Yes, I found his omments curious. Kinda of like saying that she is sort of pregnant and getting annoyed with me for noticing.

From my perspective it is a factual matter, that shoud be easy to determine. Either it is or it isn’t.

Mike

I’m still feeling mystified by it.

It was a good interview. Matt asked good questions.
Miriam

The convergence of the internet and our daily lives & communities in the form of Local will require new rules and guidelines to make it work. In exactly what timeframe or structure I am not sure.

Business will not function without the rules of a civil society. As you are walking down the street with your iPhone-droid, finalizing your hotel stay with the Marriott you need to have trust in both the relationship and the transaction.

Your wild west analogy is interesting and instructive. Once the era of Judge Roy Bean and Billy The Kid had passed, the cities, towns, states and nation abolished slavery, child labor & gun toting cowboys in favor of paved streets, fire departments, social security and zoning.

Something of the same ilk will be necessary for Local to function. The time to start calling a spade a spade is now. By referring to what occured as a “uniques case” as opposed to what it really is (theft), we are only delaying the conversation about how to really make Local work.

Mike

Okay, that’s the part that’s especially bad, I agree.

I guess, Mike, I feel a little jaded about the wild west bandito ethics regarding people finding all kinds of creative ways to scrape money out of the Internet. It is so common now. I figure people are just going to do this kind of thing, because they can.

But when I think about the data being accumulated by the spammer…that surely seems extreme.

I wonder how many years away we are from serious, enforced laws governing all this stuff.
Miriam

They are worrisome on another level to me. They cross the boundary of ethical and legal behavior and as such are quite repugnant.

Imagine if you will a business that inserted some special technology at the gas pump that sat between your transaction and the gas station and took a “small cut” of each transaction AND left with some private information about you. And like in this situation neither the business nor you knew that it was happening.

It is clear to me that this is beyond the pale as it were (hows that for a phrase).

Mike

I have to agree with you, Mike, 862 cases of mapspam is worrisome, even if these were the ONLY cases in the whole index, simply because they represent a weakness in the system that is open to abuse.

Miriam