Jesse Schibilia

A blogger’s friend lost her SideKick II in an NYC cab. The individuals that found it are being low lifes about the situation. When faced with an offer for a reward, the low lifes have refused, responding instead with threats of physical violence and other such intimidation. Queue up the Web 2.0 Wrath music!!!

The blogger put up a page on his website (go to page) to showcase the injustice his friend is going through. He has had very little (if any) sleep since the ordeal began yesterday. His website has been flooded with traffic from many places (mostly Digg). What chance do the low lifes have?

If you look at the folks at PriceRitePhoto.com, which I wrote about in a previous post, they have very little chance. The only difference is that they are individuals, and not a commercial entity. Based on T-Mobile’s records and logs taken from T-Mobile’s servers, the individuals know who the low lifes are and where they live.

The blogger has posted links to the low lifes MySpace accounts. I am assuming that the low lifes have been thoroughly harassed by the blogging community because one of them has taken down his account. It seems like they are getting lots of nasty feedback because on one of the MySpace profiles, one of the low lifes has lashed out against the e-mails that have been sent to him and the comments that have been left on his account.

How do I see this panning out? Hopefully the police will deal with it in a civil manner. Hopefully the low lifes have enough decency to return the Sidekick. It is in their best interest to avoid the legal system here (the girl who apparently is in possession of the phone is also the 16-year-old mother of an infant). She may or may not have a 24-26 year-old boyfriend who may or may not be the father of the child. They don’t need that type of attention toward their personal lives.

It is amazing to see how the blogging community gets behind people that they don’t know. The blogger mentioned that a police officer (who saw the story on another blog) contacted him to give him advice as to how to handle it. Blogging connects people all over the world without having to traverse the traditional pathways that they would normally have to take. Instead of the blogger having to work through the bureaucracy of a local police station, someone with the right information came straight to him. This is the same way that blogging empowers people in some types of large companies. They connect today’s knowledge workers.

My last post on Web 2.0 Wrath seems to have been found by at least a few folks. Being the vain person that I am, I google my first and last name once every so often. On one of my recent searches, I found a result pointing to cnet.com. The article’s title is “When consumers become vigilantes” and was posted by Mike Yamamoto who is apparently a staff writer for CNET (read original post).

I was excited to see that someone recognized my post. This means that I am not just spouting off useless drivel for me to read on cold nights when I need to feel self-important.

I immediately looked at my AIM client to see who was online; I desperately needed to show someone that I’m apparently an authority on the subject of web vigilantism. I found my brother-in-law, John. John is a programmer and as such has an eye for minutiae. He noticed that my professor’s name is not mentioned on the cnet.com quote as it is in my original post. Also missing are any mention of digg and priceritephoto, the two entities that I was discussing in the post.

Now I am assuming that Mike Yamamoto has to change my post for some legal reason. But my quote is taken out of the exact context of the dispute. Not only does Bill Crosbie get zero props for being such an astute thinker, but this paraphrasing raises zero awareness about the entities in question and instead passes the buck onto a broader subject of ‘web vigilantism’.

This is all well and good: people should do their own research. My post is not the end-all be-all of web vigilantism. I’m no copyright lawyer, but shouldn’t Mike Yamamoto contact me if he is going to directly change my writing? Or should I just be greatful that I now get more click-throughs?