Privacy on the Internet?

Is there such a thing as privacy on the Internet? No. This past week there was a discussion on My Manilow Network about how a picture some lady took was posted on another site without her permission. She ranted about getting a lawyer and the whole thread turned into a name calling bash of alt. fan Barry Manilow. (While this person never came right out and said what group, it was pretty easy to figure out; everyone knew what group she was talking about.) This fan needs to do some research. Picture can’t be posted to alt. fan. It’s a binary group. Images can’t be posted there. All someone can do is post a link to a picture. She put her picture out there. That means she opened the door for anyone with the knowledge of right clicking a mouse access to her picture. How many times do people have to hear this before they believe it – once anything is posted on the Internet control is lost? Now this person is only going to post a link to her blog on MMN. She also isn’t going to allow comments. Next time you have a picture you don’t want retrieved by anyone, don’t post it. That’s the only way to avoid the problem.

Another privacy issue concerns MMN. It is now a “closed” website. MMN can only be seen by individuals whose passwords allows them to log in. Don’t confuse “closed” with “private.” “Closed” means the site is passworded. That doesn’t mean members can’t take posts off the site and post them on other sites. That is happening all the time. Is it fair, or ethical? Who can say? It’s not good net etiquette but when has that stopped anything? MMN is no longer available for viewing by anyone surfing the web like alt. fan is but it is also not private. Why? Because, and I’ll say it yet again, there’s no such thing as privacy on the Internet.

The Hijacking of a Manilow Blog

This past week I experienced just a tiny bit of what it must be like for Barry and other artists when their work is used without permission. My blog, the very one you are reading, was hijacked and a post from here put up on My Manilow Network. All this was done without my permission I might add. To give some background on what transpired:

The first of last week I got a friend request from someone over on MMN. Not only did this person want to be my friend, but she asked permission to post my Queen Bee blog on the network. She said, and I quote, “It’s time.” Besides having no idea who this person was, I had no clue what she meant when she said it was time to re-post that blog. Right then and there I made up my mind to deny both of her requests but I didn’t have time to reply at that time. I put off answering her until the next day.

Waiting was a mistake or maybe not. Anyway before I replied to her requests, I checked MMN. Can you guess how this plays out? Of course you can, the blog post was already posted. My suspicions are the blog was already posted when I was asked for permission to put it on MMN. The permission asking may have been an after thought triggered by a couple of people commenting on the fact that I wrote the piece.

See, I don’t post on that many places. Not because I don’t have anything to say, quite the contrary, I have tons to say. I’m just not into all the drama that comes with posting on the majority of Manilow sites. Every place, including the scarce newsgroup, has its own dramas. That’s not my cup of tea. The Internet is a very hard place to access what people are trying to express.

The printed word leaves out all the clues such as body language, tone of voice, facial expressions, etc. that are used in conversation to help people understand what is being said. Reading what someone writes on the Internet might not come across in the way the writer meant. So how is it determined which individuals like to cause the drama on Manilow or any other sites? (FYI, Manilow sites are not the only places where fans disagree. It happens all over.) History. That’s how drama queens are identified. The pattern of behavior is repeated over and over, no matter where they go, making it easy to know who is going to stir things up.

The woman who posted my blog on MMN, (did I say it was without my permission), I don’t know if she causes problems. I do know she caused me anguish by taking it upon herself to hijack my blog for her own personal use. I don’t participle enough on the network to know what is going on. I don’t even post by blog on MMN anymore. I post the title and a link to my blog on my page. That way people can make up their own mind if they want to go read it, or not. I did post when I saw my blog on MMN, because I wasn’t sure how people were reacting to the post. I wanted everyone to know I had nothing to do with the blog being posted or any part of any issue that was being addressed.

If this person felt so strongly about issues she felt needed to be addressed, then she should have expressed her feelings – not mine. Like I said at the first of this post, maybe this week I felt just a minuscule bit of what Barry feels when he sees his work, illegal videos of the shows or copyrighted material on the Internet without his consent. It’s a terrible jolt to come across something you created being used in a way you never intended it to be used. I understand that so much better now.

As I said, I rejected that friend request. I couldn’t see myself being friends with someone who would take such advantage of me. The decent thing to do would be to at least apologize to me. I haven’t heard from her as of this writing and I don’t expect I will. To finish off the hijacked blog story; after I posted about my unhappiness on MMN, I went out to dinner. I had great food and a wonderful time with good friends. By the time I returned home, my blog had been removed from MMN. By whom? I don’t know. I was glad it had been taken down.

Please, feel free to read my blog posts. I welcome that. Comments are welcomed too. Just when you are finished reading my blog, leave it right here on the Blogspot site. This is where I put it and until I decide otherwise, this is where I want my blog to stay.