How to play the pedophile card

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How to play the pedophile card

TechDirtFull.jpgPhillip Eide, a k a Xavier von Erch, the controversial figure behind Perverted-Justice.com, the website which gave rise to Dateline NBC's popular "To Catch a Predator" series, has to be one of the internet's most unassailable trolls. As we pointed out last fall, it's difficult to criticize Perverted-Justice's tactics without coming across as defending pedophiles, which no sane person wants to be accused of. Especially when the accusations are delivered in an immature name-calling method, as tech news blog Techdirt found out over the weekend.

Techdirt reported on Perverted-Justice's decision to name and shame Wikipedia as a "Corporate Sex Offender" for allowing suspected pedophiles to serve as editors of the user-created encyclopedia. Perverted-Justice decided to redirect all inbound traffic from the online encyclopedia to a page detailing all of Wikipedia's supposed transgressions. The result of Techdirt's post? Comments 62-79 consist of the words "TECH DIRT IS FULL OF FILTHY PEDOPHILES!" repeated over and over. Call it the Internet equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and repeating "la la la I can't hear you."

What Perverted-Justice supporters are apparently not interested in hearing is how Eide has behaved on Wikipedia. Called out for repeatedly engaging in flamewars with other users, Eide was banned from the online encyclopedia. He has a heck of a way of getting even.

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