I See Paris

In "Porn in a flash" Salon.com describes how a "troubling surge in creepy 'upskirt' photography" has "lawmakers in a twist," since the photographs that rely on digital cameras unobtrusively hidden in mobile phones are usually taken in public places, albeit from odd angles. Although there are apparently "not many practical, legal remedies available to people who find themselves the victim" of "upskirting" or "downblousing," half of the fifty states in the US either have or are considering legislation that would bar the practice of posting photos of private body parts without the subject's consent.

Of course, one also has to wonder about the motivations of Salon.com for running the story at all, given how its prurient content is likely to garner more eyeballs who will then go in search of this material online armed with the proper keywords that the mainstream media is often so happy to provide. Furthermore, although the story contains the alarming statistic that a "keyword search for 'upskirt' on the photo-sharing site Flickr turns up 36,368 hits," it doesn't note the striking fact that many of these are parodies of what is obviously an Internet meme. Even the Eiffel Tower and the American flag are presented as upskirt subjects.