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Feed The Register: How Web 2.0 evangelists make the Microsoft monopoly stronger (theregister.com)

Delusions of grandeur

Comment One IT Manager, bemoaning his lot to me, recently compared the rise of Web 2.0 enthusiasts to the problem the Police has with Freemasons. The blog and wiki evangelists within are not as secretive, of course, but they're equally cult-like: speaking their own language, and using the populist rhetoric of "empowerment" for relentless self-advancement.


Are Spammers Giving Up? 327

sfjoe writes "Are spammers giving up the game? Google seems to think so. In an article at Wired, Google, '... says that spam attempts, as a percentage of e-mail that's transmitted through its Gmail system, have waned over the last year'. They think their own filters are so good that spammers aren't even trying anymore. 'Other experts disagree with Google, pointing out that overall spam attempts continue to rise. By most estimates, tens of billions of spam messages are sent daily. Yet for most users, the amount of spam arriving in their inboxes has remained relatively flat, thanks to improved filtering.'"

Feed Techdirt: Citizen Journalism Site Sued Over Content Posted By User (techdirt.com)

We've seen way too many cases where people blame service providers for the actions of their users, despite clear safe harbors found in section 230 of the CDA. The courts have been pretty consistent in throwing these lawsuits out, but it appears the message still hasn't reached some lawyers. Up in Brattleboro, New Hampshire, someone is suing a local citizen journalism site for comments posted by a user that were potentially defamatory. The woman is suing the person who made the comments -- which makes sense -- but also the site that hosted them. This, despite the fact that the comments on the site are unmoderated. This would seem like a clear situation where the site, iBrattleboro, is protected by section 230, but the lawyer handling the case doesn't seem to think so: "I think their defense will be that they don't read prior to publishing, but I'm not sure that will be enough to avoid some degree of liability." That seems like an odd statement as the law is pretty clear: "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider." Plus, there's a wide assortment of precedent cases that all seem to back up very similar situations as being protected.

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