Mez: Amanda Knox Case Robot Revolt -

Blogging Does Not Mean Scraping!

Antony Curatolo, of no fixed abode, but a longtime habitué of the neighborhood, explained in court that it was his custom to sleep rough near the Piazza Grimana for the past several years.

Not surprisingly, he associated Meredith Kercher's macabre murder with the garishly costumed people and weird processions moving through the streets of Perugia on Halloween, but he testified that he remembered seeing Knox with Sollecito and then seeing the CSI and police arrive on the following day.

His testimony seems consistent with his previous testimony in the lower court, which linked the couple's presence to the subsequent arrival of CSI who are distinctively shrouded in their "space suits."

"And I also saw the 'extraterrestrials' ... I saw those
youngsters the night before the men in white outfits."

Was his testimony crucially conflicted? No. The rest of the noise about this is just astro-turfing spin to provide a platform for selling advertisements. It's pseudo news for a gullible public.

# The recent demands being made of Jimmy Wales to provide a separate page dedicated to Amanda Knox are tragically misguided and possibly somewhat demented. There is a kooky notion floating around out there that such a page will accord Knox celebrity status comparable to Paris Hilton or Britney Spears.

It will not, because Wikipedia already has established categories for American female murderers and convicted killers. Such a dedicated page would be more like the page for Carolyn Warmus.

And what will happen after Knox gets out of prison? Will the Foxy Fans lobby group demand that the page be erased? Why burden her with it in the first place?

# Early yesterday, while Googling around, I stumbled upon a blog which I've never seen before. After clicking through, I was startled to read that the blogger there claims that Perugia Murder File is a Hate Cult.

The Perugia Murder was originally one of many crime threads on a destination in the True Crime Community on the Internet. The thread for that crime generated so many comments that it was put on its own separate message board. It has a history and genealogy on the Internet just like other online destinations. It is not a Hate Cult or any other kind of cult. No one forces you to read that message board if you don't like it.

The Perugia Case is being discussed at many other destinations besides PMF. For example, here is the Perugia thread at Web Sleuths.

# It is unfortunate that Google Blog Search is filled with so much astro-turf Robot Gibberish lately, but in most of the rest of the world, this case is known as The Meredith Homicide of Perugia. I doubt that's going to change any time soon, even if some Americans don't like it.

It is not the purpose of Blogging to simply parrot news reports. If that's what you are looking for, you've come to the wrong place.

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