The 'Wikipedia for Porn' launches, should parents worry?

Carnalpedia aims to be the definitive online resource for all things related to sex, including the porn industry. They also claim that innocent eyes will not be able to visit thanks to their Restricted to Adults rating.

I suppose it was just a matter of time before a site like this was created. The sex and porn industry has had an enormous influence on the development of the Internet and remains one of its most popular albeit controversial topics.

Carnalpedia will remind visitors immediately of Wikipedia, the site that has become the web's favourite destination for finding facts on just about every imaginable topic. The layout is identical, as is navigation and organization of content within article pages. It also maintains the wiki convention of being free to access and open to anyone to create and/or edit submissions.

Although the site has only been online for a few weeks, it already contains more than 120,000 articles, including a growing list of adult movie titles, which currently sits at about 76,000.

When asked about why the web needs a Wikipedia for sex, Carnalpedia creator Jeremy Haddock said "The fact that Wikipedia has a certain type of audience leaves a lot of information about sex and the adult industry either blocked or censored."

Haddock notes that all of Carnalpedia's article pages will be labeled with the Restricted To Adults (RTA) tag which will prevent them from being accessed on computers equipped with services like NetNanny which only allow age-appropriate content to be viewed.

The site is trying to avoid being a resource for people who simply want to swap adult material: only "authorized individuals from approved sources" are allowed to upload images, in order to comply with copyright laws.

Hmmmm, Well my first reaction is... Do we REALLY need a site like Carnalpedia? and although I'm not a parent, what disturbed me, is the relative ease at which I am still able to view any and all sorts of content (some of it really "kinky" lets just say to put it lightly) without any filter, password, request for age confirmation, or anything of the sort on the website... Is this be something that parents should be (if not worried) at least a little concerned about? the site is relatively new, but already has over 120,000 articles as mentioned above.. all of which can be viewed by just about anyone visiting the site... To make any changes, or additions to the articles in the database, you'd need to sign up/in, at which time you'd have to prove your age.. but is that enough? what about those not wanting to make additions? those simply wanting to "check things out"? I am sure there are a lot more people wanting to view things, then there would be wanting to add things... I feel as though there should be at least some sort of safeguard on the site to ensure inappropriate content can not be viewed by minors, software, and parental vigilance can only go so far.. I think the site also has some responsibilities in ensuring that pornography can not be viewed by persons not old enough to do so.

Thoughts?

Twitter proposes TV competition series

Twitter, the Web site that asks what everybody's doing, says it wants to be doing a TV series.

The social-networking service said Monday it has teamed with Reveille productions and Brillstein Entertainment Partners to develop an unscripted series based on the site, which invites 140-character postings from members around the world.

The show would harness Twitter to put players on the trail of celebrities in an interactive, competitive format.

The producers call their proposed series the first to bring the immediacy of Twitter to the TV screen.

"Twitter is transforming the way people communicate, especially celebrities and their fans," said Reveille managing director Howard T. Owens, who expects the new project to "unlock Twitter's potential on TV."

No further details were made available on the show's format or when it might hit the air.

Reveille's scripted entertainment includes "The Office" (NBC), "Ugly Betty" (ABC) and "The Tudors" (Showtime), plus reality programming that includes "The Biggest Loser" and "American Gladiators" (both NBC).

Brillstein Entertainment's credits include "Real Time with Bill Maher" (HBO), "The Sopranos" (HBO), "According to Jim" (ABC) and "NewsRadio" (NBC).

The San Francisco-based Twitter, which was founded in 2007, is one of the Internet's fastest-growing sites. A recent Nielsen report found that unique visitors to Twitter skyrocketed from 475,000 during February 2008 to 7 million a year later.

Craigslist may eliminate illegal sex ads

Cnet is reporting that Three state attorneys general plan to meet with Craigslist representatives to begin negotiations toward eliminating advertisements from the site for prostitution and other suspected illegal sexual activities.

State attorneys general from Missouri, Illinois, and Connecticut will represent a group of state attorneys general in a meeting Tuesday in New York City with representatives of the Web site.

Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster said his office found several ads offering and seeking prostitution on Craigslist pages for the Kansas City, St. Louis, Columbia/Jefferson City, and Springfield areas.

"Craigslist is allowing advertisements for illegal activities like prostitution on its site," Koster said a statement. "It is blatant. It is irresponsible. It is illegal."

Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster expressed optimism toward the goal of reducing illegal activity on the site but stopped short of discussing the removal of the "erotic services" section.

"Craigslist looks forward to meeting with the attorneys general, and anticipates making further progress toward the common goal of eliminating illegal activity from Craigslist, while preserving its full utility and benefit for tens of millions of law-abiding Americans who value and depend on Craigslist's free local community services in their everyday lives," Buckmaster said in a statement.

The site's erotic services section was thrust into the national spotlight following the arrest last month of Philip H. Markoff, who is suspected of killing a 25-year-old masseuse he met through Craigslist at a Boston hotel. Markoff, a 22-year-old medical student at Boston University, was charged with murder, unlawful possession of a firearm, and kidnapping. He is also suspected of attacks on two other escorts at hotels.

However, even before the so-called "Craigslist killing," the site had worked with a group of 40 attorneys general to create new measures on the site designed to thwart ads for prostitution and other illegal sexual activities. Craigslist requires anyone posting ads to the erotic services section to submit an operational phone number and credit card, the site announced last year.

But those measures don't do enough to stem prostitution, according to a federal lawsuit filed in March against Craigslist by the sheriff of Illinois' Cook County, alleging that the Web's largest classifieds publication is "facilitating prostitution." Sheriff Tom Dart asked the court to force Craigslist to remove the erotic services section and for $100,000 in compensation for the man-hours the county paid police to investigate alleged criminal services being advertised on the site.

Buckmaster suggested at the time that the suit was a waste of time, saying that "Craigslist cannot be held liable, as a matter of clear federal law, for content submitted to the site by our users." Craigslist announced later that month that ads for such services were down 90 percent to 95 percent during the past 12 months on Craigslist sites that serve five major U.S. cities.

However, many CNET News readers suggested that the reduction was due to the ads being relabeled and moved to another section.

While some portray Craigslist as the world's largest bordello, workers in the sex trade say the site helps reduce the risk of violence prostitutes often face.

"Craigslist is important to helping us avoid violence," a 35-year-old sex worker in San Francisco told CNET News last month before the murder in Boston occurred. "Craigslist is a way to filter out that kind of person...and with Craigslist there is no need for pimps."

Thoughts?

Is the end drawing near for Facebook?

Back in the 1870s, the town of Deadwood, South Dakota experienced a gold rush and quickly became home to gunfighters, gamblers, cussing and plenty of women woman "of poor reputation". Today, Deadwood is just a tourist trap in boring old South Dakota (No offence to anyone FROM South Dakota, but come on, even you'd have to agree!).

In many ways, that's exactly what's happened to the social-networking website Facebook.

Facebook's formative years (2003-2006) started out much like the Wild West had. Open, kind of barren, but people were free to do as they pleased without much worry of repercussions.

With ridiculous status updates, embarrassing photos, nasty late-night wall postings on an ex's wall following a "user is now single" update. With the creation of the news feed in September 2006, which allows a user to see what other users are doing, it was like picking up a newspaper in the morning and every article was a gossip story about someone you knew.

It was awesome!

But slowly, Facebook has evolved into something else. Something that managed to take up much more of my time, yet bores me in a way it never did before.

Here's how it happened....

Phase 1: Fear your neighbours! Then improvise!

When the media first discovered Facebook (scholars suggest this was sometime in late 2006 after it got a mention on "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart"), there was one nearly homogenous response in reporting - "lock your doors, hide your face, evildoers want your information!"

After being scared about their privacy, users started clamping down on the way they allowed their information to be seen. The news feed has slowly been reduced to a shadow of its former self, with many users choosing to severely limit the feature.

At the same time, the website skyrocketed in popularity to the point where both your mom and your boss (and even your bosses mom) were on it. Suddenly, those pictures of you being held by the ankles while you're performing a keg stand didn't seem like such a smart thing to post.

Worst of all, were all the reported cases of employers scouting out Facebook for dirt on potential employees. While Facebook profiles are always an idealized version of a person, soon people began setting their profiles to look like a bland virtual-resume...just in case.

This is not to say there's not some fun, risqué stuff on Facebook. There is. But with the tent growing larger and larger, it's no surprise that people have become more tentative and conservative with what they post and how they act.

Phase 2: Every day is exactly the same

Every Facebook user over 25 knows (but won't necessarily admit to it) that the best part of Facebook is "catching up" with someone you haven't seen in years.

Seeing their profile for the first time, with its orgy of photos (are they still hot? what?? they're hotter??), information on marital status, jobs and children (oh damn, i'm too late, she's married and has children) -- well, that's as good as Facebook gets.

Eventually though, you are going to run out of people that you will want to glean your years apart with a check of their profile.

But after that initial "catch-up", you are left with the day-to-day boring minutiae. A sample:

- Tom is going to the shower, then bed.
- Amy is tanning.
- Sarah is loving her new red kitchenaid mixer!
- Jenna is without power and cable at home.

I already have my own perfectly mundane life to deal with, I don't need to know yours.

Dr. Robin Dunbar, an Oxford University anthropologist has said that the brain's cognitive power limits the size of a person's (real-life) social network to about 150 people. That sounds reasonable.

Yet, There are people with over 500 Facebook friends (at last count). I've also seen others that have nearly 1,000 "friends". This is data Malcolm Gladwell should write a book about.

A lot of people on Facebook have massive networks, but must be inundated with so much data it's utterly pointless for them. They might as well be logged into someone else's account because there's no way they are interested in the majority of people on their account, Do they even remember when they added most of those people, or when that person added them? or who the heck most of those people even are?

You just can't care about your massive amount of Facebook friends, your brain won't do it.

Phase 3: Useful to the point it's work

It was reported that social networking has surpassed email in terms of worldwide popularity, with Facebook being the most popular of the social networking sites.

This is not surprising, as Facebook has an email system that simplifies getting in touch with people, as well as a built-in instant messenger.

Facebook has also become the go-to planning calendar for social groups of a certain age, with its Event interface making it easier than ever to plan a social gathering.

Add in socially-conscious groups to join, bands and TV shows I "need" to become a "fan" to promote, too many applications to count (I'm especially looking at you Scrabble!), birthday wishes to give and a quick log-in to Facebook can feel like the start of a marathon.

You know when you put off logging in to Facebook, the same way you put off taking out the trash, that's not a good sign for something that's supposed to be entertainment.

Somewhere along the line, Facebook stopped being a place to "creep" your ex-girlfriend's profile and became a semi-useful technology you can't live without.

The wild Deadwood of U.S. history eventually became Deadwood, the town that's a National Historic Landmark. Prettier, more useful and a lot less crazy - truly, the inverse of the mores of its founding.

That's the same fate awaiting Facebook. A place where people will stop by to say, "I remember that...It used to be fun here."

IFPI website hacked to protest Pirate Bay trial

The Swedish website for the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry was defaced Thursday by hackers protesting the group's involvement in the ongoing Pirate Bay trial in Stockholm.


The message on the homepage of the recording industry association's website urged Pirate Bay prosecutor Haakan Roswall of Stockholm to "stop lying." The hackers, calling themselves "The New Generation," said the intrusion was a "declaration of war against the anti-piracy industry."

The site was restored by early Thursday.

"It is deplorable that these saboteurs will go to such extremes as to infringe on our and others' freedom of speech on the internet," said Lars Gustafsson, a director of the IFPI in Sweden, which is trying to shutter Pirate Bay, the notorious BitTorrent tracker with more than 22 million users.

Peter Sunde, who is one of the four on trial, condemned the attack.

"Whomever is hacking the IFPI websites, please stop doing that," he wrote on Twitter. "It only makes us look bad!"

It's not the first time the IFPI has been swashbuckled. In 2007, the Pirate Bay briefly acquired control of the IFPI's international website site via a cybersquatter.

Facebook guru says nothing sinister in service terms

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has told his company's 175 million users that the recent changes his company has made to its terms of use have not been implemented for nefarious purposes.


A contentious clause in the social networking site's recently-amended terms of use has raised the ire of some Facebook users. It reads as follows:

"You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers), any User Content you (i) Post on or in connection with the Facebook Service..."

The new terms of use, which were posted to Facebook on February 4, give the social networking site the right to hang onto information posted by users for as long as the site wants -- and even after that information is removed from a user's profile.

Privacy lawyer Brian Bowman told said that some users may want to consider using Canadian-owned social networking sites that must adhere to stricter privacy laws.

"You're probably going to be afforded much better privacy protection in Canada than you will in other countries, such as the United States," he said.

Zuckerberg, in a post published on The Facebook Blog on Monday, explained why the company made the changes it did.

He said the company changed the language of its terms of use because it better described the way the site works.

"When a person shares something like a message with a friend, two copies of that information are created -- one in the person's sent messages box and the other in their friend's inbox," Zuckerberg said on The Facebook Blog.

"Even if the person deactivates their account, their friend still has a copy of that message. We think this is the right way for Facebook to work, and it is consistent with how other services like email work. One of the reasons we updated our terms was to make this more clear."

"In reality," Zuckerberg continued in his posting, "we wouldn't share your information in a way you wouldn't want. The trust you place in us as a safe place to share information is the most important part of what makes Facebook work."

Zuckerberg said that people want full ownership and control of access to their information, while demanding full access to information that has been passed to them by others, such as email addresses, phone numbers, phone numbers and the like.

"These two positions are at odds with each other," Zuckerman said in his posting. "There is no system today that enables me to share my email address with you and then simultaneously lets me control who you share it with and also lets you control what services you share it with."

The Facebook founder said his site's users that the contextual issues of privacy and information exchange on the Internet are complex and are constantly "being worked out."

Zuckerman said these issues form "difficult terrain to navigate," but he pledged his company would make efforts to "resolve them very seriously" as they arise in future.

MySpace kicks out 90,000 sex offenders

MySpace.com has identified and removed 90,000 convicted sex offenders from its popular online social-networking site, according to one of the dozens of state attorneys general who pressured the site to beef up its safety standards.

Richard Blumenthal, the attorney general of Connecticut who spearheaded the campaign to subpoena MySpace, said he found the number "appalling."

"These convicted, registered sex offenders clearly create profiles seeking to prey on children," he said, adding, "This revelation is totally appalling and unacceptable, and this shocking revelation, resulting from our subpoena, also provides compelling proof that social networking sites remain ripe with sexual predators."

In May 2007, MySpace announced that it would provide the coalition of state attorneys general with information on sex offenders who use the site.

"We have zero tolerance for sexual predators on MySpace," Hemanshu Nigam, chief security officer for the site, said at the time, as he introduced a tool known as Sentinel SAFE to track online sex offenders.

MySpace had initially refused to comply with the subpoena, citing federal privacy laws.

White House website instantly reflects new President

The White House website has undergone significant changes to reflect the "open and transparent" nature of the administration of newly sworn-in President Barack Obama.

The 'new' WhiteHouse.gov

was updated at 12:01 p.m.
ET on Tuesday to reflect
new President Barack Obama.

Although Barack Obama had not yet finished his inaugural speech, at exactly 12:01 p.m. EST Tuesday, the White House website was updated with information about the new president, his proposed initiatives and policies, and his cabinet.

The site includes a number of new features, including a blog. The first post, entitled "Change has come to WhiteHouse.gov," calls the site "a place for the President and his administration to connect with the rest of the nation and the world."

A new feature that will garner a great deal of attention in the coming days is the page on which Obama's executive orders will be published.

The president is expected to issue a number of executive orders early on to set the tone for his administration. One of his first orders could be the closure of the military prison at Guantanamo Bay.

According to the blog, written by White House director of new media Macon Phillips, visitors to the website will also be able to:

- Sign up for email updates to stay on top of major presidential announcements and decisions.

- Read and comment on all non-emergency legislation, which will be posted for five days.

- View photo galleries of the president's first days in office, as well as the president's weekly video address.

"President Obama has committed to making his administration the most open and transparent in history, and WhiteHouse.gov will play a major role in delivering on that promise," Phillips writes. "The President's executive orders and proclamations will be published for everyone to review, and that's just the beginning of our efforts to provide a window for all Americans into the business of the government."

Wikipedia meets US$6 million fundraising goal

The non-profit foundation that runs Wikipedia, the popular online encyclopedia of user-contributed articles, said Friday that it has met its US$6 million fundraising goal for fiscal 2008.

With about six months left in this year's campaign, the Wikimedia Foundation said it has raised US$6.2 million. A flood of donations came in after the site's founder, Jimmy Wales, posted an appeal for support in late December.

The foundation said about 50,000 contributors chipped in a total of US$2 million in the space of eight days, bringing the total number of donors to more than 125,000.

The money will go toward improving the software Wikipedia runs on as well as upgrading the servers and Internet bandwidth that accommodate the site's traffic. Wikipedia consistently ranks among the top 10 most visited Web sites in the world.

The foundation operates the site without advertising as a matter of principle, making donations critical.

Since its founding in 2001, Wikipedia's fundraising prowess has expanded quickly. The foundation hauled in US$1.3 million two years ago and US$2.2 million last year.

In March 2008, the site received a $3 million gift from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, to be dispensed in US$1 million annual installments. Last month the Stanton Foundation gave US$890,000 to make Wikipedia's editing process more user-friendly.

The Wikimedia Foundation hopes the growth in big-name donors will help improve the encyclopedia's uneven reputation for accuracy, both by showing that civic-minded institutions are willing to make an investment and by funding programs that increase outreach to new contributors.

Wikimedia spokesman Jay Walsh said expanding the foundation's Wikipedia Academies will be a major goal in the coming year. The program sends Wikimedia staff to institutions around the world for discussions with experts in different fields, partly in hopes of drawing more academics and professionals to the site.

"There's work to do in getting the word out about how Wikipedia works," Walsh said.

In a thank-you note posted on the site Friday, Wales told donors, "You have proven that Wikipedia matters to you, and that you support our mission: to bring free knowledge to the planet, free of charge and free of advertising."