Mailvox: look, it’s the Internet

There is no excuse for the despicable behavior of psychotic feminist brownshirts, but I nevertheless find it very difficult to have any sympathy in this situation:

I have been attacked by internet stalkers from places like Whitewashed Feminists. We have recently had to contact a lawyer because they terrorized my daughter, who is homeschooling, by posting pictures of her children on immitation blogs. She had removed the pictures a full year ago. When they discovered they were gone, just last week, they found pictures in their own cache and posted them.

They have been “punishing” us for removing posts. It reminds me of a spoiled toddler. Sometimes a toddler goes through a stage where they will not tolerate any changes. They fuss and scream if you remove their plate from the table or cover them better with a blanket. Then when you put it back, they fuss and scream because they don’t like that, either.

These cyber terrorists have several impersonation blogs about me and have stolen many copyrighted photographs. We finally had to contact a lawyer. Do you have any ideas for us on how we may actually put a stop to this? Many of our friends have had to remove their blogs,but these terrorists attack even worse if you do remove your blog.

Other than cease-and-desist orders, followed up by legal action if they refuse to comply, there’s not much that one can do. The object lesson is the same one that’s been obvious since 1998: don’t put anything on the Internet that you’re not comfortable handing to your worst enemy.

Never, ever, put pictures of children up on the Internet. Not on Facebook, not on invitation-only Live Journals, and certainly not on public blogs. It’s not only reprehensibly stupid, it is completely disrespectful of a child’s right to make his own decisions about his public profile in the future. True, sometimes this is unavoidable, such as when a child happens to be in the news for one reason or another. But barring that, no responsible parent should ever upload a picture of a child to the Internet, no matter how proud one might happen to be.

Finally, there is no such thing as a “cyber-terrorist”. It’s a silly metaphor; impersonation blogs are hardly the online equivalent of hijacking airlines and shooting hostages dead on the tarmac. Like it or not, there’s no space for crying on the Internet.