Encylopedia Dramatica's Ryan Cleary Arrested, split from older ED topic Options

[Milton Roe]

If you request a page that isn't cached at CloudFlare, or the CloudFlare cache has timed out and has to be freshened by them, then the packets have a long and treacherous journey before you see the page. Also, there may be content on the requested page that is not cached by CloudFlare, since it only caches relatively static content. If that's the case, the page cannot be delivered until that content is fetched. When everything is perfect for the page you requested, then CloudFlare sends it to your browser. If a router somewhere drops a packet, it has to be requested again. Every packet has to make it before CloudFlare delivers the page to your browser.

That's what I believe is happening, but it's mainly a guess. Why do they do this? They want to be so clever that no one can ever find the server that hosts the content. And even though the two main controllers of the content are Zaiger in Massachusetts and Garrett in Michigan, they want to be able to say that the content is not hosted in the U.S. and therefore U.S. laws are not relevant. Note Garrett's response to this CDA complaint: "Additionally, no one cares."

So why aren't controversial-content sites like ED and Wikileaks available by BitTorrent, or Blog Torrent? Right now, it ends up being almost the same thing.

[Milton Roe]

Of course ED has never been involved in a raid, everyone there are upright internet citizens.

For those who don't know the history, I recommend the WP article on LulzSec. Of course, the connection between LulzSec and ED is tenuous (and seems to be mainly through Cleary himself), and I'm skeptical of reports that it was heavy, simply because those who want to attack ED for other reasons have no better way of doing it than to smear it with all the activities of LulzSec.

Inquiring minds want to know what Cleary did with his supposed botnet. Did he run around doing DNS attacks on his enemies or was he really into sophisicated hacking? Did he program the thing himself, or did he get help from LulzSec hackers who know the game better than he does?

[Somey]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopedia_...and_vigilantism

Is this satisfactory?

Michael, did you actually read the article for comprehension, or did you merely scan it for juicy facts you could use in the Wikipedia article in question?

The mere fact that two sides of a dispute are presented in a "news article" does not make the information in that article "reliable." What you have there is claim and counter-claim - it's not much different than "how long have you been beating your wife" or "he stole my bike/no I didn't."

So no, that's not satisfactory. But then again, neither is Wikipedia in general, so I guess you'll get away with it.

[Michaeldsuarez]

Michael, did you actually read the article for comprehension, or did you merely scan it for juicy facts you could use in the Wikipedia article in question?

The mere fact that two sides of a dispute are presented in a "news article" does not make the information in that article "reliable." What you have there is claim and counter-claim - it's not much different than "how long have you been beating your wife" or "he stole my bike/no I didn't."

So no, that's not satisfactory. But then again, neither is Wikipedia in general, so I guess you'll get away with it.

The Wikipedia article now basically includes all the information the Daily Dot article has to offer. I also incorporated some information into the "Content" section and the "EncyclopediaDramatica.ch" section. Not all of this material is "claim and counterclaim". Did I leave out anything significant? I'm here for article's benefit.

This post has been edited by Michaeldsuarez: Mon 1st August 2011, 1:06am

[Somey]

Did I leave out anything significant? I'm here for article's benefit.

It's what you put in that's the problem, not what you left out. Using that article simply to source the fact that ED.ch is back online would hardly be problematic even in an actual encyclopedia, but all you're doing with the other stuff is repeating rumor and innuendo - the fact that "it has been reported..." as such doesn't make it less so. In effect, you're doing what Fox News does when they can't produce evidence for "terror babies" and "death panels" and what-not - they report on the rumor, and after a day or two, conveniently forget to mention that it was a rumor.

Admittedly, if Fox News were doing that stuff to promote responsible governance and sound economic policy, most people (including myself) probably wouldn't complain. The same probably applies to you too, though I can't think of anything about ED.ch that's sound or responsible...

I do wonder if the new incarnation will be as much of a useful "safety valve" service to WP as the old one was. I suspect it won't be, which is probably good in general, but probably not good for people (living or dead) who are the subjects of ED.ch articles.

Meanwhile, all the fuss over Ryan Cleary and moving servers around has boosted ED.ch's Alexa ranking to where it's now pretty close to what ED.com's was.

[Michaeldsuarez]

Speaking from my personal experience and insights, the only rumor included in the Wikipedia article is the claim that Brandt runs josephevers.blogpot.com, and the article notes that Brandt dismisses that claim. I can verify everything else in the Wikipedia article. The uncertainty of the blog's ownership doesn't diminish the significance of Brandt's involvement, as he himself admits. I didn't include the rumors about an "army of pissed people" and "false DMCAs" that the Daily Dot article speaks of. Are there any specific "rumors" in the Wikipedia article that you're concerned about?

This post has been edited by Michaeldsuarez: Mon 1st August 2011, 2:12pm

[Daniel Brandt]

Speaking from my personal experience and insights, the only rumor included in the Wikipedia article is the claim that Brandt runs josephevers.blogpot.com, and the article notes that Brandt dismisses that claim. I can verify everything else in the Wikipedia article. The uncertainty of the blog's ownership doesn't diminish the significance of Brandt's involvement, as he himself admits. I didn't include the rumors about an "army of pissed people" and "false DMCAs" that the Daily Dot article speaks of. Are there any specific "rumors" in the Wikipedia article that you're concerned about?

You could add that the entire motivation for ED.ch is to increase traffic by drawing attention to themselves, and the way they do this is to defame and abuse others in the name of "lulz." Currently they are dismissing nearly all complaints from their victims by claiming that their secret server is located offshore.

You can quote me on that.

[Aug 1 2011 03:59:37] <garrett> haters make us famous
...
[Aug 1 2011 04:12:47] <garrett> our alexa rankings
[Aug 1 2011 04:12:48] <garrett> are like
[Aug 1 2011 04:12:49] <garrett> exploding
[Aug 1 2011 04:12:53] <garrett> thanks to all this media attention
[Aug 1 2011 04:12:54] <garrett> lololololol

Or you could withdraw from editing the Wikipedia article on the grounds that Garrett made you an ED.ch administrator. This means that you are editing this Wikipedia article with a conflict of interest, which is supposedly discouraged on Wikipedia.

14:43, 19 May 2011 Garrett (Talk | contribs) changed group membership for User:JuniusThaddeus from (none) to Administrators

[Michaeldsuarez]

You could add that the entire motivation for ED.ch is to increase traffic by drawing attention to themselves, and the way they do this is to defame and abuse others in the name of "lulz." Currently they are dismissing nearly all complaints from their victims by claiming that their secret server is located offshore.

You can quote me on that.

[Aug 1 2011 03:59:37] <garrett> haters make us famous
...
[Aug 1 2011 04:12:47] <garrett> our alexa rankings
[Aug 1 2011 04:12:48] <garrett> are like
[Aug 1 2011 04:12:49] <garrett> exploding
[Aug 1 2011 04:12:53] <garrett> thanks to all this media attention
[Aug 1 2011 04:12:54] <garrett> lololololol

Or you could withdraw from editing the Wikipedia article on the grounds that Garrett made you an ED.ch administrator. This means that you are editing this Wikipedia article with a conflict of interest, which is supposedly discouraged on Wikipedia.

14:43, 19 May 2011 Garrett (Talk | contribs) changed group membership for User:JuniusThaddeus from (none) to Administrators

My affiliation with Encyclopedia Dramatica isn't a secret. It's stated in plain sight on my userpage. I've been entirely transparent. The users who watch the page and participate in talk page discussions (Silver_seren, Conti, etc.) know about my affiliation. I'm not being deceitful. I assumed that you knew this already.

I'm not writing about ED in a promotional fashion, and if I were, I wouldn't be here examining concerns. I just wish to make information published in reliable sources accessible to readers. I thought that it would be preferable to have a responsible ED user incorporate that information into that article instead of waiting and risk having a .ch fanboy or one of your enemies do it.

This post has been edited by Michaeldsuarez: Mon 1st August 2011, 5:06pm

[Silver seren]

You're the only one that's bothered to be up front about it. H64 and Zaiger didn't, though Zaiger does now, I believe. And, of course, I had to originally dig a tiny bit to find H64. You know if any of the other people involved on the page are also admins?

Considering Meepsheep's sudden interest in me, I would think he's one of the people on the talk page. Or maybe he just lurks as an IP.

[Michaeldsuarez]

Considering Meepsheep's sudden interest in me, I would think he's one of the people on the talk page. Or maybe he just lurks as an IP.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contr..._in_the_sandbox

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Kids_in_the_sandbox

Yes, he was on the talk page. You had a discussion with him.

[Silver seren]

Ah, I see.

That explains a good amount.

You should let him know that he needs to tighten up his writing style. The psychology section started out good, but then it turned all apologetic toward ED.ch and that just made it embarrassing. For ED.ch, I mean.

[Somey]

I didn't include the rumors about an "army of pissed people" and "false DMCAs" that the Daily Dot article speaks of.

Good!

Are there any specific "rumors" in the Wikipedia article that you're concerned about?

Well, two things. I'm not concerned about any of this; the word is probably more like "amused" or "fed up." (Admittedly, the last is two words). Also, I'm using the term "rumor" loosely - I actually don't doubt that any of this is true; I'm just pointing out what should belong in an "encyclopedia" and what shouldn't, once we're past the issue of whether this article would belong in one at all (IMO, it wouldn't).

So, having said that, the parts in boldface below are what I would delete, if it were my article.

According to Gawker, "Entire blogs have been devoted to exposing ED's staff as cyberbullies."[41] Garrett E. Moore described one blog in particular, josephevers.blogspot.com, as a "stalker blog." EncyclopediaDramatica.ch accuses Daniel Brandt of being the operator of josephevers.blogspot.com. Brandt denies being the blog's operator and claims that he only a "researcher and advisor" for the blog's operator, whose identity is unknown to Brandt. According to Moore, Brandt pressured DeGrippo into closing the original ED. josephevers.blogspot.com formerly hosted the personal information of the original Encyclopedia Dramatica's staff. Moore also accused Brandt of harassing his fiancée at her workplace. Brandt claims that it was in retaliation of the spam he received after Moore published Brandt's contact information on an IRC channel. According to an encyclopediadramatica.ch sysop, a complaint resulted in the deletion of encyclopediadramatica.ch's article on Daniel Brandt. The anonymous operator of josephevers.blogspot.com described his blog and the alleged team behind it as being dedicated to "the misdeeds of the people associated with the old and new Encyclopedia Dramatica. I have exchanged emails with Brandt. I've also exchanged emails with other people who feel they have been abused by ED and I've given them advice on how to deal with it."

...obviously the resulting material would have to be rearranged for readability, but you get the general idea.

[Daniel Brandt]

UK police, with FBI help, just arrested two more LulzSec hackers. They hacked under the username "Kayla," who was considered one of the highest-level LulzSec hackers. Garrett E. Moore and his fiancée Karen Rose Shinaver, have been supporters and associates of Kayla for a long time.

Garrett and Karen share an apartment in or near Lansing, Michigan, and she is a senior network administrator at Liquid Web Inc in Lansing. She works a four-day week from 10 pm to 8 am. Her account there was used to sign up one of my email addresses for spam on May 24 at 12:24 am EDT. I recently had to stop using that address because of all the Viagra spam, as well as lots of spam in Chinese characters, that's still coming in.

Garrett and Karen (aka "Kaeroseen"), who both help keep encyclopediadramatica.ch going, are depressed over this latest arrest. Last night Garrett tweeted to Kayla (aka "lolspoon" on Twitter): "@lolspoon We miss you already, I hope this is bullshit. Kaero and I are here for you. <3"

There was no answer, of course. An hour later Garrett (aka "KnownCyberbully" on Twitter) tweeted this: "The Internet is dead, go home folks."

By the way, I'd stay away from Liquid Web Inc hosting. I informed management there about the Karen, Garrett, and Ryan connection last May, a month before Ryan was arrested, and provided proof that Karen's account was involved. Management's only response was from "Clinton H" (he wouldn't give his surname), the "Support Manager" at Liquid Web. All he said was, "Signing anyone up for a mailing list without their consent is against company policy and we are dealing with this issue internally." ( What about LulzSec, Mr. "Clinton H" at Liquid Web? Don't you care about that? )

Ms. Shinaver still works at Liquid Web. In my opinion, their due-diligence and security isn't very good — I certainly wouldn't want Ms. Shinaver to have access to my dedicated servers!

[Wikicrusher2]

UK police, with FBI help, just arrested two more LulzSec hackers. They hacked under the username "Kayla," who was considered one of the highest-level LulzSec hackers. Garrett E. Moore and his fiancée Karen Rose Shinaver, have been supporters and associates of Kayla for a long time.

Garrett and Karen share an apartment in or near Lansing, Michigan, and she is a senior network administrator at Liquid Web Inc in Lansing. She works a four-day week from 10 pm to 8 am. Her account there was used to sign up one of my email addresses for spam on May 24 at 12:24 am EDT. I recently had to stop using that address because of all the Viagra spam, as well as lots of spam in Chinese characters, that's still coming in.

Garrett and Karen (aka "Kaeroseen"), who both help keep encyclopediadramatica.ch going, are depressed over this latest arrest. Last night Garrett tweeted to Kayla (aka "lolspoon" on Twitter): "@lolspoon We miss you already, I hope this is bullshit. Kaero and I are here for you. <3"

There was no answer, of course. An hour later Garrett (aka "KnownCyberbully" on Twitter) tweeted this: "The Internet is dead, go home folks."

By the way, I'd stay away from Liquid Web Inc hosting. I informed management there about the Karen, Garrett, and Ryan connection last May, a month before Ryan was arrested, and provided proof that Karen's account was involved. Management's only response was from "Clinton H" (he wouldn't give his surname), the "Support Manager" at Liquid Web. All he said was, "Signing anyone up for a mailing list without their consent is against company policy and we are dealing with this issue internally." ( What about LulzSec, Mr. "Clinton H" at Liquid Web? Don't you care about that? )

Ms. Shinaver still works at Liquid Web. In my opinion, their due-diligence and security isn't very good — I certainly wouldn't want Ms. Shinaver to have access to my dedicated servers!

"I hope this is bullshit" - It definitely is, though not definitely in the sense that he meant it. They should go free immediately. Hacking can't be much worse than the crimes committed by our leaders. Arresting them is just a sadistic punishment tactic.

This post has been edited by Wikicrusher2: Sat 3rd September 2011, 9:39am

[Vigilant]

"I hope this is bullshit" - It definitely is, though not definitely in the sense that he meant it. They should go free immediately. Hacking can't be much worse than the crimes committed by our leaders. Arresting them is just a sadistic punishment tactic.

Fight the man...man.

[Forward!]

They should go free immediately. Hacking can't be much worse than the crimes committed by our leaders. Arresting them is just a sadistic punishment tactic.

Arresting people is a sadistic punishment tactic!? Arresting people is a prelude to a punishment, one which will be more fair and more just than anything ED/Anonymous/4chan/kids can come up with. Hacking is a crime, and while certain things our leaders have done are also possibly crimes, that's an argument for arresting our leaders *and* the hackers, and charging them both. The hackers don't get off scot free under any circumstances. They should have the common decency to do what they're doing openly, rather than hiding behind proxies, screen names, and weird cross-gender internet personae.

[SB_Johnny]

Stoopit

Reply to stoopit

No Comment needed.

Fight the man...man.

Damn straight, brother!

I miss the grups. Where'd y'all go?

[Detective]

I recently had to stop using that address because of all the Viagra spam, as well as lots of spam in Chinese characters, that's still coming in.

Switch to Gmail; it has an excellent spam filter. (Cue rant on the evils of Google and Gmail.)

[EricBarbour]

[Michaeldsuarez]

http://www.dailydot.com/news/encyclopedia-dramatica-outage/

Brandt, how do you feel about the latest Daily Dot article? The article says,

Brandt was unavailable for comment at time of publication.

http://www.dailydot.com/ethics-policy/:

The Daily Dot’s first and most important responsibility is accuracy. We make reasonable efforts to verify information by publication time and we disclose to readers transparently what we do and do not know to be a fact. Should we receive information that questions something we have published, we will not rest until we have established the veracity of that information and corrected the record.

Corrections will be made to the original story clearly and with explanation. In regard to material details being corrected well after publication, we will publicize the changes in a manner similar to the original publication of the story.

If you have anything to say or correct, you're welcome to let them know.

Before I revise the Wikipedia article, I wish to know whether there are any inaccurate statements about you in the article. Do you have anything to say about your alleged involvement?

Also, how do you feel about Kevin Provance's comment at the bottom?