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Lawyer Sues Yahoo for Message Board Name-Calling
Yardboy writes "Yahoo! News has a story concerning one Stephen Galton who has filed a class-action lawsuit against Yahoo claiming the company 'unfairly protected people who post negative messages on its bulletin boards and falsely advertised that it prevents such abusive messages.' Seems he was subjected to name-calling (such as shyster) when he signed up under the username 'stephengalton' in order to respond to a negative post about an unidentified client. As other users chimed in with negative remarks, Galton filed suit against them (it's not clear from the story for what) and sought their personal information from Yahoo via a subpoena. The lawsuit seeks restitution, a permanent injunction and other forms of relief. What's really interesting is all the message board posts relating to the story have been deleted."
That's the trouble with the internet and it's rapid and massive stream of information, some of it your not going to like. Find other ways than litigation to deal with it, as litigation just shines a 10 billion candlepower light on it for all the world to see.
"It's so convenient to have a system where everyone is a criminal" - A. Hitler
Yo Stephen! There is this little thing called the First Amendment to the Constitution that has something to do with another something called free speech. Grow up and learn how to deal with the kids on the playground.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
Seriously pal, your not doing your profession any favors here.
bit trollent
He isn't claiming that the critical comments on yahoo aren't protected speech under the first amendment; he's claiming that yahoo failed to fulfill their promise to prevent abusive postings, which doesn't have anything to do with the first amendment.
what kind of example is this for kids. i mean you get called names, aren't you supposed to say "stick and stones can break my bones but words won't hurt me"??? And so you get called a few names, it's not a big deal. Stop being so sensitive and take it in stride. Just because you're a lawyer doesn't mean you can sue the crap out of anyone
who gave us the world's first spam?
;-P
well then, we have divine justice/ karma, or that "first spam post! w00t!" newsgroup lawyer from the early 1990s should have his butt sued too
regardless, i really can't get worked up too much about this lawyer's horrible, horrible victimhood, since if the real world effect of newsgroup negativity is as potent as this lawyer might insist, then anyone who has ever been flamed or trolled on slashdot probably has grounds for legal action and or psychiatric counseling too
right
hey, found the wikipedia reference to the world's first spam
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Do people actually give their REAL info when signing up for an account?
-Valiss
See the problem here is that this lawyer can file total bullshit suits like this with no fear of reprisal.
This waste the other party's time AND the government's time costing us all money.
What should happen here is that the first judge to see that paperwork should call him a "stupid crybaby" and fine him several thousand dollars.
It a shame we can't deal with baseless legal threats the same way we deal with threats of physical violence.
These types of threats really do hurt people, and the system should take that into account.
Unfortunately, it doesn't. This is why we have bullshit lawsuits about this like "one click" shopping and the fucking ALT key.
The end result is that both parties spend a bunch of money on litigation. We as taxpayers spend our money as well, and a couple lawyers who knew full well the suit was bullshit get rich.
It's bad for everyone but the fucking lawyers. FUCK LAWYERS.
Are you a "good" lawyer? Then do something about it! Purge the assholes from your ranks!
Do you think doctors would tolerate this type of behavior within THEIR ranks? You're supposed to be fricking professionals.
Life is too short to proofread.
Unmoderated message boards might be like airlines were in the 1950s. Pay your fare, get on, no hassle. Totally vulnerable to all sorts of mayhem that nobody happened to think of doing.
The mayhem we are vulnerable to on today's message boards isn't libel, it's litigation brought by people who can't excuse other people for acting and talking like humans. The result is that people are going to have to be hyper-careful about expressing anything negative, like employers being asked about former employees.
If this gentleman wins his suit(s), imagine how many people George Bush could sue for comparing him with Hitler. Or Courtney Love for calling her a skank? Everybody has the right to their own opinion, as long as they shut up about it.
"remember the Farenheit 9/11 story in which all Republicans were IP banned from posting"
Right, yeah, because Slashdot maintains a listing of IP addresses tied to political affiliation.
What a load of nonsense. Mods, YHBT. Do your job.
His fscking HEAD would explode!!!
Ok this is bull shit. Does anyone remember the problem of people(not) the government discriminating against lets see here.... sex,sexual preference,race,religion... well you get the idea when it comes to who you choose to rent a place to? How is it that the laws get to dictate who we choose to rent OUR private property to?
It is because of people standing by and doing nothing or it's because of the "social" attitude of the day.... today we hate Irish tomorrow we hate Blacks day after tomorrow we hate fill in the blank; but because of a legal system that would prefer to make it a crime to exercise ones constitionally right of free choice we are left with more criminals that because they "chose" to break a law lose some constitutional rights.
EVERYONE is a criminal.... and the reason is that we have too many laws it is only a matter of time before someone find an obscure law that we (un)intentionally broke.
Or the press gets on a bandwagon about lets "protect" the children and wants to pass a new law against something. How in the HELL did our parents/grandparents ever succesfully raise a child in that kind of environment? Guess they didn't successfully raise the ones making the laws... but if you ask them yes their parents did ok (generally speaking) when they raised them.
Sorry for rambling on and such.
And yes
I am willing to die for your right to disagree with me because to not do so would be admitting that they actually hold power over your thoughts.
I think I know the reason that lawyers are so hated and often seem childish. It is because they try to follow the law to the letter but not to the spirit, and will often sue those that are following the law to the spirit but not the letter. And since our (Awerican) laws are supposedly based on the Bible, I would just like to point out that we are supposed to follow the spirit of the law, not the letter (2 Corinthians 3:6). Why going against the spirit of the law while following the letter seems childish is because that is what children tend to do. Only after growing up a little do people learn that laws are meant to be followed to the spirit; those who don't seem(are?) childish.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Why do people act like this says anything about the state of torts in this country? The case hasn't even been TRIED for godsakes. How is it an example of why we need tort reform? Is it because the man has equal access to the courts? Well gee, we should strip him of that too! Hasn't anyone stopped to consider that this man is trying his against a gigantic corporate entity? Even if he had a legitimate grievance (which I concede he does not), he would still be screwed. Cries of tort reform should be addressed at genuine abuses of the system, not this baloney (again, for which the proceedings have not even begun).
AFAIK (journalism class from long time ago) "public persons" have less right to privacy than "private" citizens. The reason being that public people have willingly put themselves in the "vortex of public debate" and thus the law recognizes that they'll get called all sorts of names. This is called the "vortex rule" IIRC.
:) If that fails somebody call the supreme court and say that such ruling will have a "chilling effect on the free flow of information".
Ironically, I wonder if in this case the guy could classify as public person for making such a ruckus...
The ENIAC Demo Competition
Yeah right, Yahoo is so unsecure that people can use an alias to register an account with them. They can sign up for a Yahoo Mail address using bogus info and automatically get an Yahoo Account to use on message boards.
I wonder what names Yahoo will give that Lawyer?
Let's see, we have like 38 Bill Gates, 31 Steve Jobs, 26 William T. Kirks, 24 Bruce Waynes, etc. None of them are their real names. Or maybe you can track them by IP address? Yet what if they were using a library, or grade school, or high school, or college system? Get the IPs from Yahoo, track it to their ISP, and then subpeona the ISPs to see who holds the accounts. Stand in line next to the RIAA and MPAA who want the names of IP numbers behind file sharing accounts. Good luck!
On the other hand, if the Yahoo Member paid for anything on Yahoo, Yahoo then has their billing address, credit card, etc.
Watch what you say about the lawyer on Slashdot, he may subpeona Slashdot to get the details behind your accounts. See ya in court!
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.