A little postscript; Crowe has also taken to putting various put-downs and unnecessarily cruel comments etc. on Jon's YouTube channel, for absolutely no reason except to confirm the impression that Crowe is an internet stalker.

I have lost track of the number of times Facebook have removed a post arbitrarily. To them, a picture showing a woman breastfeeding, or a lady displaying her mastectomy scars is labelled as "pornographic", resulting in images removed, and the user banned for varying times, while Facebook turns a blind eye to groups advocating rape and violence. This week, Facebook did nothing when the contact phone number of a mental hospital in the US were published and a post urged people to call up to harrass the staff and "loonies". Hell, Facebook even refused to ban links to a movie showing a real-life execution as it didn't violate their terms of service. But when Zuckerberg's sister's pictures were stolen from Facebook and plastered all over the internet, Facebook were damned quick to react then! Lets see how they react to the proposed prosecution by the Italian authorities which has stemmed from an on-line bullying campaign that made a young girl kill herself. Maybe they'll finally take all this seriously....

This overlaps with something a friend of mine, Jon Smith, is experiencing at the moment. He collects ocean liner memorabilia and posts them on his various Facebook groups (such as "The Olympic Class Liners"). He watermarks them in line with Facebook's policy of showing where images come from, and also to protect his investment as pictures are routinely lifted and passed off as someone else's property. The watermarks show that the images in this case have come from his own collection and not pilfered by right clicking Google images.

This has angered other groups, such as "Lovers of the Ocean Liners" who routinely steal other's pictures, usually claiming them off as their own images. Of course they can't do this with watermarked images, so they are particularly irate. This theft has irked other observers external to FB too too, such as this lot. "Lovers of the Ocean Liners" are an odd bunch, prone to banning people on a whim, routinely lying about pictures and so on. Three of their admins (Kipfer Fox, Carl Ireton and Gene Speroni (now posting under the name Virgil Gene)) have received permanent bans from Facebook for theft but somehow they always seem to come back and gloat about how they get around Facebook. So far the watermarking has resulted in some grumbling, but things went to a new level when one user accused my friend Jon of plagiarising pictures by right clicking and putting his name on the images, thereby in his view, laying claim to not just the odd postcard Jon has bought, but EVERY single instance of that photo created since the dawn of time. This man doesn't seem to realize that there is an infinity of different in watermarking an instance of a picture and copyrighting all images.

This is where it starts to get really unpleasant. The user referred to above has taken his malice to new levels. He set up a facebook group called "Fakers frauds and other plagiaristic pariahs" to hound the copyright thieves but it in a group set up mainly to attack Jon and his friends. You may think "So what, this is just is a silly spat over very old photographs, well outside of copyright". You may have a point. BUT on that "Fakers Frauds..." page, the "gentleman" in question took to posting homophobic slurs and various threats. He said that he would have his friends break Jon's legs. He made comments about Jon and his friends molesting people. He even accused one lad of being a child molester with not a single piece of evidence presented. There are many other examples. The man, Mike Crowe (who also goes under the FB name Michael Crowe, thereby breaking Facebook's one-account-per-person rule) is an interesting man. He claims to be have been a director of a cruise line but when contacted they say that he hasn't worked for them for over a year (he has since changed his details); his inability to articulate except in crude terms would not seem to be on par with someone who claimed to study at Oxford University and then served at the RAF. He claims to live in San Diego or Laguna Beach, but when things took a turn for the worse, he then said that he was living in China, to avoid detection.

The threats of violence and accusations have resulted in a disinterested attitude from the UK police who say that people are entitled to their own opinions, thereby ignoring the laws of various countries that it is illegal to make such threats on-line. The UK police therefore won't pass the details on to the FBI, who would investigate threats made on US soil. And what have Facebook said about all this? To them, it doesn't violate their terms of service and they see nothing wrong. This is when someone actually replies. Out of dozens of reports, only about three replies have been received all saying the same thing; "we see nothing wrong" - or words to that effect. One spirited US lawyer replied to this brush-off by telling FB that to accuse someone of paedophilia and threats of violence not only breaks Facebook's own terms of service but also violates the laws of several countries. The nasty stuff disappeared from Crowe's pages for about a day after this. The US lawyer had even said that she was not afraid to bring in the media. Facebook evidently gave this "threat" the finger as the awful taunts were soon restored. But private lawsuits cost money and this is something my friends do not have. So Crowe and his friends, and indeed FB, can get away with all this unpleasantness.

Jon's health has never been good; he suffers from a degenerative spinal illness and arthritis and his neighbors are anti-social vermin, hosting loud parties until the early hours of the morning and they feel no inclination to stop hounding him. Facebook's unwilligness to do anything is not doing him any good. And Crowe and his pals seem to be free to do whetever they want, issue more taunts and threats safe in the knowledge that nothing will be done against them.

A few days ago, it all came to a head when Jon decided to put his side of the story on his Facebook pages, complete with evidence in the form of screengrabs. Facebook pulled the statement without comment or warning within a few hours. Jon has reposted his comments in an attempt to clear his name, and these defences have also been deleted by Facebook, again usually within hours, as have criticisms of Facebook by other members of his groups. Those who taunt Jon are allowed to get away with their vile slurs. How the hell is this fair?

The UK media haven't helped. An article in "The Sunday Telegraph" nearly two weeks ago gave the story a dismissive spin. Crowe was contacted and said his comments were a joke and that people shouldn't have been so up-tight. Privately, the reporter has said that beforehand he was worried about how Crowe would reply and conduct himself. The screengrabs that Jon provided to give evidence of Crowe's on-line behaviour were ignored by the reporter, as was the lack of Facebook support. In short, Jon was made to sound like a demented, pathetic soul and his accuser was a heroic vigilante. But say YOU were accused of being a child molester and a potential employer found it on the internet? Or say you wanted to foster a child and this came up in a routine search? Such an accusation would be utterly destructive. Having seem the screengrabs in question I can say that the original threats were in no way "a joke" or a little prank. They were serious vile accusations and incitements to violence. Of course, having been tipped off the press that the police were involved, a lot of the more horrendous items on "Fakers Frauds and other plagiaristic pariahs" and Mike/Michael Crowe's personal pages was junked, but fortunately screen captures were made in case of any future litigation.

Facebook of course, haven't commented. Well, how can they? They hide themselves behind phone numbers that go nowhere, ring out or are "dead". Email support is a joke. The only phone number that worked is the one that takes you to their sales department. It seems that it all Facebook is concerned about - squeezing money out of people. When it comes to libel and the harm their laziness and insouciance is doing, they truly don't give a damn.