Well, it turns out that it just might be illegal to impersonate someone on MySpace and crush a teenage girl’s spirit so much that she ends up hanging herself.

Just when you thought the saga of Megan Meier was over with and the villain was going to get off free and clear, the culprit Lori Drew has been indicted on charges that could lead her to as much as 20 years imprisonment. Certainly no one can disagree that what Ms. Drew did was evil, at worst, and downright scummy at best.

The problem here is that the charges, at this point, are pretty flimsy at best. The charges filed, according to the LA Times, are “three counts of accessing protected computers without authorization to obtain information to inflict emotional distress on the girl and one count of conspiracy.” Add to that the fact that the case is being tried far outside the jurisdiction of the Missouri town where the incidents took place, and the government is going to have a very hard time bringing this case to term.

Only in the biggest stretch in the sense of the word can you call MySpace a protected system, especially when what all Drew did was click on a very prominent sign-up button, and then enter false information for the personal data.

It also calls into question First Amendment rights - how exactly do you define what sort of speech is designed to “inflict emotional distress,” and which sort of speech is designed to simply put those Steve Jobs-worshipping trolls on the VistaFan forums in their place?mashable109:http://mashable.com/2008/05/15/cyber-bullying/

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Back in November, YouTube announced the creation of something called the Community Council, which is where they got some of the more visible video posters together, and appointed them as folks to act as liasons to the community at large.

Metacafe is growing at a decent clip themselves, and has embarked into creating something similar; they’re calling it the Cafe Council. Instead of acting as liasons for the community at large, the membership appears to much wider open to the general populace, not limited to a few representatives.

They haven’t yet announced the members of the council.  Earlier today they posted on the corporate blog a call for volunteers and what the responsibilities would be for the members of the council:

Once you join Café Council, you will be periodically contacted by email to answer an online survey. Here are some questions we’ve asked in the past:

• What’s the best new tagline for Metacafe?
• Here’s a sneak preview of an upcoming feature on Metacafe – what do you think about it?
• How can we make Metacafe a better site?

We respect your time - you will receive no more than 5 survey requests a year.

So to put a political spin on it - YouTube vs. Metacafe is republic style representation to the management as opposed to democratic style representation.

Instructions for joining the council can be found at Metacafe’s blog.mashable109:http://mashable.com/2008/05/15/metacafe-cafe-council/

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Still don’t have your VIP tickets for this Friday’s MashBashNYC? We were sold out but I managed to finagle the venue into adding 50 more last minute tickets. Please buy them directly through Webster Hall. Any remaining tickets will be available at the door between 8pm and 9pm only.

Who’s ready for a crazy night?! Join Mashable’s Adam Ostrow, Adam Hirsch and Brett Petersel and some of New York City’s finest. We expect a variety of folks you want to meet, including bloggers and press to startups and venture capitalists. We are looking forward to seeing you there!

Updated Schedule for the Evening:

08:00 - 10:00PM: Open Bar sponsored by kluster & Music by DJ Alex English
10:00 - 11:30PM: The Legendary Grandmaster Flash
12:00 - 01:00am: James Murphy (of LCD Soundsystem)
01:00 - 04:00am: Sets by LA Riots / MSTRKRFT / Does It Offend You, Yeah?
What: MashBash NYC : Mashable’s NYC Spring Party!
Who: 2,500 sold out crowd, 450 Mashable VIP Tickets on Balcony, Grandmaster Flash starts the night off
When: Friday, May 16th, 2008
Drinks: Open Bar, 8 - 10 pm sponsored by Kluster (21+ only)
Where: Webster Hall, 125 East 11th Street, New York, NY

There are very few “Mashable VIP” tickets left ($50/ticket), which include:

* Private Access and Open Bar from 8 - 10 pm, Sponsored by Kluster.com
* Exclusive VIP Access from 8 pm till Midnight
* Front of the line status - party inside instead of waiting outside!

And now, a few words from our sponsor:

kluster empowers groups to collaborate + decide through three channels:

projects: kluster.com provides an online platform for small businesses to engage a community to get stuff done. consults: kluster works with brands to create custom community engagements, powered by the kluster architecture. brands: launching in April, klusterlabs is a breeding ground for community operated brands/businesses where 20% of all revenue generated by the community gets redistributed amongst influencers.mashable109:http://mashable.com/2008/05/15/mashbash-nyc-tomorrow-last-minute-tickets-added/

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I had a chance to talk to John McCrea today regarding the acquisition of his company by Comcast, and while a lot of the raw information is probably found elsewhere or in other analysis, the way he laid it all out to me showed me exactly how much sense the joining of these two organizations really made. This is a return visit for him, and he and I always have fun when he’s on the show.

Given that Comcast isn’t a huge shareholder in the Web 2.0 property market, a lot of questions were going around as to what this could possibly integrate with, how much integration Plaxo would make within the Comcast organization.

As it turns out, this buyout came as a result of a long relationship that they’ve had since the Plaxo tools were integrated into the suite of tools given out to Comcast broadband subscribers. Since then, they’ve continually discussed what an expansion of that partnership would look like.

When he was describing the future of all this, a conversation from an episode of Elite Tech News sprang to mind from a few weeks ago. The topic was whether or not Twitter and FriendFeed would ever see mainstream adoption, or if would forever remain the loved utility of us blogosphere folks.

The argument against it becoming widespread was that it just isn’t accessible.  For it to be useful, the users really need to be on a wide variety of services like Digg, Google Reader, and Twitter already. This is in contrast to the future that McCrea sees with Plaxo Pulse, where your TV and movie viewing habits will tracked through the Pulse system, and integrated into the set-top box experience.

Yes, the TV becomes the platform, but just as important, the barrier to entry will no longer be existent.  My 92 year old gramma knows how to use the TV.  Explaining FriendFeed to her would be about as useful as explaining underwater basketweaving to her in Latin. Thus, Plaxo’s lifestreaming utility is the first to break into the mainstream.

This is a potentially groundbreaking partnership in a number of ways, and McCrea definitely puts an interesting new spin on the whole partnership I hadn’t heard yet.

You can hear all about this in the embed available below, or you can download the MP3 file directly here.

Never miss an episode with these links:
Get the Mashable Conversations podcast here.
Add directly to iTunes here (or give us a rating).
Add directly to your Zune here.

Are you a regular listener to Mashable Conversations? Consider filling out our Listener Survey.

mashable109:http://mashable.com/2008/05/15/plaxo-john-mccrea-comcast/

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Editor’s Note: If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion in “The Startup Review” series, please see the details here.

STARTUP DETAILS:

Company Name: Buru

20 word description: Users can collect web contents into collections and easily share them in buru.com.

CEO’s 100 word description: There is always someone who has better knowledge on a topic and has collected contents while browsing the internet. It make sense to provide a better way to collect and search for these user filtered contents in collections. Buru is a platform for people to collect and save the actual web contents based on their interest and also made for people who search for these topic related collections. Buru is based on the belief that human-filtered contents that are organized into collections are the most valuable information on the web.

Mashable’s Take: If you hadn’t noticed, we’re seeing a serious upsurge of new bookmarking tools, most of which are looking to provide a central, personalized service that enables individuals to better organize content they find across the web, or even from their computer.

Buru is a new bookmarking site that lets you bookmark items from across the web, or import options from a handful of blogs, photo and video-sharing sites, or Delicious. Even though Buru has a clean design and is easy to navigate, it’s still emerging in a space that’s becoming increasingly crowded as search and personal recommendations enter the equation of social and/or tailored bookmarking services.

Nevertheless, I like Buru for its current offerings, and appreciate the option to import items as well, though I had a bit of trouble importing some of my items. Viewing others’ items is also simplified, as there are slideshow features and FriendFeed-like following options. However, I’m still fully aware that the monetization of such sites is still being explored, and mainstream web users don’t seem quite ready for ultra-personalized recommendations beyond media (movies).

It’s not entirely clear how Buru provides recommendations for users, and it doesn’t even appear to be a major focus for the site right now. But as the space matures, we’re seeing a number of different ways in which bookmarking services are being applied towards practical scenarios, such as semantic search, and even task management.

Sponsored by Sun Startup Essentials
mashable109:http://mashable.com/2008/05/15/bur/

Surprise! Yahoo doesn’t agree with Carl Icahn’s assessment that “it is unconscionable that you have not allowed your shareholders to choose to accept an offer that represented a 72% premium over Yahoo’s closing price of $19.18 on the day before the initial Microsoft offer.” Those were the words used by Icahn in a letter he wrote this morning announcing his intentions to nominate a dissident board of directors at Yahoo’s upcoming annual meeting - presumably one that would be more than willing to accept a new bid from Microsoft.

In a letter/press release issued this afternoon, Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock defends his company’s decision, writing “we do not believe it is in the best interests of Yahoo! stockholders to allow you and your hand-picked nominees to take control of Yahoo! for the express purpose of trying to force a sale of Yahoo! to a formerly interested buyer who has publicly stated that they have moved on.”

Bostock goes on to give a blow-by-blow account of meetings his company held with Microsoft, and how they arrived at the conclusion that going it alone was a better idea than accepting Microsoft’s $33/share offer. Unfortunately for Bostock and his Yahoo cohorts, it’s doubtful that they will win this battle through a war of words.

mashable109:http://mashable.com/2008/05/15/yahoo-responds-to-icahn/

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Graduation can be a hectic time for high schoolers or college grads, and you need all the help you can get. We’ve gathered a couple of online tools and services to hopefully make this crazy time just a bit easier on you. Starting, of course, with the inevitable parties.

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Looks like Cox Communications is following in the footsteps of Comcast, having been found to be interfering with file-sharing by blocking its customers’ Internet connections. A study based on research by The Associated Press and Krishna Gummadi at the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems found that about 54% of Cox users were blocked while using file-sharing services. About 62% of Comcast users were blocked as well.

Will this research get Cox in the same legal trouble as Comcast has found itself in, thanks to a similar study reported on a few months back? The issue here is of course heavily tied in with net-neutrality, and more specifically, peer-to-peer sharing sites like BitTorrent that seem to be a major focus when it comes to institutionalized Internet connection blocking.

What’s more, is that other ISPs have come forward, admitting to blocking Internet connections for users, claiming such blockage as a necessary tactic for maintaining connection speeds and bandwidth allocation. These issues have caught the eye of the FCC, and eventually led Comcast to state that it would cease with selective blocking based on file-sharing users.

Nevertheless, this particular study puts a dent in Comcast and Cox’s proclaimed necessity to monitor and modify traffic, as the study found that the Internet was being blocked for some, regardless of time of day or periods of high traffic congestion. Such findings could spell even more trouble, which puts the pressure on ISPs as well as legislative officials that must deal with the legal questions such activity brings up.
mashable109:http://mashable.com/2008/05/15/cox-blocks-interne/

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Announcing the Online Community Unconference on June 18th at the Computer History Museum (cool!) in Mountain View, CA.

The Online Community Unconference is a gathering of online community practitioners - managers, developers, business people, tool providers, investors - to discuss experience and strategies in the development and growth of online communities. Those involved in online community development (and social software in general) share many common challenges: community management, tools, marketing, business models, legal issues. As we have found with our past events, the best source of information on all of these challenges is other knowledgeable practitioners.

The Online Community Unconference is inspired by the emerging “open space” conference format. There will also be plenty of time for networking.

The Computer History Museum in Mountain View is a unique venue with plenty of parking and WiFi. Lunch and snacks will be provided, and the Museum exhibits will be open to the group during the breaks.

An extensive FAQ has been posted here: http://www.forumonenetworks.com/unconferencefaq

Mashable readers: Save $15 when registering here with the code ocumash. mashable109:http://mashable.com/2008/05/15/online-community-unconference/

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Following outages last night that Mark blamed on the Democrats, Twitter has gone down again this afternoon. I’ve been noticing the outages for at least an hour, but I’ve seen other reports suggesting that it has been down longer.

In a cheap attempt to get a high comment count, Mashable looks to fill the void, and asks you to tell us what YOU are doing in 140 characters or less in our comment section

[inspired by this friendfeed thread]mashable109:http://mashable.com/2008/05/15/twitter-is-down/

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