Morning Music Notes – More Reasons Not To Accept Random Facebook Friend Requests

Sheryl Crow Has Brain Tumour

Sheryl Crow has announced that she has a benign brain tumour (via Billboard). The 50 year old singer (she’s 50 now? Man, time flies) announced the news at a concert, which is a bit of an interesting way to drop some heavy news. You may recall the singer battled breast cancer a few years back. This doesn’t seem fair – all she wants to do is have some fun (I am docked points for making the most obvious of jokes). For those interested in the technical/medical jargon, the tumour is meningioma, which is typically benign and develops from the protective linings of the brain and spinal cord. Don’t trust me, I’m not a doctor.

Look out Internet Trolls – Can You Get Sued for Internet Comments?

Interesting stuff here from Digital Trends – can you get sued for making anonymous comments on this beast we call the Internet? A current court case is trying to force a website that hosted the comment to provide the commenter details by using a subpoena. This case could have HUGE ramifications.

Tina Jacobson, chair of the Kootenai County Republican Central Committee, is politician who is suing an anonymous commenter (the bad ones always are anonymous) and asking for $10,000 in damages. The comment was on a photo of Jacobson and other local Republicans, and said that $10,000 that was supposedly missing from the Central Committee’s funds could be found “stuffed inside Tina’s blouse”, followed by other comments of embezzlement. The comments were made on the Idaho Spokesman-Review newspaper website. The newspaper refuses to tell Jacobson and her lawyer who the commenter is, and well done to them.

A decision is expected later this week. Will trolls be outed now, and will all comments be nice from now on? If we can stop idiots from the crazy racist and derogatory comments (especially on YouTube!), then it might not be the end of the world. However, websites being forced to give up IP addresses is not a path that I want the Internet to head down.

Why You Shouldn’t Be Facebook Friends With Random People – They Might Be Cops and They Might Arrest You

Note that this headline only applies if you’re a criminal. Brooklyn police officers arrested an entire burglary gang (with the lame name, Brower Boys) by becoming their Facebook friends and monitoring their status (via Digital Trends). Much like the Principal with a fake account to monitor her students, this makes me wonder – WHY ARE YOU BECOMING FRIENDS WITH RANDOM PEOPLE?! “Officer Johnson? I think I know him! I WILL accept this friend request!”

Officer Michael Rodrigues sent Facebook friend requests to known members of the gang, and when one of the members posted “It’s break-in day on the avenue” as their Facebook status update, the police started monitoring their activities during the day. This doesn’t sound ENTIRELY legal to me, is it?! They then filmed the gang in the act, and arrested them – not sure why the filming was necessary. In a twist of “oh snap!”, the Brower gang even knew that other gangs in Brooklyn had been arrested by Facebook monitoring, mocked them, and WHAM, got arrested themselves. The gang are made up of 13 to 19 year old kids, who might have grown up with the Internet but not the “common sense” of past generations.

Listen! Fiona Apple – Anything We Want

A few days ago, we had another new Fiona Apple song for you, describing what I turn into on full moons – Werewolf. We now have another new song off of The Idler Wheel (I’m not writing out all of the words in the lengthy album title). You can now listen to Anything We Want ahead of the album’s June 19 release. Note that the picture has nothing to do with Fiona Apple, and also note it’s not an official release, so it might be gone by the time you finish reading this sentence.

Fiona Apple – Anything We Want