How an obscene word stymied The Riddler

By CHRIS BARTON

On the internet different rules apply. Or so the folklore says.

But increasingly internet users are finding the rules of the real world are also being enforced in the virtual ether.

The latest in New Zealand is defamation. The long-awaited judgment in O'Brien versus Brown has brought rules to one of the last lawless frontiers of cyberspace - newsgroup postings.

There, a tacit consensus deemed it okay to call a spade a spade and then, well ... whatever you felt it deserved to be called. It was all in the interests of free and frank discussion.

But Judge Gregory Ross and other judges are saying no.

The judge found Alan Brown had defamed Patrick O'Brien in newsgroup postings and said of the medium: "I must say I know of no forum in which an individual citizen has the freedom to say what he likes and in any manner he wishes, about another individual citizen with immunity from suit for all consequences."

So what's changed? In short, lots more people are using the internet now than there were then. The medium is leaving behind its wild west days where flame or be flamed was the lore.

But the net - because it is such a different medium from anything before - can still throw up conundrums. Like our recent run-in with The Riddler, obscene language and rightful authorship. No, it's not a Batman movie.

The problem began with the Herald front page story on August 21 - "Sinister spy file tracks PC users" by IT writer Michael Foreman. It was about odd behaviour by a file called index.dat found in the Content.ie5 folder on Windows PCs using Internet Explorer.

The story caused quite a stir and generated an unprecedented amount of e-mail. Michael did a wrap-up feature on the whole thing - "Secret lives of our PCs" - a week later.

A few days after that The Riddler got in touch - miffed we hadn't acknowledged him in the articles.

In his first story Michael had acknowledged that the index.dat controversy had been alive on the web for some time and in the wrap-up piece he discussed that point again. But The Riddler wanted more - he/she/they wanted to be acknowledged as the source.

We had three problems with this. The first is that the web - being the vast repository of knowledge that it is - is riddled with information about index.dat and only a small portion of it involves The Riddler.

Second, The Riddler's web address and home page contain an obscenity - an obscenity which we don't publish in the Herald or online. It's one of our rules.

Third is a little more philosophical - a general mistrust about claims of originality and authenticity - especially on the web. Blame it on journalistic cynicism or reading too much deconstruction theory if you like.

For the record, we did come across The Riddler's site. But because of the obscenity, which expressed a certain sentiment towards a certain large software company, we were unconvinced. Just another anti-Microsoft nutter we thought. But that's where our own investigation took over. We checked and rechecked numerous sources on the web - and then did some of own experimentation on a number of our own machines.

It was only then that we were convinced the index.dat conspiracy theorists were on to something. We also took the concerns direct to Microsoft for comment.

So is The Riddler the rightful author of the index.dat revelation? To be honest, we don't know. Neither do we know who The Riddler is - he/she/they don't want to reveal their true identity. On the web it's difficult to find things out for sure. Which makes the rules of engagement - and search for truth - so complicated.

Our research indicates one Ward van Wanrooij, a 17-year-old student from the Netherlands, was posting stuff about index.dat way before The Riddler. Who knows?

But to give The Riddler his/her/their dues we have since managed to track down another website with no obscenities - the Hackers BBS - where you can see the revelations. One thing there are still no rules about - in the real world and in cyberspace - is the size of your ego.

* chris_barton@nzherald.co.nz

Links

Ward van Wanrooij's index.dat information

The Hackers BBS