Gawker was once only irritating rather than unethical, a website that stood as a predictable outgrowth of America's sick obsession with the rich and famous, even the rich and famous who have contributed less to society and the human race than the average grocery store checker. If you love watching Jared Leto on the Red Carpet; if you obsess about what Lindsay Lohan's next hair color will be; if you know who weighs less, Nicole Richie or Ashley Olson; if these and a hundred other completely irrelevant and meaningless matters haunt your waking hours, then Gawker, the New York celebrity sighting website, is for you. Just don't challenge that grocery checker to a game of Scrabble, because he'll beat you by 200 points.

But Gawker couldn't leave dumb enough alone…now it has combined Google's map technology with cell phone text messaging to allow Gawker regulars who spy a celebrity on the streets of Gotham to call in their coordinates. Within 15 minutes the website will have a map on line showing that, for example, Claire Danes is shopping for books at Brentano's, and here's how to find her.

The feature is called (har har har!) "Gawker Stalker," and the site is cavalier about it:

Sightings are sent in by readers and fact-checked by no one. Some may, yes, be fabricated -- it's up to you to smell a rat. A reminder: Mapped pinpoints are posted anywhere from 15 minutes to a couple of hours from when readers first send them in, which provides an ample window for celebrities to move about before facing certain death exacted by their violently obsessive fans. Send your stalkings to tips@gawker.com.

What fun. When "Nightline" did a story about the site, Gawker's editor laughed off suggestions that there was anything wrong with encouraging the sad sacks desperate enough to read a site like Gawker to descend en mass upon an actor or model enjoying a day off. Hey, he said, it goes with the territory! Look at all the money they get! We have a right to make sure they never get a moment's piece.

Another ethics theory for examination: if you make a lot of money, it justifies other people attempting to find new ways to make your life miserable through the miracles of technology. Perhaps one reason the Golden Rule never enters into the thinking of people like the ones who run Gawker is that they can't possibly imagine what it's like being a celebrity. If they could comprehend that, they probably wouldn't be so interested in them, because the fact is that celebrities are real people, and their lives are not nearly as wonderful as their fans suppose.

Celebrities get no sympathy for the fact that they get stares and attention when they go about the hum-drum details of life, but their fame does not create a license for others to harass, annoy, attack, or impede them when they venture outside their satin-lined cocoons. And Gawker "Stalker" is worse; its method goes well beyond celebrity gazing to celebrity threatening and quite possibly celebrity endangerment. Does Jodie Foster deserve to have her whereabouts broadcast to aspiring John Hinckley clones? What about celebrities who are unpopular with certain groups? Jerry Falwell and Ann Coulter, Howard Stern and O. J., Cindy Sheehan and Katherine Harris….watch out, Gawker Stalker is putting you it its gun sights.

If ethics won't make Gawker cut it out, then the legislature needs to get busy. Gawker Stalker is bad enough to warrant legal prohibition before a celebrity gets hurt.

This isn't a quote from a vintage Monty Python skit, unfortunately. It is part of the pitch on this month's Unethical Website, and a more deserving choice for the honor would be hard to imagine. The Alibi Network provides members with a wide variety of deceptive services, from fake phone calls to their bosses to verify phony sick days, to providing "virtual employment" for out-of-work jobseekers who want to fool potential employers into believing that they have a job, to elaborate "alibi packages" created to support extra-marital affairs.

The latter is obviously the website's true calling and the reason for its existence. While such services as "Discreet Shopping" and "Business Services" are vaguely and unconvincingly described on the site, alibi activities related to spouse-cheating are the only ones that included elaborate details and prices. A fake conference invitation, complete with a receptionist who will field phone calls from home while you rendezvous with your paramour? Just $55.00. E-Ticket confirmation to Newark when you'll really be scuba-diving with bodacious Trixie in the Bahamas? Also $55.00. How about a phony digital photo of you with other conference "attendees"? That's $75.00; the framed certificate of attendance is only $35.00.

Equally as objectionable as the services provided by the Alibi Network are the site's smug justifications for its "business." "Live the Way You Want!" one banner proclaims. The word "freedom" appears over and over again, while more appropriate words like "cheating" and "fraud" or phrases like "lying one's head off" never show up at all. "Privacy" is another favorite word on the site, as in "privacy" while one is betraying one's wife and children, "privacy" while one is cheating one's employer out of a day's pay, and "privacy" while failing to inform your live-in lover that you are HIV positive.

The Alibi Network isn't merely unethical. It spreads a virtual plague of bad ethics, facilitating and encouraging deceit and dishonesty by making it easier and less risky. The service debuted in Europe and South America, and is now spreading its plague to the United States. Dozens of local TV stations in the US and Canada have eagerly devoted segments to the Alibi Network, thus helping it reach its target market. "Is this service unethical?" one asked.

If it isn't, nothing is.

See unethical sites from other months