In a recent article here in the Herald, Urizenus Sklar argued that the US Attorney in the Barrett Brown case was attempting to smear Barrett by listing a whole number of allegedly bad attributes of Barrett and then publishing them in a public court document.  

I think Uri missed the bigger picture here. Not that Uri is wrong.  But Uri missed the fact that larded into the US Attorney's comments is a tacit indictment of the entire US criminal justice system.  

The US Attorney's screed against Barrett looked like this:

Perhaps without realizing the prejudicial effects on brown the media repeatedly has publicized potentially inadmissible and prejudicial information such as Brown’s … anarchist ideology… troubled childhood and alternative schooling, declaration that he is an atheist, use and abuse of ecstasy, acid, heroin, and marijuana, lack of steady employment, claimed diagnoses of ADHD and depression, associates descriptions of Brown as a junkie, name fag, moral fag, court jester…

Now, the question is this:  Why on God's Green Earth should it be impossible, or even difficult, for someone who is an atheist, or someone who is depressed, or someone who has ADHD or someone who lacks steady employment, or someone who has used drugs to get a fair trial in this country?

You see the deep point here is that implicit in the US Attorney's statement is the admission that for people who are even just a tiny bit outside of the mainstream, the justice system can not be counted on to be fair to them.  Any perceived flaw which sets you outside of a Norman Rockwell ideal is enough to ensure that the justice system, if you find your way into it, will grind you to pieces.  Tiny pieces.

If you are depressed, you cannot count on the justice system to be fair to you.

If you use marijuana, you cannot count on the justice system to be fair to you.

If you had alternative schooling or raised by alternative parenting, you cannot count on the justice system to be fair to you.

If you are a student of, or influenced by, anarchist writings, you cannot count on the justice system to be fair to you.

If you were once a heroine addict, now on Suboxone, you cannot count on the justice system to be fair to you.

If you had a troubled childhood, you cannot count on the justice system to be fair to you.

If you lack steady employment, you cannot count on the justice system to be fair to you.

If you are a moral fag (that is, if you are ethically motivated hacker), you cannot count on the justice system to be fair to you.

In short, if you are remotely alternative and outside of the power structure, you cannot count on the justice system to be fair to you. 

That you US Attorney, for admitting this.  Now, when do we begin to fix the problem?

Perhaps without realizing the prejudicial effects on brown the media repeatedly has publicized potentially inadmissible and prejudicial information such as Brown’s … anarchist ideology… troubled childhood and alternative schooling, declaration that he is an atheist, use and abuse of ecstasy, acid, heroin, and marijuana, lack of steady employment, claimed diagnoses of ADHD and depression, associates descriptions of Brown as a junkie, name fag, moral fag, court jester…”

And not only was the prosecutor thoughtful enough to think of all the possible bad things one might say about Barrett, but she took the trouble to write them down so we could have them. And then she put them in a court document. And published it. And then a gag order was placed on Barrett and his defense team. Just so, you know, they wouldn’t damage his reputation by responding to these claims.

prosecutor's gag order: list bad things that might be said, then muzzle the target

Of course the ultimate concern is that all that chatter out there would make it impossible to impanel an impartial jury. Because people in the Dallas region are following this case in sooo religiously (being rabid readers of The Nation and all). And if there are two thing a Texan cannot abide it’s moralfags and namefags! Gosh, I’m so happy I live in a country where politicians appoint kind, thoughtful prosecutors that have everyone’s best interests at heart. Because, you know, if you are sending someone to jail for 105 years you wouldn’t want people to think they are - SHOCK! - an atheist or something.

Yes, summer is winding down, but it isn't too late to cram in some late late summer reading.  And who better to suggest good solid reading, but the FBI.  Dell Cameron, writing in the Daily Dot, has the goods.  He gives us the 20 online publications concerning Barrett Brown that the prosecution considers "must read."  Or is that "don't read".  Hmm these lists are so confusing...

Here is how Mr. Cameron lays it down.

I attended the gag order hearing on September 4 and listened as the U.S. government spoke candidly about the journalists who've covered Barrett's case. Twenty articles were admitted into evidence from various writers and websites. Much to my surprise, the U.S. government has great taste in journalism. I've collected the online articles it selected as evidence against Barrett Brown for your reading pleasure.

You want to know who made the list, don't you?  Well to see it you just gotta click through! [link]

Spoiler though, some of the names will be familiar to Herald readers!

It seems like just today that I published a long article explaining the strange case of Barrett Brown and how a beloved Second Life alumnus was looking at 105 years in prison for sharing a link to an online document dump. Come to think of it, it *was* today! And this afternoon, I received the news that a gag order has been issued for Barrett Brown and his defense team. A gag order? Let’s reflect on that.

The prosecution, to make the case for a gag order, offered up a number of articles that had been published in places like the New York Times, The Nation, The Huffington Post, etc – seven by that mild mannered tweed wearing lovable professor Ludlow! The view of the prosecution was that given all the people in Texas that read The Nation and the annual NYT articles on Barrett Brown it just would not be possible to find a neutral jury pool. Because you know, all people in Texas do is read The Nation.

Let’s put this in even more perspective. This is the judicial system that convinced itself that there was not too much publicity for OJ, or for Jodi Arias, or for really any trial that shows up on Nancy Grace. But OMG someone publishes a story in The Nation and the scales of justice are out of balance. You just can’t find a neutral jury anymore.

Allow me to opine:  Barrett Brown was exercising his constitutional right to *defend* himself against charges for which he has not been convicted. And, by the way, these are charges which he believes, as do I, that are not just false, but absurdly false. Ditto for the lawyers. If they can’t defend their client in public against false charges then the public will be ignorant of the specifics of the trial and will not be able to judge whether justice is being served or whether it is being miscarried. Of course that is probably the point – if justice was being served there would be no point in a gag order; there would be no reason to fear open discussion of the specifics of the case.

And so, as the Herald yacht powers its way towards Long Island New York, I stare at the now dormant Barrett Brown hotline wondering: Is this how the American system of justice finally collapses into a system for oppression and tyranny? Not with a bang or even a whimper, but just a dial tone?

Last week I was on the Herald Yacht, steaming towards the Herald retirement villa in the Turks and Caicos islands, when the emergency phone rang in the ready room. Helmut, my trusty cabin boy summoned me. Barrett Brown was calling.

Mr. Brown, for those of you who don’t know, is currently in federal custody looking at charges that could put him away for 105 years for linking to the cache from a hack of the private intelligence firm Strategic Forecasting. He was also an alumnus of the notorious Second Life griefer group The Patriotic Nigras and a second group called illuminati/i/illuminati. “Uri baby,” he implored, “you have to come out of retirement, the fate of the free world hangs in the balance!”

For those of you who don’t know it, the story of Barrett Brown is an interesting one. After his years as a Second Life griefer, Barrett graduated to being a rather gifted writer, penning many essays for Vanity Fair, The Skeptical Inquirer, True/Slant, The Guardian, and the Huffington Post. True to his roots, he mercilessly trolled conservative pundits like Thomas Friedman, Michelle Malkin, Charles Krauthammer, and Sara Palin biographer Robert Stacy McCain.

In 2010 Brown was working on a book on right wing political pundits, when some of the actions of Anonymous caught his attention and he penned a defense in support of one of their anti-censorship operations in Australia. This brought him to the attention of Gregg Housh (the Anon who bought a Guy Fawkes mask and, with a crack team of fellow Anons, made the first video for Operation Chanology) and Housh subsequently brought Brown into the orbit of Anonymous. Brown eventually became a frequent spokesperson for Anonymous during the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings. (Brown’s role did not involving computer hacking – he couldn’t hack his way out of a box of tissues.) His interview with Michael Issikoff in those heady days remains legendary. 

In February, 2011, against the background of the Anonymous actions in the Arab Spring, Aaron Barr, the CEO of a private information security company called HBGary boasted that he had identified leadership of Anonymous. This boast provoked an epic hack of HBGary by a hacktivist group called Intenet Feds (subsequently called LulzSec). That hack, which was splashy enough to garner the attention of The Colbert Report, resulted in every form of pwnage known to mankind, including the defacing and destruction of the servers and websites of HBGary. Along the way 70,000 e-mails were downloaded and posted online. One terabyte of data from HBGary’s backup servers were wiped, and as a final insult to injury the contents of its CEO Aaron Barr’s iPad were remotely wiped.

The HBGary hack was motivated by the desire to humiliate HBGary, but it had the side effect of dropping a gold mine into the lap of Mr. Brown. One of the first things discovered was a power point presentation that developed a strategy for undermining the credibility of the journalist Glenn Greenwald and thereby neutralize his defense of WikiLeaks. But there was more. There was a conspiracy of government agencies, lobbying and cybersecurity firms to carry out a disinformation campaign against critics of the Chamber of Commerce. There were also plans for data mining and disinformation campaigns targeting social organizations and advocacy groups.

The plot was already thick, but then it thickened more. By June, the FBI had the goods on the leader of LulzSec, one Hector Xavier Monsegur, who was known to his associates in LulzSec as Sabu. The FBI arrested Sabu on June 7, 2011 and (according to court documents) turned him into an informant the following day. Six months later (Dec. 24, 2011) under the control of the FBI and possibly the FBI’s direction, Sabu appears to have directed some of his LulzSec crew (now called AntiSec) to hack the website of a private security company known as Strategic Forecasting, yielding a trove of approximately five million emails. The FBI may have controlled Sabu and hence the Stratfor hack, but they lost control of the five million emails in the Stratfor database, which quickly made their way onto the Internet and then to WikiLeaks.

When the contents of the Stratfor leak became available, Barrett Brown (who again played no role in the hacking and had no relation to LulzSec or Sabu) determined that his ProjectPM should have a look at it. To direct the project participants to the Stratfor data dump, he pasted a URL into a chat channel. This ultimately would be the principle “crime” for which he is facing 105 years in jail.

It is worth noting that the contents of the Stratfor hack were even more outrageous than those of the HBGary hack. This time the emails ranged from proposals for renditions to surveillance on the Yes Men on behalf of Dow Chemical. One remarkable exchange revealed that the Coca-Cola company was asking Stratfor for intelligence on dealing with PETA, and the Stratfor Vice President for Intelligence remarked in a leaked email that “The FBI has a classified investigation on PETA operatives. I'll see what I can uncover.” Suggesting, of course, that not only did Stratfor have access to the classified material, but that it would be provided to Coca-Cola. The FBI had been turned into a private dick for corporate America.

The FBI, arguably itself responsible for the information being released, needed to get the toothpaste back into the tube, decided that one way to staunch the distribution of the Stratfor data would be to stomp on Brown and his Project PM. A warrant was issued for Brown’s laptop, presumably on the assumption that incriminating information would be found there.

When the FBI went to serve the warrant on Brown he was not home but at his mother’s house, and he sensibly decided to stay there. The FBI returned with a warrant to search his mother’s house, retrieved his laptop, and found exactly nothing incriminating. Deciding they needed a way to turn up the heat on Brown, they initiated charges against his mother for obstruction of justice.

At the time Brown was experiencing the difficult side effects of the medication he was taking to ameliorate the effects of his heroin addiction while also dealing with the harassment of his mother by the FBI, and he snapped, uploading a video to YouTube that vaguely threatened the FBI agent that was harassing his mother.

“I know what’s legal, I know what’s been done to me… And if it’s legal when it’s done to me, it’s going to be legal when it’s done to FBI Agent Robert Smith—who is a criminal.”
“That’s why [FBI special agent] Robert Smith’s life is over. And when I say his life is over, I’m not saying I’m going to kill him, but I am going to ruin his life and look into his fucking kids… How do you like them apples?”

Because threatening an agent would only put Barrett away for a few years, the charges that could lock him up permanently had to be found elsewhere. In this instance, the DoJ took advantage of the fact that the Stratfor data had a number of unencrypted credit card numbers and validation codes. This would be the pretext for charging Brown with Traffic in Stolen Authentication Features, Access Device Fraud, Aggravated Identity Theft. Add to this an Obstruction of Justice charge and the charges relating to the threat against the FBI agent, and Brown is looking century of jail time. He has been denied bail.

When Brown went to jail, work on ProjectPM ground to a halt. Even worse, the DoJ now took an interest in everyone else who had participated in ProjectPM. On April 2, the DOJ served the domain hosting service CloudFlare with a subpoena for all records on the ProjectPM website, and in particular asked for the IP addresses of everyone who had accessed and contributed to ProjectPM, claiming it was a criminal enterprise. The message was clear: Anyone else who looks into this matter does so at their grave peril.

Here we are. Barrett Brown sits in prison and many activists are afraid to go near the Stratfor files; worse, the mainstream media appears to be completely uninterested in their contents.

While the media and much of the world have been understandably outraged by the revelation of the NSA’s spying program, Barrett Brown’s work was pointing towards much deeper problems. First, he showed that this wasn’t merely a problem of private intelligence firms spying on us – it was worse than that. These firms are trying to manufacture a false reality for us. They are engaged in PSYOPS against a civilian population on behalf of their corporate clients.

But even this tells only half the story. One might have thought that private intelligence agencies were simply doing outsourced intelligence work for the US Government. But unfortunately it seems that the tail has begun to wag the dog – it appears that in many respects the US Government and in particular the Department of Justice is now working for private intelligence firms. This is evident when, for example, Stratfor asks for FBI classified files on PETA or the Department of Justice is used to try and punish journalists for probing into these private intelligence companies.

But I disgress. I began with Barrett’s call to the Herald hotline. So what did Barrett want? He put it this way: “Uri baby, in the hall of mirrors that is the Internets, you can only trust the Herald to get the story right. You and Pix have got to come back. The game is bigger now.”

And well, yes, the game is bigger now. Former Herald staffer Prokofy Neva saw this too, in her delightfully positive and chirpy essay on her blog Wired State. 

The entire thing makes me think of The Wrong Hands and the Justice League -- a story in Second Life that prefigured many of our woes in real life today…

… It's like the story of WikiLeaks and the story of the NSA, today. It is one of the many thing I feel were prototyped in Second Life where it was really easy to prototype -- a hostage community of people online that you could easily affect like dropping a rock in a pond, endless capacity for virtual harassment, endless edge-casing and lawfaring capacity with a troop of coders and developers of the same hacker tribe who are the managers of Second Life at Linden Lab.

Actually, I don’t know what that means and neither do you, but what I think Prok is trying to say is that reality is beginning to imitate the virtual reality of 2006, and those of us who honed our skills trying to sort through the spy-vs-spy mindfuck games of Second Life are particularly well equipped to navigate house of mirrors created for us by the NSA, FBI, private intelligence companies etc.

So now that the so-called Real World has begun to imitate Second Life, the Herald is returning to its mission of helping its dedicated readers find their way through the house of mirrors. There is a war on reality happening. The Herald is going to cover it. For Barrett Brown. For our readers. And for the lulz.
 

As I prepared to expose a horrific virtual pet abuse scandal in Second Life this afternoon, a pair of SMS messages brought my iPhone to life - and put virtual pets on hold as the prospect of being scammed out of $9.99/month by phone bill ganking scumbags caught my attention.

You didn't ask for MobChance - but we have already billed you by the time you read this

An operation named Mblox/BuneUS had somehow obtained my mobile phone number and enrolled me - without my consent - in MobChance IQ Fun Facts. Am I now part of an increasingly popular large scale scam IQ test on the general population? It appears so.

While the messages said I could end the service with a STOP txt or by calling their phone number, a quick search of the interwebs revealed that as soon as you see the first two messages, Mblox/BuneUS has already charged you without consent - a practice known as cramming. I had sent a STOP message, but when I visited the AT&T site it was clear that STOP didn't have any effect - there was already a $9.99 charge on my phone bill.

According to several accounts at scam tracking sites, the call center for BuneLLC is a complete waste of time. These are not the sort of people I want to negotiate with - it was time for a call to AT&T to get the charges reversed, and block the possibility that anyone else could try this stunt.

Yes, the gameifaction of real life continues with big bucks to be made by 3rd parties placing unauthorized charges on phone bills - particularly because the unwary are billed indefinately.

According to DailyFinance, a US Senate report issued in July places cramming charges at over $2 billion/year - and 17 state Attorneys General are calling on a limp FTC to enact rules to curb the practice for both wireless and landline phones. The FTC seems to want to proceed very cautiously - perhaps the revolving door into industry beckons - or is this more a case of regulatory capture? Meanwhile the wireless carriers are thought to have designs on becoming a sort of phone/3rd-party billing hybrid, and so are concerned about creating friction in the billing process setup. This leaves the door wide open for scams.

If the FTC is reluctant, could controlling this sort of fraud be something that even the lobbyist-money-dependent Congress can agree on? It would certainly be more productive than the ill-advised SOPA and PIPA legislation.

But perhaps limiting the opportunity for large scale fraud is too much to ask. Cramming is big business for both those allegedly running scams such as Jason Hope of JAWA.com and for the phone carriers processing the billings. This may explain why the practice persists - as Hamid Shojaee explains at AZDisruptors.com.

With the phone companies pocketing a portion of the charges billed through their systems, and the landline business on the decline, walking away from any sort of revenue appears to be difficult. Perhaps that is why after calling AT&T to get a credit placed on my account for the unauthorized charges, it took a bit of persuading to get the customer service rep to enable "parental controls" on the account so that third parties cannot place charges without my explicit consent.

In a rational world, requiring explicit permission before billing would be the norm, but for whatever reason, there seems to be a reluctance to limit the ability of grifters to scam via phone bills. Have you looked at the details of your phone bill lately? You might be surprised at the games that are being played.

It took a call to AT&T to get Mblox/BuneUS out of my bill

At the same time, an ocean and a continent away, a cartoonist is being charged with cyber stalking after making videos mocking the local police department and their unethical ways. Judge Cayce in Kings County, Washington heard arguments on the warrant this week.

Meanwhile, Wang Xiaoning and Shi Tao - two Chinese dissidents - are still prisoners in the People's Republic of China.

Now as I previously wrote on the Herald, Yahoo! China released the identifying details of Wang Xiaoning and Shi Tao to the Beijing security services.  Wang and Shi were not operating under the real names, but as pseudonyms. Then Yahoo! was sued in the United States, brought before the U.S. House of Representatives, and made to beg for forgiveness from Wang and Shi's families.  

This was in 2008.  After the first two stories, I start noticing something.

Facebook doesn't like avatar names. Google Plus doesn't like avatar names. Second Life also looked at linking real names with avatar names.  The Kings County prosecutor, who was selected by the police to prosecute this case, is currently trying to get a warrant served after a motion to quash was filed. But the Crown Prosecutors didn't need to bother, as the youths sentenced just used their real names.  And as an added bonus, China is congratulating the UK on its internet restrictions. 

Suppose - besides providing better accuracy for advertisers - Facebook, Google and the rest are demanding real names to prevent being in Yahoo!'s position in 2008?  If the authorities already know who to come after, there is no need to turn over any information. The person is as exposed as if they were in a city street shouting the same statements, but in the online world their words are recorded forever with an arrow pointing to them.  

This approach reduces the internet service provider's liability.  When the Wang and Shi cases came around, the commentator class said Yahoo! didn't need to turn over the information.  Simply put, if a Chinese security services officer asked an employee located in China for information on dissidents, the employee could turn them away and nothing further would happen to the employee or the company. Because as anybody knows, police officers will simply go away if you tell them no.

Yahoo! was sued when they turned over the identifying information, and had to settle the suit while being called before the U.S. Congress to testify about what happened.  But if Yahoo! had not turned over the identifying information, then beyond a loss of business, Yahoo!'s Chinese employees might have found themselves arrested for anything up to being an accessory to obstructing justice.

Notice that while Yahoo! was sued and called before Congress and told they had failed, the two dissidents are still in jail, three years later. 

By moving from avatar identity and pseudonyms to legal identities, Google and Facebook can step back and let whatever authorities arrest whoever they want because without pseudonyms protecting avatars/players and involving corporate bottom lines. 

What will be truly telling is whether Judge Cayce allows the Kings County cartoonist warrant to go through. Will Google balk at revealing the identifying of the cartoonist McFiddlesticks - and then face liability themselves, or will Google comply and let a person who anonymously aired out the police department's dirty laundry without identifying the department's name be put on trial for a potential felony?

By Urizenus Sklar, from the Hall of Mirrors Desk

Cryptically and on short notice, my old friend Mike Godwin has left his position as General Counsel for Wikipedia. He first notified his staff on Oct. 19 and he was out on Oct 22. Why the quick departure? The letter from the Executive Director of Wikipedia included a FAQ that raises more questions than it answers:

Why is Mike leaving the Wikimedia Foundation?

Mike leaving the Wikimedia Foundation is a confidential personnel issue, and the Wikimedia Foundation doesn’t talk about confidential personnel issues with anyone except the people directly involved. We want to handle this kind of thing with respect for people’s privacy and dignity, and we are hopeful we can do that in this instance. That means, we’re not going to answer this question, and we hope you will understand why.

That isn’t a FAQ, that is a FUQ, as in a frequently unanswered question. And as we know, when people don’t say much they are violating Grice’s Maxim of Quantity, which usually means they can’t say what they really want to say, which is this: Nazis made us do it!

In this case, the speculation in the Hall of Mirrors™ is that Godwin has been pushed out because of his smack talking the FBI over the use of the FBI seal on Wikipedia.

Back in August, the FBI took umbrage at the FBI insignia appearing on the Wikipedia FBI page. FBI General Counsel David Larson cited 18 U.S.C. 701, which states: "Whoever manufactures, sells, or possesses any badge, identification card, or other insignia, of the design prescribed by the head of any department or agency of the United States for use by any officer or employee thereof, or any colorable imitation thereof, or photographs, prints, or in any other manner makes or executes any engraving, photograph, print, or impression in the likeness of any such badge, identification card, or other insignia, or any colorable imitation thereof, except as authorized under regulations made pursuant to law, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than six months, or both."

Godwin fired back in his usual manner – a manner designed to outflame all opponents in WELL flame wars (back when his pseud was “mnemonic” and his style was all aggression all the time): “while we appreciate your desire to revise the statute to reflect your expansive vision of it, the fact is that we must work with the actual language of the statute, not [the FBI's] aspirational version." Godwin went on to point out, quite correctly, that the law "was intended to protect the public against the use of a recognizable assertion of authority with intent to deceive."

Could this really be why Godwin is out? Stranger things have happened. And…

…in the Hall of Mirrors™, we may never know.

by Journey Yellowlist, Herald Legal Desk

Bored office-clones clung to the edges of their coffee-stained chairs, withered doyens of the china-cup crowd shredded lace hankies in anguish, and drunken hillbillies fell off pickle-barrels in the general store in hysterics as Judge I.R. “Hang ‘em High!” Shirley DeBoss, of the District Court of Second Life, decided the case known to the annals of fake legal history as Taliaferro v. Enoch. 

In my first dispatch about this celebrity trial, Septimus Severus Legume, representing Miss Petunia Courtney Amaryllis Taliaferro, President for Life of the Second Life League of Decency, had questioned Mr. Enoch, pointing to the man’s long criminal history as proof enough for the charges of vandalism, high crimes against the Arts, and burglary leveled at the moonshiner and Herald reporter as well as his sister. 

Pappy and Jezz Enoch were in the courtroom, but were not called to the stand on Day Two. Mr. Enoch, fresh from the comforts of a deluxe cell given him after some machinations with the jail staff, looked healthy, and he had packed on several pounds from jail food. Ms. Enoch, who had suffered in several cat-fights with buxom female guards, had been “spruced up” with a new set of stripes and many bandages. 

This reporter was present as attorney Slewfoot “Ain’t Lost Me a Case Yet!” Hadisson called the plaintiff to the stand. 

Judge deBoss: Miss Petunia, take that there stand! 

Jezz Enoch (whispered): Hell, askin’ a fat hag like that ol’ fancified fart to stand am just too much! It are like callin’ on a whale to git up on its flippers. 

Judge: I begs yo’ pardon, Miss Enoch? 

Jezz : What I done said were, askin’ somebody who done lost her fine art to stand am cruel and am just too much, so you needs to get her a nice pair o’ slippers. 

Miss Petunia: Oh be quiet, you hellbound degenerate, you foul trunk of noxious humors, spewing the poisons of your fornications!  

Judge: Least she gots her a petite figure fo’ that spewin an’ fornycashum  (winks at Jezz). So hush up yo’ self, tater-butt…I means Madame Plaintiff! 

Mr. Hadisson, git over here an’ do yo’ stuff. 

Slewfoot: Now lookee here, Miss P. The party o’ the first part… 

Petunia: Do you refer to me, you fly-by-night shyster? 

Slewfoot: Yep, you. Call me whatsoever you wants, but I gots evidence here that you harbors a mighty awful grudge agin’ the party o’ the second part… 

Pappy: Me? 

Jezz: No, me, you fat chunk o’ gov’mint cheese! (slaps Pappy silly) 

Slewfoot: BOTH o’ them po’ sufferin’ orphans who done lost their Papa to a Bigfoot attack and their Mama to a wastin’ disease brought on by pinin’ and gen’ral luv-sickness for that selfsame Bigfoot after she got one good look at his manly form while he were maulin’ and dismemberin’ her husband.  

Mammy Enoch won’t never the same, cause she knowed she done married the wrong feller.  She beat them chirren silly an’ led them into a life o’ sin and grief. 

Judge: Am that a defense? Hell, my mama were kiddynapped by Bigfoot and I done become a judge! So what am the point, sir? 

Slewfoot: Blamin’ Bigfoot am my general point, but they am more. Yo’ honor, I got me evidence that this so-called pillar o’ society gots herself a rite tarrible  secret….a secret identify! 

At this point the multitude, well, all 5 observers including me and the court typist, began to demand justice for the Enochs (and pass the jugs freely). 

Slewfoot: You sees, I gots evidence that none other than Miss Peetoonia Courtnobody Sasparilla Taladega… 

Legume: Sir! Objection, your honor! He mocks my client! She’s Petunia Courtney Amaryllis Taliaferro! 

Judge: Oh shut the hell up, you dang pantywaist, befo’ I has you taken fo’ a scrape behind the County Dog-Catcher’s truck. Now go on, Cous…I means Mr. Hadisson. 

Slewfoot: I gots me photygraphs o’ Miss Peetonia as none other than “Wild Orchid,”member (ex-officia) o’ the Justice League Unlimited of SL and the gal who done blowed up Pappy’s trailer when he were runnin’ fo’ mayor o’ Hard Alley. Here they am! 

Judge: Gimme them photygrafs.  

Well, it are decided then. First, I declares Bigfoot guilty o’ the crimes committed by Pappy and Jezz Enoch, since he were the root cause. In dementia, I sentences him… 

Ulysses Enoch: You mean “in abstentia,” your honor? 

Judge: That too. I sentences him to hang by the neck until he are dead and rotten! 

Next, I declares Miss Petunia Curtly Anorexi..et cetera…to be GUILTY as sin!  

Petunia: Oh, ruined! 

Judge: Furthersoever, Let the Enochs, who done suffered at the hands o’ Bigfoot an’ Miss Petunia, have what am left o’ her house, Doilywood, on account o’ the false charges agin’ this brother and sister who done paid their debts to society. 

Judge (whisper): And paid me, too. Thanks fo’ that roll o’ bills and the case o’ Shine, boy. 

Slewfoot (whisper): You am a peach, yo’ honor, and I are a servant o’ the law, servin’ rite good Shine and gals, too, if’n you needs some.  

Judge (whisper): I gots that all set, boy. Tell Jezz to git to my chambers rite after we drags ol’ Tater-butt off. We gots legal bizness to transact. 

Legume: THIS IS A TRAVESTY! Her art! Her stately home! Violated by rude mechanicals! 

Judge: Tapestry my butt. We ain’t that fancy, boy. Photygraphs am good enuff. An what you got agin’ mechanics? My pappy were one o’ them. Baliff, take ol’ Needlepoint Slim here downstairs for a good beatin’ and snap to it! 

Here Legume was dragged from the courtroom by the Bailiff and Sgt. Dolly Grip, of the Really, Really Bad Girls Detention Center. Sounds of a good beating drifted upstairs while Miss Petunia shivered in her seat. 

Judge : Anysohow, we needs to set us a example so’s I kin leave this stupid game an’ git back to hangin’ folks in the real world and takin’ real bribes.  So fo’ the rest o’ Miss Petunia’s punishment, I reckons them Herald readers can vote on it. That Hamhock Au boy at New World Notes runs them polls, so let’s have one ourselfs! Mistopher reporter! 

Me: Yes your honor! 

Judge: Run a poll in that fake paper! Then run them results! Justice am a gonna git done! 

Miss Petunia: Oh, cruel and harsh world! I’LL HAVE MY REVENGE ON ALL OF YOU! 

At this point she attacked Hadisson with a rolling pin but was disarmed with a series of expert Kung-Fu moves by the two-headed prim baby, Ulysses-Diomedes Enoch. 

Judge: Restrain that-there gal, bailiff, an’ put her in stripes! Git up an’ down ones if’n you kin. They has a slimmin’ effect. 

On this note, amid weeping and gnashing of teeth, the forlorn Miss Petunia was dragged away into custody.   

Pappy: Can I spend one mo’ night in jail, yo’ horror? 

Judge: What the hell for? 

Pappy: Tonight am fried chikkin nite agin! 

Judge: Sho thing, boy. You already et up $5000 in fake food, so what am three mo’ chikkins?  

Enochs: Whee hoo! Let’s liquor! 

Pappy and Jezz performed a folkloric line-dance in the courtroom to the tune of “Jailhouse Rock,” and all was again as right as it could be in the fake world of Second Life. 

Now, gentle readers, you hold justice in your sweaty hands. Do it the Enoch Way: Vote early! Bribe your friends to vote for justice!  

In a blatant show of force against a host of more than 73,000 wordpress blogs, the US Government ordered BurstNet Technologies to take down the server of Blogetery.com for repeated acts of abuse of intellectual property and insufficient respect for the DMCA. According to a story on TorrentFreak, the owner/renter of the server received the following notice from BurstNet: "

Due to the history of abuse and on going abuse on this ‘bn.***********’ server.

We have opted to terminate this server, effective immediately. This termination applies to: bn.affiliateplex.com

Abuse Department
BurstNET Technologies, Inc"

Herald readers will note that the governments ban notice sounds much like the sort of banhammer notice that some less than above board members of SL have received in the past – as well as some innocent residents. Given the extensive abuse of intellectual property in SL, could the other shoe may finally be dropping on Linden Lab’s abysmal and often capricious DMCA enforcement in Second Life?

Consider the number of what could be Star Wars, Star Trek, LOTR, Harry Potter, NFL, MLB, Michael Jackson, and do we need mention, Marvel and DC Comics, copyright violations occuring in Second Life  — then wonder how soon it will be before Linden Lab gets a similar takedown notice from its internet service providers. The situation is complicated by illicit third party SL clients capable of "securing" backups of user owned content, regardless of creator permissions – while spoofing themselves as approved clients.

Blogetery.com has a rather notorious record of hosting blogs of rather blatant software and other IP piracy operations, providing links to download the latest video games, hollywood blockbusters, and music MP3s. While it claims it maintains a policy of timely response to DMCA filings, their timeliness evidently had not satisfied the demands of the federal government. It surely wasn’t like they were being punished for hosting, say, certain SL related weblogs.

It stands to reason that not ALL of the 73,000 blogs on Blogetery.com were involved in piracy, but the innocent were swept away with the guilty as everyone lost the entirety of their blog content. It is well established that the federal government is constitutionally prohibited from exacting collective guilt on people merely for being customers of a company that provided services to criminals, so this case may wind up in the courts – at least for the legitimate bloggers who want their data back. Apparently BurstNet is under orders not to release the data on the server in question to anybody, which leads us to wonder if any newsy WikiLeaks content originating in the middle east may have been on that server, but at this point we can only speculate.