Slashdot introspect

The god of Slashdot smiled upon me yesterday, and posted a front-page article about my "Verisign Typosquatter Explorer".

More than eight thousand readers so far, and around four thousand program downloads. Talked to a journalist today. And it's going around mailing lists.

I didn't have to worry about being sued. (well, I think, but reasonably, no, see, I'm really not paranoid). Verisign is not going to issue a nasty response calling me names. It wasn't even a tremendous amount of difficult technical work, compared to some of the censorware investigations.

I'm very happy to be getting this coverage. But I'm also thinking once again, it's just not worth it, in terms of anything which does have a legal risk, to be sticking my head in the lawyer's, I mean lion's, den, and hoping I don't get mauled. I've written this before, I'm extremely underpowered and out of my league in press-power terms, and this is yet another piece of objective evidence which confirms that conclusion.

I can hear the response already: "Seth, you're never satisfied. Look, look, you got heard today! That proves you are not as poorly-off as you moan and groan".

This misunderstands something: The god of Slashdot is not a jealous god. But he grants power to those unworthy of it, as they do evil yet are not shunned. He will not intervene if the heights of the journalistic pyramid are used to throw stones at me. And today is one more lesson, if another were needed, on such power.

Update: From talking to the journalist above, I have a small mention in the article: Verisign's SiteFinder finds privacy hullabaloo

Seth Finkelstein's Infothought blog (Wikipedia, Google, censorware, and an inside view of net-politics) - Syndicate site (subscribe, RSS)