Re: Bollacker accurately predicts preservation panacea!

(Posted to this blog on 4/24/07)

I've been asked to clarify what I linked to in my message below. I believe the "Piper Almen" blog to be a spammer's subterfuge, set up for the sole purpose of raising the Google standing (PageRank) of the purveyors of power supplies and acne cures
whose links appear on the blog.

In order to fool automated spam-blocking software, the blog also contains snippets of actual text from other sites (much like the email spam you've no doubt seen in your mailboxes).

It just so happens that one of those snippets was a reference to "how to derive a collectible artifact from variable media art." After January's symposium I set up a Google Alert (a periodic check of new Google results) for "variable media," and
sure enough I was also lured to the ersatz Piper Almen blog.

But hey, there's no such thing as bad publicity, right?

jon

"Jon Ippolito" <jippolito@umit.maine.edu> on Tuesday, April 24, 2007 at 10:29 AM -0500 wrote:
>Remember when Kurt Bollacker predicted at last January's Berkeley symposium that the pornography industry would drive digital preservation?
>
>Well, I ran across the following citation of our work, preserved effortlessly in the digital flotsam of some spammer's auto-generated (or is that auto-degenerated) blog:
>
>"it sa nice space but power outlets were in conspicuous short supply i was lucky problem as how to derive a collectible artifact from variable media art ."
>http://piperalmen.beginlog.nl/2007/02/19/newton-power-supply/
>
>Move over, LOCKSS.org--make way for Lots Of Spam Keeps Stuff Safe!
>
>jon
>