11.19.2008

#230 Remember the Streisand Effect

German Politician's Plan To Block Wikipedia Backfires... Badly

Basically a German official didn't like what was written about him on the German Wikipedia site. So, in an attempt to suppress the bad press, he sued to have it removed and drew about a thousand times as much attention to it than if he'd just shut the heck up.

The Streisand Effect refers to Barbara Streisand trying to stop photographers from taking and using images of her coastal property when they were putting together an entire photographic inventory of the west coast of the US. Her lawsuit was baseless, ridiculous and resulted in far, far more people looking at the images of her property than would have done so if she'd just kept her big stupid mouth shut.

Rule #230 is Remember the Streisand Effect

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