From: Matt Norwood <mrn2101@columbia.edu>
  To  : <cpc@emoglen.law.columbia.edu>
  Date: Tue, 18 Apr 2006 18:44:35 -0400

Re: [CPC] Paper 2: Plastic Identity

Did anyone else read this Times article that Josh sent to the list (and
that Dan cites in his paper)?

> [9] ³A Sinister Web Entraps Victims of Cyberstalkers,² NY Times, April
> 17, 2006. 
> http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/17/technology/17stalk.html

The Times seems to have joined Time Magazine in its campaign to put out
a story every few months reminding everyone how dangerous the Internet
is:

'It is the online equivalent of scrawling "for a good time, call Jane
Doe" on a bathroom wall, but the reach of the Internet has made such
pranks — if they are only that — far more sinister.'

(Cue ominous organ music and Vincent Price laughing maniacally.) The
rest of the article fails to tell us exactly why the Internet changes
anything about this age-old behavior. 

Has anyone run across any hysterical NY Times articles from 1906 warning
readers about the terrifying epidemic of young women being ravished over
the tele-phone device? Anyone up for running a Lexis search?

I no longer read the Times because they've joined the rest of tabloid
America in alternating between two modes of journalism: "Freedom
democracy freedom freedom stay the course welcomed as liberators
freedom", and "Sinister predator pedophile sinister Internet terrorist
sinister sinister".


-- 
Matt Norwood
Software Freedom Law Center
1995 Broadway, 17th Fl.
New York, NY 10023
(212) 461-1907 direct
(212) 580-0800 main
(212) 580-0898 fax
norwood@softwarefreedom.org
www.softwarefreedom.org


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