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Annoy.com Gag Order Lifted
A reader writes "Annoy.com, the web site that pushes the first amendement envelope, has emerged victorious in their most recent court ruling. Haven't heard of the case? That's not surprising. The magistrate's gag order covered not only the details of the case, but also the very existence of the case. Read details in this SF Gate Article or this annoy.com release."
...is this
--meredith
--meredith
Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis
It seems to me that U.S. case law is taking an ominous turn with all the stuff that's been going on regarding insulting messages being said anonymously. Shouldn't slander and libel be reserved for people and/or organizations that make official statements that are libelous and/or slanderous?
Let's say I have a friend named Joe. One day, Joe asks me to put up some flyers for him, and I don't ask what they are, nor do I look at them longer than it takes me to put up the flyers. Am I then liable for their content? Or am I legally bound to reveal that it was Joe who asked me to put them up?
Summed up, my feelings are, "If you're a duck, shed water." I think most people take anything they read that's posted anonymously with a large grain of salt. After all, an anonymous post shouldn't really be perceived to have a lot of credibility, should it?
Pope Felix the Scurrilous.
Pope Felix the Scurrilous.
Computer Geek by day, religious Icon by night.
On their website, when you click censure (where you can post anonymous postcards, what this was all about), there is a warning :
WARNING
It has come to our attention that certain people have been using annoy.com to deliver what some might consider to be threats of physical violence or harm to others.
Do not mistake our commitment to freedom of speech for a license to abuse our service in this manner.
We plan to cooperate fully with law enforcement agencies in whatever efforts they make to find you and punish you - even if it's some renegade authoritarian dictatorship that might crucify your stupid ass if they catch you.
Free speech and annoy.com are not about harassment and definitely not about harm or violence. If you think for a second we will allow cowardly idiots to spoil our free speech party you are making a mistake. A huge mistake.
Just wondering what they mean with "some renegade authoritarian dictatorship that might crucify your stupid ass if they catch you". In light of these events I mean.
Nobody believes the official spokesman, but everybody trusts an unidentified source. -- Ron Nesen
I know that if I were involved in this sort of case, I'd want as much publicity as possible... this is scary.
...which is exactly why gag orders are necessary. Guess what? Trials are meant to be tried in court, not in the media. Or have you forgotten about what happened in a certain case involving Orenthal J. Simpson?
--
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
The point of publicity is not to sway the courts, they are supposed to be above all that.
The point is to ensure the govt can't do things in secret, like this vary case. Look at the UK's new Regulation of Investigatory Powers (?) law -- if the govt demands your secret keys, you can be thrown in jail just for telling anyone about it.
The danger isn't a lynch mob. The lynchers can always be brought to justice. The danger is a govt so infatuated with itself that it throws people in jail and forbids the press from reporting it. How the hell is family or friends or anyone supposed to stand up to a repressive govt when you can't tell anyone?
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Infuriate left and right
Individual uses service to send threat. (not cool)
Annoy.com's claim was that the Police/Authorities did nothing to establish that the communication in question was in fact a threat, and not just a joke. If you read the original card, while crude, vulgar, offensive, and perhaps harrassing, it makes no reference to force, only to sexual activities. Not that I'd be happy to receive something similar.
Police/Authorities ask that proceedings be 'closed' so that investigation can proceed without individual learning of it. (cool, it's under the eye of the judiciary, and ISP/Annoy has ability to comment/be-involved in legal proceedings to protect their anonymous users from un-necessary discloser)
Prosecutors asked that the proceedings be closed forever, and not just that they're investigating some alleged threat, but every aspect of the case. Why didn't the prosecutors ask that the identities of the parties involved, and perhaps the exact nature of the threat, be closed for a limited time (how long did they expect to be investigating this alleged threat)?
And Annoy.com was not allowed access to parts of the prosecution's legal arguments about why Annoy.com should comply. In other words, they were told that if they wanted to respond, they had to do so blind-folded!
A YEAR LATER, police/authorities drop request, as it's now way too late to be useful. (damn unfortunate)
I found no mention of when the prosecutors dropped their request, but my impression was that they lost interest in pursuing the original investigation after much less than a year, while still maintaining that Annoy.com was not allowed to talk about it (perhaps a matter of saving face?).
Bunch of people foaming at the mouth display their ignorance of anything deeper than 'obvious' by raving and rantin on about how 'injust' it is that the proceedings were 'hidden'. (lamers).
It was unjust that the gag order was indefinite and overly broad, when arguably a much narrower gag order would have sufficed. After all, if Annoy.com publicly said "investigators want the identity of one of our users whom they claim threatened someone", do you really think that would narrow things down enough to tip off the subject of the investigation, given the sort of people who apparently use Annoy.com in such huge numbers?