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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."
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.
The problem is that you can sued for making true statements that some corporation or wealthy individual finds inconvenient or offensive. Do a google search on SLAPP (strategic lawsuits against public participation) or see this. You may win in court and end up bankrupt due to legal fees.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
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.
All this article means is that people in general are taking the Internet more seriously and those who abuse it for personal gain are more likely to get nailed for it. Sending 35,000 messages of a potentially libellous nature is not the same as putting up a personal opinion on a website. So is making outrageous claims based on hearsay or completely lacking in evidence.
Yes, there is sometimes a fine line between simply venting a personal opinion and libel. I don't see anything in this article that says Free Speech is in danger. Getting your panties in a bunch over this when there are far more real threats out there is folly.
We now return your knees to their previously un-jerked position.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're NOT after you.
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
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
a bad thing
different to the current laws of libel (remember, it's not slander; it's written)
What you just stated is quite different from current laws of libel. Here's a brief summary from some random site called tje Libel Defense Resource Center that seems more or less accurate:
The defamatory statement must also have been made with fault. The extent of the fault depends primarily on the status of the plaintiff. Public figures, such as government officials, celebrities, well-known individuals, and people involved in specific public controversies, are required to prove actual malice, a legal term which means the defendant knew his statement was false or recklessly disregarded the truth or falsity of his statement. In general, private individuals must show only that the defendant was negligent, that he failed to act with due care in the situation.
That's a fairly significant difference-- the plaintiff has to show that the statement is false, and at the very least that you should have known it was false.
The instances in the article are particularly egregious, and involve a lot of spamming and so on. Whether or not that was material to the case, I'm sure it didn't help their standing with the judge or jury.
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.
Two fine fellows posting 14,000 messages on 100 message boards is a wee bit over the top, I think. So is sending emails to over 35,000 people.
I know that it's easy to be modded up if you mention the DMCA and how corporations are buying Usia, and actually I agree and I support Mike's view, but in this case I don't think that the people involved who lost their lawsuits can entirely blame the deeper pockets of the corps they were up against. This article is sketchy at best, and laughably light on details, but the kind of lengths that these individuals went to seem ridiculously extreme.
On the other side of the coin, this quote from one of the lawyers left me very disturbed, wondering whether he was aware that he was effectively contradicting himself and believing smugly that everyone would just swallow his bullshit, or if he actually truly has no understanding of the concepts involved:
- "It's not about the First Amendment," says Terry Budd, a lawyer for printCafe, a provider of software and Internet-based products for the print industry. "It's to stop people from spreading vicious lies."
Incidentally, this case is the only one where it seems the corporation really may be out of line--only one "lambastation" is mentioned on a single website, and then there's the curious way that "officials say the postings were defamatory and a misappropriation of confidential company information", while the lawyers are harping on about vicious lies. Which is it to be, printCafe?A word can paint a thousand pictures
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.
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"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.