertainment industry websites? As Darlene Storm says in Computer World, "Perhaps the biggest purpose it served was the warning shot heard around the globe about the collective power of anonymous people." One of the commentators insists:

"Well guess what? Anonymous isn’t as simple as a bunch of teenagers who want free music. Why did they attack Scientology, for example? Why are they attacking these websites now and why are they planning a gigantic assault on any organization which supports the ACTA or COICA internet censorship legislations? The answer lies in their simple slogan, "knowledge is free". They attacked Scientology because Scientology tried to silence free speech in the form of anti-scientology videos on YouTube. They attack ANYONE who attempts to apply any sort of "control" or "regulation" to the internet. Look at their homes, the "chans", 808chan, 4chan, wherever, for proof – there’s no order! It’s free flowing, stream of consciousness. Posts are barely even ordered into topics or subjects, it’s literally a wild west of total freedom of thought and expression. Anonymous believes the internet should be 100% free from any form of control by governments or organizations, and they are willing to stand up for this even if it means they go to jail (as some have in the past)."

Looks like Net Neutrality has a forceful defendant. Hats off. But the question is, what would happen if this force decides to use its power for things other than worthy causes? Do we have means to control it?

online playdates for hire

Weird? Not really. After all, finding a chick who actually likes to game (AND is good at it) is every boy’s wet dream. And Game Crush promises to make that happen. Through its recently redesigned Web site, gamers can select the platform they want to use, the level of interaction (designated as “zones”) they want to experience, and the gender of their future partner with whom they want to kick ass. Offering private PlayDate game sessions for as little as $.55 per minute, the site challenges the player to take his game to the next level, “Enter a private, video-enabled game session and you can find a PlayDate to play practically ANY multiplayer console game out there.” Private game sessions start at $.60 per minute with discounts for buying more credits at one time.

come play with SexyJen

The description of available “zones” (which apparently has replaced “moods” with suggestive names such as “flirty” and “dirty”) seems to be an attempt to give a more official appearance to the site that looks and feels like the cross between MySpace and the personals: “Zones help both Players and PlayDates define the game experience they are looking for. They don’t mean the actual game being played, just the vibe of the game.”

Judging by the profile pictures posted on the site, there may be something more than gaming that takes place in these “private” sessions. Young women who bare their legs, necks, bras, tattoos, and piercings appear as the possible PlayDates available through the site. And if you open and account, you can even chat with them!

CherryLix, KatiPanties, Lady_cherry, and more

Sure, there are guys few and far between displayed among the profiles… but their scarcity is a strong indicator of who the primary clientele is. When browsing these delicious pictures, however, one wonders whether there could be this many gamer chicks who are good at (and even interested in) kicking virtual butts. Knowing the extent to which people like to role play online, one also wonders if it is actually them who are the drivers behind the joystick… or another dude riding the fantasy train. Even if these are genuine profiles, the remains the possibility that the site could becoming a gold mine for predators who uses it for purposes other than gaming.

Operation Payback follows The Wrong Hands vs Justice League Unlimited script

Terra Nova is the term used to describe our weird existence in the digital realm that we call virtual worlds. Edward Castronova claims that we are in the process of exodus to these worlds. Equally interesting to note is that, as new worlds, our virtual existence complicates the real one by consistently questioning the regulations and governance that have been known to be tried and true, exposing their cracks and irregularities. Apparently, our very own Luddie (who was blatantly chatting with his alter-ego Uri the other day) wrote an e-paper on the future of virtual worlds which I illegally downloaded from The Pirate Bay. Who wants to pay for that shit, right? In it, he talks about the political structures that guide these virtual worlds and the governance structures that emerge within them. And he claims that terrestrial governments are rapidly becoming irrelevant. The problem, as he sees, is this: “when we move from the so-called real world to virtual worlds, we are moving from worlds that have been constructed by persons of tremendous vision to persons that are, quite frankly, computer engineers,” the implication being that these guys have no business governing their cubicles let alone a world (however *unreal* it may be). Another excerpt from the said e-paper: “The problem is that as virtual worlds become more and more important, the management of virtual worlds has become more and more erratic, heavy handed, and perhaps even corrupt.”

Well said, Luddie… but… I am going to say that these computer engineers who are pretending to be in charge of governance of these worlds may actually be serving a very utilitarian function: to initiate a much-needed change in the real world itself. By pretending to be in charge, they are mimicking real-world governance and policy-making (because they don’t know any better), and are inadvertently exposing how dysfunctional of our real-world systems have become both online and offline. No doubt, the convergence era brought its own set of problems. Equally obvious is that our laws and policies do not exactly satisfy the needs of a full-blown participatory culture fostered in the digital realm. We are in the process of redefining such policies and how virtual worlds should be governed. In the meantime, to make up for the absence of a functional system, computer programmers exercise a heavy-handed management style whereby users are kicked out, scammers trick n00bs, and users, who still don’t feel like justice was served, take matters into their own hands. End result: chaos ensues.

Time and again, we witnessed this dynamic play out between different groups in Second Life. Griefers harass people as they do in their usual way. They abuse the loopholes in the platform and ToS. Linden Lab initiates a blanket mass-ban that punishes the guilty along with the innocent associated with the guilty. Lands are seized, accounts are banned, forums are flooded with irate commentary… Banned accounts return under alt accounts and cause more mischief. Vigilante groups emerge to restore order because, clearly, the bans and regulations didn’t solve any problems: so now we have the Justice League Unlimited strutting around in their spandex pants. Linden Lab thinks “Hey, we can get these JLU guys do some of the dirty work.” Arrangements are made under the table, privileges are granted to some people. People who identify with these griefing groups (or are associated with them somehow) retaliate by penetrating the vigilante group, hacking their Wiki, and exposing the corruption that goes on in the “government” by revealing shady connections which should have never existed. Throw in a university, a viewer, and a clueless pundit-blogger somewhere in the story, and voila! Governance at its best! The bigger question is this: is it any different than how real governments function? Not really… But Second Life is a game (you say), who takes it seriously anyway? Not!

It turns out, as Uri (Luddie’s evil twin) says at the end of their imaginary chat, the game just got bigger. Indeed!

Let’s zoom out of Second Life for a minute and venture forth into the dark corridors of the Interwebs. We are now looking at the message boards that gave birth to the infamous 4chan culture. Disgusting! Gross! Cover your eyes with a spoon! Well, actually peek so you can see what went down last week… Their latest activity du jour: Operation Payback is a Bitch. It all started when Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) had contracted with an Indian software company to shut down free file-sharing sites such as The Pirate Bay. This decision is one of the ongoing attempts to protect intellectual property that started with the lawsuit against Napster.

Created by Shawn Fanning as a peer-to-peer network that began in 1999, Napster set to redefine the Internet, the music industry, and the way we all think about intellectual property. The network was closed down after a lawsuit but not without giving birth to various other peer-to-peer file sharing networks such as The Pirate Bay, suggesting that it is pretty darn impossible to crush such initiatives and no content is really safe on the Internet. And thus began the string of lawsuits. That we are in an age of serial lawsuits is a strong indicator that American copyright laws, as Siva Vaidhyanathan suggests, are dysfunctional, in that, they hinder cultural production.

Within the absence of a functional policy and copyright laws, companies started acting as the watchdogs of intellectual property, unleashing numerous lawsuits upon the guilty and innocent alike, mostly to extract money from whoever buys into the scheme. Virtual worlds exposed the cracks in our governance systems, peer-to-peer file sharing networks demonstrate that our copyright laws have become bankrupt in the face of a burgeoning participatory culture. The question in this scenario is this: who is watching the vigilantes in this Wild West? Enter Anonymous who called on its community to launch distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDoS) against RIAA, MPAA, and the law companies that are leading the copyright infringement lawsuits. Besides the damage these attacks have caused, the bloggers claim, this initiative could mark the first mass cyber protest of its kind on the Web. Could the Internet Hate Machine be responsible for… uhm… hacktivism?!? Actually, if you look at the definition that our very own Luddie gives in his article on Wikileaks published in the Nation, it certainly does. He explains hacktivism as “the application of information technologies (and the hacking of them) to political action.” One blogger cheerfully announces “In a massive triumph for freedom of the Internet a British law firm (ACS: Law) that specialises in anti-piracy cases has been exposed by Internet activists for what it is: a heartless, soulless, money-grubbing conglomeration of complete bastards, who have no respect for human rights, or even humans.”

The attacks of Anonymous against RIAA took down the organization’s site for one hour and 37 minutes. In a smart mob-like fashion, the group distributed instructions to users throughout the weekend, indicating the specific time to launch the attacks as well as the target IP address. Protestors also Google bombed a phrase accusing the president of MPAA of child molestation and attacked the Indian software company that MPAA and RIAA hired to shut down the free file-sharing sites. Slyck news reports that the group also targeted the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT) Web site.

Almost nine days after the initial attacks against the MPAA & RIAA, the focus of 4chan shifted to ACS:Law and Davenport Lyons. Exposing security issues and Web server mismanagement, these attacks left these sites down for several hours at a time. In the case of ACS:Law, an entire database of e-mails was left exposed on their server for several hours, ready to be downloaded by hackers who, then, promptly uploaded its contents to The Pirate Bay. Over the weekend, legal exchanges and embarrassing e-mails were published all over the Internet. Slyck reports that the file contains around a month of webmails belonging to solicitor Andrew Crossley, head of ACS:Law. According to the Register, the e-mails revealed that ACS:Law threatened lawsuits against alleged P2P copyright infringers unless they agree to an out-of-court settlement, typically of £500.

As sites like TorrentFreak continued to leak the contents of the company’s private correspondence on their sites, it became apparent that ACS:Law was actually leveling wrongful claims against those who had no idea what was going on. While the company owner Andrew Crossley was happy to brag about how much money he had been making, the hacked e-mails revealed that the human victims of this scheme were from poor people pleading for clemency, to bewildered old age pensioners accused of sharing adult movies and to married men who have been confronted with allegations of sharing gay porn. The leaked e-mails show that many of the alleged infringers simply refused to be bullied and had clearly been using the advice issued by both BeingThreatened.com and that available in the discussion threads of Slyck.com. They also seemed to very aware of the limitations of the evidence and also their obligations under the law. That’s good to know. UK’s Information Commissioner announced that ACS:Law could face a fine of as much as half a million British Pounds for not ensuring that the personal data was protected. Andrew Crossley is also being investigated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority on charges of unethical conduct.

All is well that ends well (for the most part).