Cre8tive Flow

The recent hubbub (and yes, I am aware I use that word too much and need a synonym… how about brouhahahahahaha?). As I was saying, the recent brouhahahaha over anonymous comments has centred around the supposed damage that comes with anonymous commenting. This sentiment is summed up nicely in the following quote from a recent Washington Post Editorial:

Imagine going to a meeting about school overcrowding in your community. Everybody at the meeting is wearing nametags. You approach a cluster of people where one man is loudly complaining about waste in school spending. “Get rid of the bureaucrats, and then you’ll have money to expand the school,” he says, shaking his finger at the surrounding faces.

One of the frightening points brought up by the foul experience of a well-known blogger in the news who has received life threatening, abusive blog comments, is that it is hard to prove the person listed as the commenter is really that person.

We find this in Cre8asiteforums as well. Validation and Captcha are not enough protection from spammers and those who wish to post some of the most disgusting sentences I’ve ever seen. We have a system that prevents most slime from ever being viewed by our members, but there’s always a chance that something will not be caught before it appears on the board. We’re not perfect.

It appears that an audit conducted during scans by earthlink for the first three months of 2004 uncovered an average of 28 spyware programs on each machine they looked at.

This is definitely a problem that needs more attention, whether through legislation, or more widespread use of programs that block the installation of unwanted software, or both.

The State of Utah has recently passed a strict law against this type of spyware and malware, and the federal government has been looking at similar legislation. But, not everyone is happy about that. One company has sued Utah, claiming that Utah’s statutes are unconstitutional, and block ads from people who actually do want to see them.