] "Let's face it: Gangs already have their own alphabet,
] their own language, their own hand signals, so why not
] use the Internet?" said Tod Burke, a criminal justice
] professor at Radford University in Virginia. "Is this
] case unusual? Yes. But what I'm afraid is going to
] happen, this is probably just the beginning of it."
]
] In fact, gangs threatening rivals and issuing challenges
] on the Internet has become relatively common, said Jared
] Lewis, director of Know Gangs, a Wisconsin-based
] organization that educates police and the public about
] gangs. It's fueled in part, he said, by chat rooms and
] bulletin boards on gangster rap artists' Web sites, he
] said.

If you ever find yourself at a public place where any two large angry groups of people seem to be converging, exit the area.

HoustonChronicle.com - Street fight started in chat room

] Even as much of the Internet has come to resemble a
] pleasant, well-policed suburb, a little-known
] neighborhood known as Internet Relay Chat remains the
] Wild West. While copyright holders and law enforcement
] agencies take aim at their adversaries on Web sites and
] peer-to-peer file-sharing networks like Napster, I.R.C.
] remains the place where people with something to hide go
] to do business.

The NYT on IRC.

My first use of the Internet was IRC and news groups. The first command I typed in a unix shell was "irc".

NYT - The Internet's Wilder Side - IRC

] extend, personalise, break, poke, peek, learn. hacking
] hacking hacking. ever had that desire to pop open your
] tivo, your xbox, cell phone, or your car? ever wanted to
] know what the hardware and software hackers are up to?
] this is what mehack is all about.
]
] we all know the frustration in discovering that there
] isn't something out there that does exactly what you want
] it to do. we've all fantasized about doing it ourselves,
] or taking something off the shelf and modding it. we're
] going to be tracking people, projects that are doing both
] -- we're interested in those that take the "hell with it,
] i'll just build it" attitude, and we're interested in
] those that buy those things off the shelf and pop them
] open to coerce them into doing what they want. and we're
] interested in the tools they use too.
]
] our agenda is simple -- we want to learn from others.
] we're not interested in doing anything destructive. and
] we're not interested in piracy. we just want things that
] we can hack on. and most of all, we want to make it
] simple for people like you to start building.

mehack

Rattle wrote:
] In what MetaFilter called the "end of an era", JenniCam will
] shutdown tomorrow after 7 years of operation.
]
] Pathetic geeks across the world will mutter "don't go jennay"
] in their best Forrest Gump voice. Others will author a
] "JenniCam ate my balls" webpage. The next age of the Internet
] is ready to begin.

Balls Deep wrote:
] As a mater of fact, I just happen to find one.
]
] http://www.2c-i.org/AMB/JenniCam/

JenniCam Ate My Balls

In what MetaFilter called the "end of an era", JenniCam will shutdown tomorrow after 7 years of operation.

Pathetic geeks across the world will mutter "don't go jennay" in their best Forrest Gump voice. Others will author a "JenniCam ate my balls" webpage. The next age of the Internet is ready to begin.

JenniCam Closing 12/31/03

The most profound effects of the music industry's efforts are not about music.

This is a proxy war. Ostensibly the fight is about music, but the veil is thin. This is Afghanistan in the 1980s.

Are you mujahideen?

The RIAA Succeeds Where the Cypherpunks Failed

] The coffee-houses that sprang up across Europe, starting
] around 1650, functioned as information exchanges for
] writers, politicians, businessmen and scientists. Like
] today's websites, weblogs and discussion boards,
] coffee-houses were lively and often unreliable sources of
] information that typically specialised in a particular
] topic or political viewpoint. They were outlets for a
] stream of newsletters, pamphlets, advertising free-sheets
] and broadsides. Depending on the interests of their
] customers, some coffee-houses displayed commodity prices,
] share prices and shipping lists, whereas others provided
] foreign newsletters filled with coffee-house gossip from
] abroad.

Economist.com | Coffee-houses

In response to the RIAA's suits, users who want to share music files are adopting tools like WINW and BadBlue, that allow them to create encrypted spaces where they can share files and converse with one another. As a result, all their communications in these spaces, even messages with no more commercial content than "BRITN3Y SUX!!!1!" are hidden from prying eyes. This is not because such messages are sensitive, but rather because once a user starts encrypting messages and files, it's often easier to encrypt everything than to pick and choose. Note that the broadening adoption of encryption is not because users have become libertarians, but because they have become criminals; to a first approximation, every PC owner under the age of 35 is now a felon.

Another great essay by Clay Shirky, linked via vigilant.tv.

The RIAA makes everyone a cypherpunk

Interesting article in the wake of a recent SFOBUG meeting..

] Talking to Fyodor in another context, with Althusser
] still on my mind, I asked him, "Do you want to tell me
] your real name?"
]
] Fyodor is the hacker handle he picked out for himself as
] a teenager. It isn't as if the name his parents gave him
] is a huge secret, although I don't know it. I was simply
] curious about whether he wanted to tell me, which isn't
] the same thing as finding it out.
]
] "No," he said with a smile.

I've been thinking about the use of nyms lately, so this is interesting..

The rest of this article focuses on the dual-use qualities of nmap, and trying to put them (and Fydor) in the light of French Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser. I'm not sure what to make of that..

SFOBUG - Fyodor Article

] The Chasing Bush campaign is asking people to "disrupt the
] PR" of the visit by spoiling stage-managed photos.
]
] They are being encouraged to send location reports and
] images by mobile to be posted on the Chasing Bush site.

Flash mobs use internet to track Bush's location. The angry mob threat model ain't just for cryptanalysis anymore.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Mobile users told to 'chase Bush'