It is one of the sleaziest, creepiest uses for a webcam and the Internet: spying on your room mate while they are having a close encounter of the intimate kind, and broadcasting the fact on Twitter and sharing it through iChat. But it is not a hate crime, even when you announce that you “saw him making out with a dude.” That is the finding of New Jersey Judge Glenn Berman, in sentencing Dharun Ravi to 30 days in jail following Ravi’s actions, and the subsequent suicide of his roommate Tyler Clementi.

You’ve probably already heard of the .xxx domain that has been proposed, rejected, re-rejected, and reconsidered, but did you know that there are also a .god domain and a .gay domain being considered? The .xxx domain was first proposed – and provisionally approved – back in 2005, and then was rejected in 2006 and 2007, primarily as a result of lobbying by conservative and religious groups; now it’s being reconsidered. Interestingly, the .god domain, which has had considerably less press, was first proposed as far back as 1995, and has been in the public awareness since at least 2000. The .gay domain is among the newest of proposed TLD (Top Level Domain) offerings (actually “gTLD”, which stands for generic Top Level Domain), although not the only new one (consider New York City’s request for a .nyc domain) – all of which are being considered this week as the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) meets in Nairobi.

Last week dozens of thousands of books quietly disappeared from Amazon’s listings and ranking system. What they all had in common was that they had either gay or ‘adult’ themes.

Online dating giant eHarmony is required to create a new online dating site for same sex couples under the terms of a settlement with the State of New Jersey’s Civil Rights Division. The new service will be called Compatible Partners (not “Compatable Partners”, as some sites are reporting, which is a mis-spelling.