Billings Beta

According to a Canadian criminal lawyer, there are over 7,000 Websites “that promote racial discrimination and allow the hate mongers ‘direct marketing’ of their message to the YouTube generation.” These sites use free video games and online video to attract young adults and spread messages of hate. The article continues, “Last year, a girl in Burlington, Ont., went to such a site run by a neo-Nazi and became convinced the Holocaust never happened, and she went on to convince some of her classmates.”

How do you decide whether a website has accurate information or not?  How might linking your own website to an online game of killing people from a certain country or religious group affect the way your friends think of you?

Original article: Canada.com

Someone stole a laptop in New Zealand. The security video was posted on YouTube and Google Video and watched over 500,000 times. One of the viewers recognized the thief and turned him in.

How many times a day do you appear on camera? Think about grocery stores, webcams, parking lots and coffee shops. Do you have a right to privacy when you are in a public place?

Original article: New Zealand Herald

A lady filed a federal lawsuit in Philadelphia claiming that she was hurt when falling over at a New Jersey comedy club. The club’s defense team says that the court case should happen in New Jersey - the place the club is, the witnesses are and where this lady’s MySpace page (still active as of 8/9/07) says she lives.

The laws in Philly could be quite different that in NJ. The lady in the lawsuit hasn’t logged in to her MySpace page since October of 2006. What if you never edited any of your public information out on the web again? Would things get out of date? Would anything exist that might hurt you when it is time to apply for a job, sign up for college, or fall in love with someone?

Original article: C|Net News

Spock.com went live today. It’s search engine and is designed to help you find people, not just things. So far they have 100+ million people in their database, and are gathering information from MySpace, Linkedin, Wikipedia and a few other locations.

The company is hoping that you’ll help them manage all their information by “claiming” your name and adding data. If you sign up for an account, they will ask you to give them all your email addresses and login information for various sites. Is it a good idea to give a company you’ve never heard of lots of personal information about yourself? Is it a good idea to give a company you’ve never heard of access to your accounts?

I looked up my own name and know that the info they have on file is more than a month old, as I’ve made changes back in early July to the site they scraped it from.