On Sunday February 15th, 2009 a teenage boy and his brother filmed two videos and posted both on YouTube. It showed one brother beating a cat in a bathroom while the other brother filmed and commented. Though YouTube has now taken down the video and suspended the account, about thirty thousand views were recorded for the video over the weekend. The video caused an uproar among online communities in general.
Since Sunday, numerous internet communities have used social networking sites such as Facebook and Myspace to identify the perpetrator. From posts online, commenters were able to put the pieces together and figure out the location of the poster. Using the user name and information along with information from the internet, internet users from various sites were able to pinpoint the location of the video poster. From this we can see how information we post throughout the internet may be scattered and unconnected, but can be put together to show a bigger picture. It is terrifying to see how someone can unknowingly be tracked down via the internet.
The online community is in an uproar, urging authorities to prosecute the cat abuser. Various websites and videos have been made in support of prosecuting the teenage boys involved. On one of these websites the teenage boys' parents' workplace and contact infromation are listed, along with their home address and full names.
By posting the videos on YouTube, these teenage boys are ultimately being punished in return by the internet.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
good community from online conferencing point of view, i will try to join it, thank you for sharing, keep it up
Dude, i've heard of cases of internet justice like this, and it is pretty crazy how people work toegher to figure it out.
I saw once on a forum someone once posted a phone number because they had been getting creepy or annoying calls from that number, so other people in the forum would call the number and leave random messages. They didn't go as far as figuring out who it was, but the creeper stopped calling.
It kind of reminds me of that one declaration of the interet that we read at the beginning of the quarter. The people are indeed resolving conflict themselves.
Post a Comment