Internet Scandals: Juicy Weekend Reading

Why is the Internet like a wildfire? Because they both spread their flames so quickly. Dan Tynan, a tech writer with a sense of humor that bites, took me down memory lane as he recently recounted 10 of his favorite web-based scandals for PC World.

See how many of these you can remember and see if you can figure out which ones he forgot.

Remember the Navy officer that oh-by-the-way listed his status as gay on his AOL profile? He didn't put his last name on his profile, but was outed when an AOL employee divulged his identity to a Navy official.

As for the likes of Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee, Tynan offered them this advice: "When you see somebody pointing a camera at you—and you're not on a movie set—put your clothes back on."

Of course, there was the moment when the RIAA and the MPAA began stalking the peer to peer web sites in order to snare music-stealing culprits. During their search, they've slapped lawsuits on "12-year-old honor students, dead grandmothers, computerless families, and thousands of John Does."

Also making the list are Paris Hilton's T-Mobile Sidekick—the one that held the private photos and all of her addresses. There was also the guy who planned to cut his feet off live on the web and charge spectators to watch. My personal fave? Mark Foley's intercepted emails; one more political career interrupted.

When it first appeared a few months, ago Tynan's list circulated around the web (a sort of mini scandal of its own). Last night I shot him an email asking him which scandals he thought he’d missed. The guy is a walking scandalmonger. He reminded me about John Zaccarini, the notorious typosquatter. Zaccarini bought up thousands of domain names that contain slight misspellings of well branded, often searched companies. Most of his sites were pornographic. DVD Jon, the fellow who reverse engineered the DVD encryption and then posted his workaround on the web, is high on the list of almost-scandals too.

Now I have my own scandal fever. I found Dr. Laura, the family values oriented talk show host that had some very nude photos flooding the web. Of course there's Essjay, one of Wikipedia’s top contributors, who had a little fantasy thing going about his academic credentials. I seem to remember the scandal about the couple who would lose their virginity on the web, too.

Here's to the Top 10 Internet scandals. May they serve as a cautionary tale for life in Internet times when unintended consequences are the norm, not the exception. Scandalicious!