Bad Net karma
Reading this fascinating story in today's Times, about a rebellion of teens in a sort of quasi-military disciplinary camp in Costa Rica named Dundee Ranch, I read a name that sounded weirdly familiar: Narvin Lichfield. (OK, it's the kind of name you remember.) Hadn't I edited a story involving this person?
Yes -- Andrew Leonard wrote this strong story for Salon back in 1998 about an effort by an organization founded by Lichfield to spam search engines via spurious multiple sites overloaded with meta-tag keywords.
Today, Lichfield is facing criminal charges from the Costa Rican authorities. And Google has pretty much put the practice of spamdexing to rest.
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