Like Jessica Cutler, the sex blogger whose scandalous mark on the Internet will essentially never be scrubbed clean, Colleen LaRose of Millville, N.J., has a lot of reason to worry about her “Net-putation.” She shares the same name as “Jihad Jane,” the convert to Islam who is accused of recruiting terrorists in America. But instead of Jihad Jane’s face, LaRose was shocked to see her own beside an article that appeared on the Australian news site News Bizarre. The author had obtained the picture from LaRose’s Facebook page, mistaking it for Jihad Jane (who, besides for a frazzled mugshot floating around the Internet, mostly appears veiled in the style of strictly observant Muslim women in pictures).
The Star-Ledger reported March 13 that LaRose, a Millville, N.J. native who currently resides in Milford, N.J., wrote to the author, explained the mix-up, and he gladly took it down. However, other Web sites such as Digg.com used his version to tell its readers about Jihad Jane.
She told the Ledger that “on the Internet, there's just no way to get rid of the thing once and for all."
News Bizarre is lucky that she has a sense of humor—LaRose said that she did not wish to take legal action. It is very possible that she could have, on charges that her photo was used without permission and without her consent.
In class on Friday, March 12, we spoke about the impossibility of erasing something that appears on the Internet. Like a bag of feathers thrown to the wind, it becomes a daunting and nearly impossible task to trace and retract all offending material that may disseminate from its original posting on the World Wide Web. Will LaRose be able to redeem her “Net-putation?” That question is debatable-- is her picture forever encoded into the Internet alongside this story?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment