RIP: GeoCities

A pioneer in the digital age but ultimately a casualty of progress, GeoCities died today in its sleep, surrounded by 12 remaining users, at its home in southern California. It was 15.

Via ComputerWorld: Founded in 1994 as Beverly Hills Internet, what is now Yahoo GeoCities was one of the first services to offer an easy way for early Internet surfers to publish their own Web pages. Whereas most hosting options of the 1990s were expensive, thus limiting their use to more entrepreneurial pursuits, GeoCities' free hosting space became the home for thousands of sites built around thematically oriented "neighborhoods": conservation, fashion, military, sports, finance, travel, and more.

And even though we hear over and over again that anything we put on the web out there forever, it’s not quite the case with GeoCities. It’s simply being deleted. So this leads me to wonder if this is a possibility with all cloud computing properties? Could Gmail simply be deleted?

In April, when the impeding closure was announced, there were only 12 active users of the site. Since then, the Internet Archive has been working to save GeoCities pages for posterity.

Paparazzi take a blow from the Terminator

In a land where the online and offline worlds collide – and the lines between public, private, reality and fantasy have been blurred into oblivion – there has been an important step forward to protecting privacy both online and off.

Last week, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law a groundbreaking anti-paparazzi law that allows civil suits to be filed against media outlets who publish photos that were illegally taken.

According to the AP: The amendment permits lawsuits against media outlets that pay for and make first use of material they knew was improperly obtained.

Celebrity-focused magazines, TV shows and websites like US Weekly, TMZ and PerezHilton often pay millions of dollars for exclusive photos.

Until now, photographers have been restricted (with questionable success) on what was fair game and how they could get their shot. But this is the first time that media outlets have been targeted by legislation.

According to MTV, Schwarzenegger signed a bill in 2005 that tripled the damages celebrities could seek from overly aggressive paparazzi.

But I question how effective this will be. The law, which takes effect in January 2010 will fine violator publications up to $50,000 – which may just be seen as the cost of doing business. When you’re already paying $5,000,000 million for a single image, what’s another 0.01%?

According to the AP (me), it’s a blow to the paparazzi/entertainment industry – but not one that will leave a mark for very long.