Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Adam Guerbuez and Justice and Freedom

‘Kick a Ginger Day’ and ‘Spammers’ for me are in the same category. Both are Stupid. They force themselves into your life and try to make you conform to what they want.

The story came out about a fellow Canadian, Adam Guerbuez, that finally got caught by the American Justice System. It seems that they have found him guilty in California of messing with the Facebook people and Facebook Friends. He was distributing sexually oriented products on Facebook to people that he didn’t know. They were not his friends and he was messing where he shouldn’t be with stuff that he shouldn’t mess with. People were offended and so were the Facebook People.

When the court case went through the judge awarded the Facebook Company statutory damages or more that $436.6 Million – and when they add in the costs of “reasonable attorney’s fees” it jumps to $873 Million against Adam Guerbuez.

I don’t imagine that Adam will be down south soon to take part in the Black Friday shopping that takes place this weekend.

In one quote by Samuel O’Rourke of Facebook, he said, "There's no doubt that this guy isn't worth $873 million or any fraction of that amount," he said. "But we intend to go after him and collect whatever we can, even if it's a hundred dollars. We're committed to protecting our users against this stuff, and we'll target anybody that targets Facebook."

This whole case is a little ironic in that before Facebook existed we had time to be normal. At least there was a different normal than now… and that was only about 18 months ago for many of us. But actually Facebook will be 5 years old this next February 4th.

I am inundated with appeals from my friends and family to join this group or that group, belong to this one or that one. In my Facebook now I have 5 event invitations, 2 bowling buddies(I have no idea what that one is about) and 66 other requests that I should respond to. Sheesh! Add to that 7 people have Poked me… with the suggestion given by the Facebook people that if I don’t poke them back they might be offended.

Now my life on the computer also has another group of people that are part of me… they belong to the different eGroups that I am in. Some of them I actually lead and others I am simply involved in. I have had to click to a different setting in one of the groups because the stuff that was coming at me was filling my email box full with silly stuff that meant nothing.

How did we ever get by in life with no email, no eGroups, no Facebook, and no whatever?

About a month ago I clicked to the “quiet mode” on one group. I can go on to the Web and look at what is being discussed or not. I check it once in a while when I am not busy… I mean really not busy. The last time I checked there was a flood of threads going on. I searched them all and found nothing… just easy banter… with very little content. It took almost an hour for me to read quickly through what was there. If that had been coming at me steadily for one month – it would have sucked my brains out with nothingness and used a huge amount of time that should have been directed somewhere else.

Adam Guerbuez may have angered the Facebook People and they were satisfied in a court setting with the huge judgment. But what about all the rest of the stuff that floats around? It has all filled our lives full of JUNK that we really don’t need… yet we open it and savor it and pass it along.

I have had one month of freedom from nonsense I feel liberation. I am now reading another novel – and it feels so good. As I opened it the other day it felt so good to be “home again”. I have found that my personal devotion to the things that I love the most has been restored when I took control back of my computer viewing in some of the groups.

When someone or something takes over your personal life – that is letting STUPID do his stuff. Whether it is “Kick a Ginger” or a “Spammer” or Facebook or eGroups – they all become Stupid if you let them do so. When I read my grandson’s response to “Stupid” in his school – I was moved. It takes a lot for 13 year old to take action and do something – it takes a lot for a grandpa to do that too.

~ Murray Lincoln ~
Source:
http://www.internetnews.com/webcontent/article.php/3787031/Facebook+Spammer+Dinged+for+873+Million.htm

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