Slashdot Mirror
Courts Begin To Frown On Online Badmouthing
Whistler's Mother writes: "Employers are winning key legal victories against former workers who criticize them online. Rulings in the waning days of 2001 could have a chilling effect on workers' use of cyberspace for years to come, civil libertarians say. The battle over Internet free speech also is heating up as more firms crack down on grousing by laid-off staff. Read the whole story here."
If I need to tell the truth about an employer that I don't even work for anymore, than nobody should be able to stop it. If I quit or get fired, what more do they want? If it's true, than it's not slanderous. This sets a bad precedent: why couldn't movie studios hire thugs to make sure a given film gets a high rating...?
The guy sent 35,000 emails to the employees of his ex-company and the court ruled that it was spam. Maybe this isn't such a landmark ruling against free speech after all.
from the article:
/.ers tend to hail and celebrate. in a post to a story about spam laws, i predicted something like this, and here it is. the general slashdot attitude toward internet legislation must apply at all times: keep your laws off the internet. even when the laws are about spam. otherwise, shit like this happens.
The court ruled Hamidi's e-mails basically amounted to trespassing.
"We were very pleased. Our view is that this was the equivalent of spam," Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy says.
this is basically an offshoot of the spam laws -- those very same ones which
Ratio of replies to old sig content : replies to actual post content > 0.5. Sig changed.
If people are badmouthing a company and the company decides to take action, then you just have to make sure that you can prove what you're saying...
How is this either
Think, people - it may be the only way to get some of these gripes to be provable.
If, on the other hand, you are genuinely offensively libeling(?) either a company or an individual in the company, don't they have rights to defend themselves?
As always, I think it comes down to how the laws are applied. And that's where I get really scared for my liberties...
It's rather frightening to realize that there are people who only obey the law or social norms because they are too lazy to do otherwise until internet makes it easy.
I know that I will probably get slammed for this, but I am not sure that the article is really fair about most of the situations it's discussing. The case of the Intel employee emailing his grievances over and over to all the employees at Intel is a fine example. I don't see that what he was doing was any different than any other spammer, nor did some of the people who work there.
It's tough when people take advantage of anonymous posting to state things that they'd never be allowed to in print, since they'd be immediately sued for libel. There is no easy answer, of course, but companies should be able to stop truly libelous statements, and they should also be able to stop idiots like the Intel spammer. At least, they should be able to answer the detractors in the same public forum that the libel was stated.
I'd still rather see them able to just interleave the supposed libel with truth, which seems fair enough, rather than exposing anonymous posters. I truly prefer to protecct anonymity, even when abused, as some folk do, so that those few who truly need it will still find it available.
The difference between a Miracle and a Fact is exactly the difference between a mermaid and a seal. (Mark Twain)
More firms also are taking action to unmask anonymous posters. Pittsburgh-based software firm printCafe is taking legal action to learn the identity of anonymous posters ...
... "It's to stop people from spreading vicious lies."
"It's not about the First Amendment," says Terry Budd,
That's a pretty funny quote, considering that the most legally interesting First Amendment cases are ones that involve libel (vicious lies). That aside, you have to wonder who's liable for AC postings once the forum has "forgotten" the poster's identity. Say I run a weblog, and someone posts something deeply libelous to my weblog anonymously, and I don't keep access logs, or delete them within a few weeks. Am I now responsible for the comments because I've forgotten the poster's identity?
If so, then that is going to affect... Slashdot.
If not, then every weblog in the world should stop tracking poster's information to spare themselves the legal hassle.
Another quote that bothered me:
The court ruled Hamidi's e-mails basically amounted to trespassing.
"We were very pleased. Our view is that this was the equivalent of spam,"
Well, which is it? Trespassing is illegal, and spam isn't, except in California, and certainly not in this court. If email is trespassing, how do you ask permission to send email? His email didn't even meet California's standard for spam because he wasn't trying to sell anything, and it wasn't libel because no one, not even Intel, says that we was lying.
If you can trespass with E-mail, we're going to be living in very uncertain times. Or perhaps the lesson is merely: don't mess with corporations, they bend the law to their will.
Usually people don't have that kind of time to waste standing on a street corner, but they have some time to make a web page that says that
Now, if somebody is up there saying that their boss was on crack at work, and it wasn't true, that's another story..
Free Mac Mini
It's rather frightening that things protected by the first amendment can be made illegal. "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press."
It's also kind of frightening that leaflets, newspapers, and megaphones today seem to be legally limited only to large corporations, and the medium with the most promise of letting the average citizen compete on an even footing is being unlawfully restrained in this manner.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
I think that printCafe (one of the companies mentioned in the article) is actually going after FuckedCompany (which wasn't), so it's a bigger bummer than you might have thought...
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
Our government today is almost totally owned by the corps. To the point that VERY unpopular, and illegal (If you believe at all in interpreting the Constitution as written) law like the DMCA can sail on to passage with no debate to a unanimous voice vote.
Corps don't like to be badmouthed. It used to be that courts by and large threw out almost ALL slander/libel suits brought by corporations, because libel and slander law by and large apply to PERSONS, not quasi-entities like a corp.
In these days of out of control litigation, those who can afford legal teams (like corps) can pretty much deny civil liberties to anyone who can't (like a laid off worker). This is because today, NO ONE has any rights unless cleared in a court...
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
The writeup says,
But you know, Whistler's Mother actually just cut and pasted it from USA Today's page. No thought, no additional quote marks, no attribution to the actual writer, Stephanie Armour, just a quick dump to the submission form to get their name on the Slashdot front page.
And if you think this is off-topic, we're discussing 'online publication integrity', which would include slander, libel, plagiarism and general complaining. If people would respect each others rights, and don't take the lazy or litigious way through life, then we'd actually get somewhere.
[
It appears that in most cases if you slander a company, or libel a company (or officers of a company) then you should be held accountable for your actions.
Spamming 35k messages at Intel employees is not the same as saying Intel sucks, even if the message is Intel sucks. Posting 14000 messages on a message board is not the same as say walking around with a sign in front of the company.
The size of the response, even if it was technology enabled (ie, bot generated) does cross the line from being a 'Free Speech' to harassment.
If it was five or six messages that got these people in hot water then we have an issue, but let's face it, they were being vendictive online, and it got them in trouble.
III.IIVIVIXIIVIVIIIVVIIIIXVIIIXIIIIIIIIVIIIIVVIII
"I agree, but I'll just point out that employee loyalty is on the serious decline."
It goes both ways. Employer loyalty to employees is at an all time low right now as well. The fact that major corps like IBM, who aren't doing badly at all (in fact, they are making more money) take advantage of a recession to have layoffs and forced paycuts, simply because their workers can't move on right now CAUSES this sort of feeling.
In my own personal situation, I always show as much loyalty to my employer as I'm shown. I appreciate opportunity, and when in a job and situation I love, I'll take less and put up with more to stay there. But when the employer doesn't reciprocate, ie, dumps on employees at the first sign of trouble, then they have no reasonable expectation of loyalty in return.
"Do un to others" works.
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
And I am really going to -laugh- when this gets modded down by someone who doesn't agree with it and can't see the hypocracy!
455fe10422ca29c4933f95052b792ab2
Trouble is, the net isn't exactly like any of those things. It's a little like printing leaflets; it's a little like a conversation in a pub; it's a little like newspapers; it's a little like a coffee morning; it's a little like chatting to the queue at the supermarket; it's a little like carving your name on a tree; and it's a lot like something completely new.
So you can't just apply every existing law you like to it willy-nilly. Some existing laws will still be appropriate; some will best be applicable after modification; and some won't work well at all.
And then there's the problem of jurisdiction. If we here in the UK pass laws governing net use, will you in the USA abide by them? Thought not. But of course we'll need to abide by your laws, won't we...
And it gets more complicated. Who has jurisdiction if a German citizen visits Finland, dials into an Irish ISP, connects to a web site hosted in Mexico and uploads some dodgy stuff that's then downloaded by an American in Paris?...
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
..with all these stupid lawsuits/laws being passed, it's probably a good time to get into litigation and corporate law. I wonder what these sleazeballs make per year on average.
Sending 32 000 emails is simply NOT an acceptable way to get your point across. I can see why Intel is pissed and they have every right to be.
Over the past few years I've seen countless websites fall victim to corprate lawyers for one thing or another. Sites that have done nothing more than parody a company's product have fallen victim to the threats of lawsuits.
And that's where the problem lies. The threat.
Corporations know if they sue you in some district court in California, odds are you aren't going to even be able to show up to represent yourself, much less hire legal counsel to do it for you and fight a protracted battle against highly-paid corprate lawyers.
So, a letter to a website or software project leader can be as effective as a trial, because the assumption is, you are too poor to shell out tens of thousands of dollars in expenses to fight to protect your freedom of speech. Because 99.999% of the time, it is obvious to anyone that the company in question has virtually no basis for their allegiations and the potential lawsuit would be totally frivilous, yet they hold this enormous power over people with few financial resources to fight a court battle that they shouldn't even be dragged into in the first place.
Corporations use this as a weapon against all who oppose them. Piss them off....and a letter from their legal department will follow. It costs them a few dollars to have their guys fill out a form letter and post it and it protects their precious company image from all of those who wish to exercise their rights as human beings to present crticism, satire and counterpoint to the multibillion dollar PR juggernauts these companies run.
It's sick, it's sad, but there is little you can do.
But one thing you can try, is to pick out any errors in their threats. Run it by someone who knows about legal procedure. Do they say you are barred from revealing the contents of the legal threat to anyone else? (to protect their image, no doubt). Well, fuck them. Unless they have a court order, there is no way they can impose such terms on you. Did you sign an agreement with them? No? Then let people know what they are doing. Write a letter to their state bar assoication's ethics department. Do this every single time for any **valid** reason you can scrounge up. Eventually, the complaints might just pile up.
It's our only hope against these tyrants.
Sad, but true.
...these particular cases don't worry me too much. Consider:
Let's face it, folks: there is no right to anonymity. Check the Constituion if you want. It's not there. Come to think of it, there's no right to privacy either, but that's a different debate. The whole notion of rights is based on assumptions about responsible use of those rights; check Locke et al for that one. The right to free speech does not imply the right to shout "fire" in a crowded theater (Oliver Wendell Holmes, I think); similarly, it does not imply the right to commit libel or breach a valid confidentiality clause in an employment contract. Non-competes might be unenforceable, but that's totally irrelevant; the validity of confidentiality as a term of any valid contract has never been seriously challenged in the courts.
Now, should employers be able to punish employees for statements made on their own time, at their own expense (if any), that are neither libelous nor a breach of confidentiality? That's a whole different question. So far the answer is no, and so far the law still recognizes that. Don't count on that lasting very long, but that's the way it is today; none of the case in the article imply otherwise. The only thing that's threatened by such precedence is the non-existent but much-presumed right to be an anonymous asshole, and the quicker people learn that they have no such right the better.
P.S. For those who are using this as an excuse to go on an anti-corporatist rant, consider this: if a company posted 14,000 defamatory messages about an employee, they'd be just as liable. The only reason we don't hear about such cases is that such behavior requires a certain level of obsession, and companies tend toward a shortage rather than an excess of attention paid to employees.
Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
The danger is when employees are forced to sign documents which they otherwise might not, simply because the other three guys who interviewed for the job were willing to sign it. This is increasingly common, the only good solution to this problem is either to prevent employers from discriminating against those who won't sign certain types of NDA (just as they can't discriminate against people on the basis of their sex or race), or to educate people such that nobody will accept signing an over-broad NDA (the former is more realistic).
"There's nothing wrong with standing on a street corner with a megaphone saying that my ex-employer laid me off and I think they suck for doing so.."
Yes, but it WOULD be wrong if you stood out front and said that they were homophobes, or discriminated against women, and it WAS NOT TRUE. Just like it would be illegal for your employer to post on the front of their web site that you were fired for peddling kiddie porn via corporate servers, and were really just laid off because the company was running out of money.
The street works both ways. Neither of theirs are cases in which someone was out there spreading the truth in a journalistic intent, these cases are merely sophomoric harassment, and garner no protection under our laws.
I sort of see what you are saying. The big problem with the left/right view of things, is that it's increadibly Bipolar, and lots of different idealogies get lumped together, Liberalism and communism both are considered 'left wing' yet, in practice they are often diametrically opposed. the left/right thing is nothing more than a 'dumbing down' tool to simplify this stuff, it's the specifics thats important, not what label we give it.
:P
your apprasal of the scandinavian countries is laughable... so they aren't cranking out automobiles ?
oh, apart from,
Volvo
Saab
Skoda
of whice the first two are popular imports in the USA.
They also make aircraft, Ships, etc, so don't go around thinking they don't have heavy industries.
their big name corporations aren't the exception at all, more so considering their relative size and such like.
Not only are they rich comfortable safe nations to live in, they don't feel the need to sacrifice everyone one of their personal freedoms to the altar of big business.
the fact is, countries with gigantic heavy industries are usually pretty awful to live in. Who makes most of the worlds cars and technology. it's poorly paid workers in tiger economies and poor regions.
If being a 'global player', means you have to live with reduced freedoms, for the benifit of the nation overall... doesn't that sound a bit like communism ?
unchecked, freemarket Capitalism has a tendency to end up being a collection of communistic organisations (businesses) working in a free market. To the individual eventually the isn't much difference, they are still working for a greater whole for a set reward, expected to put an organisation before themselves. It's not that bad yet in places like the states and the UK,
but check places like the intel Fabs in the tiger economies, and you get an idea of where this sort of blind corporatism leads you.
still, i guess it's sort of cool for those of use who want to live in a neuromancer/snow crash style world
I can agree with Communism/Socialism being on the left-hand side of the equation, but the right-hand side would probably be anarchy, not capitalism. (After all, wouldn't you say that a state of anarchy is the ultimate in lack of govt. control of any kind, and every person acting completely on their own to achieve whatever goals he/she wishes?)
You seem to be describing the difference between fascism (heavy government control) and Anarchy/Libertarianism(no government control). Communism as an ideal is more of an economic strategy than a control thing - don't confuse the idea of trying to allocate based on need with the soviet attempt at communism.
As an aside, I think the main reason Communism doesn't work is that ignores human nature. People want to better themselves and improve their lot. They also tend to operate in the short term; this leads to the conclusion that if working more leads to no more benefit (because your need doesn't change to reflect the increased production), then you probably won't.
Reboot macht Frei.
The danger is when employees are forced to sign documents which they otherwise might not, simply because the other three guys who interviewed for the job were willing to sign it. This is increasingly common, the only good solution to this problem is either to prevent employers from discriminating against those who won't sign certain types of NDA (just as they can't discriminate against people on the basis of their sex or race), or to educate people such that nobody will accept signing an over-broad NDA (the former is more realistic).
Employer Loyalty is not only at an all-time low, but right now companies (and our government) are doing everything they can to hurt labor unions.
Like them or not, Labor Unions are the only thing that keep employers in check. I've worked both as a Union member, and as a Non-Union member and having been on every side of the fence I can promise you being Union is definately the best position to be in, esspecially if you have a good union with good member participation. That's key, without there is no Union and you can't reap the benefit of organized labor.
In another reply I'm about to post a message that I got from my union today. It's not EXACTLY on topic, but it is somewhat related, and it's definately interesting.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
You missed the last half of it: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you". That means you would show your employer respect whether or not he respects you. That's what the majority of people miss when they think of that piece of scripture. Only doing good to other people who do good to you is simply selfishness.
The fact that major corps like IBM, who aren't doing badly at all (in fact, they are making more money) take advantage of a recession to have layoffs and forced paycuts
Part of the problem is that the bloated economy caused a shortage of workers, and so companies had to increase what they were paying their employees in order to get them to work for their company. There were a lot of overpaid, underskilled people getting hired in every area of technology because in a lot of cases a warm body was better than nothing. When the market changed, it was necessary for most companies, even ones making money, to "trim the fat". You can't really call that a failure in Empoyer loyalty, because it is just a natural correction mechanism for the economic swing.
"You have the right to free speech, as long as you're not dumb enough to actually try it!"
From "Know Your Rights" by The Clash
I don't really see why the company shouldn't be able to make the person in question stop, in this particular case. Although there would be ways to block emails technically, the basic question is (like you said) similar to spamming; why should the receivers have to pay for spammers privilege to send them (uncalled for) email? One problem is that whereas talking to someone is usually impossible (or difficult) without receiver's will, sending email/fax/calling is much easier. So, if the company had tried to prevent the person from contacting ex-coworkers in person, the judge would probably have just dismissed the case.
In fact the line between having the right to voice one's concern and trespassing is not all that clear; anti-abortion people have been prevented from picketing (in cases where they were shouting their propaganda in residential neighbourhoods); it was considered harassment more than practicing peacefully their right to free speech. The balance between your right to speak and my right to ignore is a difficult one to maintain.
I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization -- Oliver Wendell Holmes