Last year I wrote a few posts on issues relating to capturing picture and video evidence on the Internet. My belief is that the relevance of these technologies will extend far beyond the traditional (albeit terrible) realms of child pornography and image copyright violation; and will become much more prevalent in other types of crimes.

It appears that it’s happened recently in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. Yesterday a man from the area plead guilty to one count of “unlawfully advising, encouraging and promoting a prizefight” and two counts of “being present at a prizefight as an aide, second, surgeon, umpire, backer or reporter.”

According to an article in the Chronicle Herald the he lead a group calling itself “East Coast Street Fights” which organized unsanctioned fight clubs to settle disputes. The group would then post videos of the fights on Facebook and YouTube. In fact the article infers that the fights were organized on the group’s Facebook wall.

It would be interesting to learn if the police authenticated the video on the Internet from the subject’s video recording device initially or if they found the video on the Internet first and went looking for witnesses and the tool that the subject used to make the recording.

Other sources in the media indicate that the organizer received a year of probation, but interestingly a quick Google search on the group indicates that the footage is still available on line.