I've just started reading Clay Shirky's new book Here Comes Everybody which opens by describing the story of a stolen Sidekick which is eventually returned after the owner's friend posts a webpage and an ad hoc group forms to help return it. It's an interesting story and fits nicely into Shirky's thesis.

It took on a new importance this morning when I received an email from my friend Dan telling me about Remi Pinaud, a French guy who'd been subletting his apartment, had stolen three iPods, two external hard drives and a digital camera. The worst part was that Remi is heading to Panama the tomorrow. Dan had been started doing his detective work locating the guy on social networking sites and wondered what I'd do.

My answer was that I'd start emailing everyone I knew about it then get on all the social networking site and start messaging all his friends telling them about it. Then I'd get make a video describing what he'd done and post it on every one of his YouTube videos. Basically an internet wide shaming process.

Dan's been busy today. He files a police report, tracked down a bunch of personal info on Mr. Pinaud, started working on the YouTube response video and started a blog titled: Remi Pinaud is a Thief to document it. The odds of Dan getting his stuff back are pretty remote at this point but I'm hoping that we can Google bomb that blog so that when ever anyone Googles his name they find out he's an accused thief.

Edited to make it clear that it's an accusation at this point. If Remi makes it back to NYC for his day in court we'll know one way or another.