Trespassing and the Social Mechanics of Blogging

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Well, I don't feel so bad now. I got hit by "booked" which rates a 10 on a scale of one through 10 for damage. Despite being given a clean bill of health several times now by Lavasoft's AdAware Professional and Computer Associate's ETrust AntiVirus, each time I start IE6, the darn thing comes back, so this is being written from Opera. The terms above are trademarks of the respective companies. This blog is copyrighted by me.

I have a feeling the Mirar's big brother is "booked." All of it is bad, bad, adware, malware. I have to compliment Symantec Corp on having very detailed and well organised information about these nasties.

Previously I thought I just had Mirar, which is considered insignificant. I don't consider rewriting my IE6 window such that I can not longer acess my on-line email insignificant. I'm sure that anyone who is handicapped doesn't consider it insignificant either. The blind are very dependent on having stable software, as they have to "listen" to descriptions of each part of the page in order to make sense of it and "see" what is on it.

It seems to me that the blind shound be able to sue under the ADA, Americans with Disabilities Act. The behavior of this "adware" is like blowing up handicap access ramps, and ripping apart the sound boxes on busy street corners that alert the blind to light changes. It is out and out vandalism.

If I have land and castle, and I put a barbed wire fence around it, and I put signs on that fence every 50 yards or so, saying, "no trespassing," I am legally entitled to have the sheriff come out and remove any individual who comes onto my property. If the person repeats, the sheriff can lock him up for a while to think about it.

As far as I am concerned, my computer should be no diffferent.

If I put up firewalls and virus protectors and ad protectors, I have said, "no, you are not welcome to come in." The amount of effort I'm expending is beginning to remind me of the Israeli's building their 30 high, 10 foot deep, wall to keep the Palestinians from playing walking time bomb.

The current state of affairs in cyber law is that if a marketeer can figure out how to fly over, tunnel under, or blast his way through the walls and signs, he/she has a perfect right to stick huge billboards about whatever, wherever he/she pleases. And if a second competing marketeer shows up, the two of them may fight and totally destroy my stuff, and I have no recourse.

This has got to stop. Legally there has to be a way of defining one's computer as one's castle, and metting (sp?)out punishment to those who, without permission, trespass.

I don't want to see the government take over the internet, but I do want to put a stop to wanton billboardism. The first step would be to review the books of those caught doing the placement of the ads. The second step would be to charge those who pay them to place the ads, megabucks. Yes, that's right, if Walmart pays Joe Cleveritas X amount of dollars to place an ad in front of Y number of faces, then Walmart pays a fine = to 10x + ($100 * Y). That should be discouraging to any megacorp.

The money goes directly to a fund to set up homeless shelters in the most expensive (value of exec's house there) 2nd home town of the megacorp's CEO, and I do mean Hillsburough, Pebble Beach, New Rochelle, Palm Springs, Aspen, Cape Cod, Kennebunkport, Crawford, etc. The home town is NOT the one he lives in to go to work from, unless it is outside of a major metro area. That would be REALLY discouraging to any megacorp executive ! He'd be hounded out of town by his toney neighbors. The shelters would need to provide FREE transportation to the to the toney new location from the nearby urban areas with crowded shelters.

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I've noticed that my older daughter's cartoon has come true for my younger daughter. She, the younger, is in med school, and is blogging, and we parents and her many other friends wind up reading her blog to see what she's up to, because she is so busy studying, she seldom has time, even for phone calls. Her blogging I'm sure also provides her with relief from psychologically stress, which has got to be intense, when you take on the "save my life, please!" job. You can never know everything you'd like, and there are always more patients than there is time or are resources 4. There, I didn't end the sentence with a preposition !

I will write more on "booked" later. The sun is up and it's time to go outside. Tis the season photos will be up on www.swland.org in 15 minutes.