Barbra Streisand, Miss Vermont, And Your Website

An anonymous reader writes "The NYTimes (sign up for free subscription) is reporting about a person who wrote about a prior relationship with a former Miss Vermont. He was ordered to remove any reference to the former Miss Vermont or the relationship by court order. This ruling has obvious implications for the First Amendment if allowed to stand. I wonder if I can get the same court order applied to my ex-girlfriends' websites." Read on to see what this has to do with Barbra Streisand.

An anonymous reader writes "A Silicon Valley millionaire, Ken Adelman, is being sued by Barbra Streisand for $50 million. Adelman photographed Streisand's sea-side Malibu mansion using a 6 megapixel Nikon digital camera from a helicopter flying over the Pacific Ocean. The photograph, along with over 12,000 other photographs, is part of an aerial photographic survey of the California coastline. This photographic database is intended for use by environmental and scientific research projects interested in the health of the coastline and coastal erosion. Streisand's suit complains that the photograph is of extraordinary clarity and violates her right to privacy, as it shows details of the property that one would not ordinarily be able to see from the road or the beach. California has an 'anti-paparazzi' statute on the books."

Comments

Google's Cache to this story ..

[i_want_you_to_throw_]

Here you go! Useful links to this story...
First the Google Cache of the Miss Vermont Story

Katy's site which ironically has a Free Speech reference.

Re:Google's Cache to this story ..

[Pig Hogger]

Hell, let's have Miss Vermont AND Max sue slashdot and myself for posting the whole thing here:

The Miss Vermont Story

This is the complete and unabridged story of my relationship with Katy Johnson, known to my friends and her fans as Miss Vermont. I normally don't like writing about the specific details of relationships or hook-ups for many reasons, but this is an exception. After putting up the giant hypocrisy that is her webpage, she has to be ready for what I write.

I must prepare you, in advance, for what you are about to read...it is as ridiculous and surreal as anything I have have ever written, and possibly anything you have ever read. This relationship was outlandish even by Tucker Max standards. You may not believe some of what is written here. To that, I can only tell you that I have several witnesses to most of the events here, and the wedding was, well, a wedding, so there were hundreds of people there.

Furthermore, this is a long story, because I didn't want to leave out any of the details, lest the story seem forced or less amazing that it really was.

And to Katy: Even though you haven't responded to the email I sent you, I know you check this site every few weeks. You are welcome to email me with corrections or additions to the story. If I got something wrong or left something out, please let me know and I'll be happy to change it. In fact, I'll go farther. If you want to write your own version of our relationship, I swear to my god, that I will post it, COMPLETELY UNABRIDGED, right next to mine. This is your opportunity to rebut anything I say here.

_____________________

The summer after law school graduation, I moved to Boca Raton, Florida and took a job managing my father's restaurants. I wasn't really expecting to meet a girl I would like, as the general intellectual level of South Florida is somewhere above functionally retarded. After I had been in Boca about two months, I hadn't really had any sort of relationship other than emotionally uninvolved sex with morally suspicious girls, and I eventually resigned myself to vacant sex with the vapid idiots that infest South Florida.

One day I was at my gym, The Athletic Club of Boca Raton. It is a massive airplane hanger of a building; a gym, health club, spa, lounge and restaurant rolled into one. Basically, it's the type of place where guttural grunts and flexing underneath tight shiny shirts passes for foreplay. Welcome to Florida. For several years it's been the in place to workout in Boca, one of the primest meat markets in a town full of butcher shops. I usually tried to avoid peak hours and the throngs of scantily clad gold-digging whores positioning themselves for fifth husbands. Don't mistake me--staring at dozens of immense fake breasts spilling out of sports bras is fun for a while, but it gets old quick, especially when those breasts are attached to faces that tell the story vacant personalities do not. These women have circled the drain a few times, and no manner of plastic surgery or trips to the spa can hide that despair that years of whorish behavior and emotional prostitution leaves in the eyes.

I was in the free weight section of the gym, and one girl kept catching my eye, more for what she wasn't showing rather than what she was. She had a navy blue hat on, pulled tight over her face, a loose fitting white cotton T-shirt, and green basketball shorts. Not the standard Boca female gym outfit. Staring at her between sets, I realized that she was very attractive. By trying to hide that attractiveness, she became even better looking. The logo on her shorts said, Vermont Law, which gave me the perfect in. My law degree would finally get some good use.

I approached her as she paused between sets, and asked if she had attended law school at Vermont. She told me she didn't, that she went to undergrad there, but that she was attending Stetson for law school.

Re:Here's the story! Enjoy! (direct link)

[DarkSkiesAhead]

it's also possible to direct link as a google partner. thus, avoiding pasting the entire article into an overly long comment.

Re:oh no!!

[lordgert]

I think encouraging Trey and Matt to do an(other?) episode on people who think they should be ruling the world is an excellent idea.

By the way, here's the direct link to the high-res mansion shot: huge image

Re:PLEASE STOP USING NYTIMES

[LordNimon]

God, you people are such morons. Just use the userid/password of cypherphunks/cypherphunks like everyone else and be done with it!

error in article

[ketan]

The article states:

Katy Johnson, who was Miss Vermont in 1999 and again in 2001, uses her site to promote what she calls her "platform of character education."

That is incorrect. As you can see at the Miss Vermont previous winners page, the winner in 2001 was Amy Johnson, not Katy Johnson, who won in 1999 and is the subject of the article. I should know; I went to high school with Amy and lived one street over.

Furthermore, it just doesn't make sense for someone to be able to compete twice. Did it not occur to anyone at the NY Times or other papers to check this? I have seen the same error in several places.

Re:Streisand has a point

[dagnabit]

A[ctually|llegedly] _he_ didn't make the identifying entry. The way the gallery of images is set up, anyone can make comments and/or add captions to the photos. And that's what happened to Ms. Streisand's estate photo, and other celebrities' homes that were snapped as well.

<Linda Richman>
"I'm verklempt. Twok amongst yourselves. The topic is: she needs to get over it, and get over herself."
</Linda Richman>

You know, no big whoop.

Re:Streissand has a point

[Raffaello]

You're both missing the big picture. When the Bill of Rights was being crafted, many opposed the whole idea, not because they were against individual rights, but because they feared that what you two are discussing would happen: that people would come to believe that *only* those rights specifically mentioned in the Bill of Rights were protected.

From: James Wilson, Pennsylvania Ratifying Convention, 28 Nov. - 4 Dec. 1787

"A bill of rights annexed to a constitution is an enumeration of the powers reserved. If we attempt an enumeration, every thing that is not enumerated is presumed to be given[to the government]. The consequence is, that an imperfect enumeration would throw all implied power into the scale of the government, and the rights of the people would be rendered incomplete."

Re:Streissand has a point

[Fat Casper]

...they feared that what you two are discussing would happen: that people would come to believe that *only* those rights specifically mentioned in the Bill of Rights were protected.

Amendment IX (The forgotten amendment)

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Remember that the second, more than the first, protects the rest. Oh, but we threw the second out a long time ago. That's why we have the USAPATRIOT Act and TIA. Because no one in Washington thinks they're at all accountable anymore.

Re:Streissand has a point

[adelman]

Actually, the relevent precedent when you're looking at the fourth amendment is California v. Ciraolo, 476 US 207 (1986).

The Supreme Court in that case, per Chief Justice Burger, held that warrantless aerial observation of fenced-in backyard within curtilage of home was not unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment.

"In an age where private and commercial flight in the public airways is routine, it is unreasonable for respondent to expect that his marijuana plants were constitutionally protected from being observed with the naked eye from an altitude of 1,000 feet. The Fourth Amendment simply does not require the police traveling in the public airways at this altitude to obtain a warrant in order to observe what is visible to the naked eye."

Barbra's house underlies the Federal Airway (V299) between Ventura and LAX. It is basically located on an aircraft-freeway in a high-traffic area. It would be hard to imagine any place with a lower expectation of privacy from air traffic.

Kenneth Adelman (Defendant)