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Maine Court Hears Case On E-Mail Privacy
Rev Wally writes "A case before the Maine Supreme Court could change rules regarding an ISP revealing the owner of an e-mail address. It seems that some one (known in court documents only as John Doe) sent an e-mail of an unflattering cartoon of the plaintiff, Ronald Fitch, and his wife. Doe had registered for an e-mail address using Fitch's name. Doe's lawyer is arguing that the e-mail is protected as free speech, and the the ISP cannot be forced to divulge the names of subscribers except in a criminal case. Fitch is arguing that he may be a victem of identity theft."
" Ronald Fitch sued Doe last year, claiming that an e-mail with an ironic message and an unflattering cartoon of Fitch and his wife - which Doe sent out under Fitch's name - amounted to identity theft."
so did Mr Doe make an email account ronald.fitch@gmail.com and use that? Or did he actually break into Fitch's email account to send the email?
If John Doe had sent the picture as a hard copy through the postal service or worse posted this throughout Ronald Fitch's neighborhood this would be a no contest case of slander.
That he used an e-mail address that had Ronald Fitch's name in it? With the dozen gmail invites I have I could make a dozen Ronald Fitch addresses. This is not identity theft. If I used those addresses to solicit his credit card information from the credit card companies than yes that's theft.
It's just some guy being a jerk.
-Teiresias
How many peopl share your name? How many want an e-mail address with that name in it? I wouldn't call it identity theft, even if it wasn't his name. If nothing else, the insipid idea that someone using a name identical to yours is stealing your identity is absurd. I know that my wonderfully common name has to have hundreds of others bearing my name and initials and none of them are, in fact, me. Things like SSID attempt to discern among people; names don't.
Since when does using the same name as someone else constitute identity theft? Maybe the cartoon was sent as Ronald Fitch the author. Or Ronald Fitch the ob-gyn specialist from Missouri. Or any one of the other hundred Ronald Fitchs showed up in my google search.
You've got a lot of the facts wrong...I know them very well being from the community and knowing the people involved. First you need to know that there's been a rather bitter personal feud going on as a backgdrop here and this is not the only incident, but rather the straw that broke the camel's back. Second, you should know that this is not the only incident and that more than one person is likely involved -- this is going to get bigger. Fitch recently had to get a restraining order against another jerk who was logging onto the Internet and claiming to be him and ordering stuff/asking to be contacted/etc. So he was getting calls from Pitney Bowes about postage meters and the like. Criminal action is underway there. Third, Ron is a great guy and willing to help all his neighbors. I won't go into the details about some of the group that has been causing trouble, but the latter instance above was subject to a criminal subpoena and the current case listed here about the email, the Judge in the case, on the Record, said that clearly a crime has been committed here. So Time Warner knows who did it (and the whole community pretty much suspects who did it too) and told the Judge. The defendant obviously did not want people to know he had done such a scummy thing, on Xmas even, and has been fighting the disclosure. You imagine having all your friends sent a email showing you fat, your wife scared up and your dead dog, on Xmas eve -- under an account that has your name. Stupid idiot used Ron's dead dog's name as the password so it was easy to break into the account -- guess he should have deleted the cc list on the email huh :-) So the stupid thing about this is that the police will probably issue a criminal subpoena if this case fails -- they're already involved and this is a big case in Maine -- and so this is all just delaying the inevitable. If it is who I think it is, then the mistress he's been keeping on the island (and reportedly with whom bought multimillion dollars worth of property under an LLC, reportedly) is going to be more front page news methinks...particularly since the person I'm thinking of is the CEO of a Maine corporation. But I could be wrong...we'll find out soon enough I think. By the way, the one thing the article did not say is that Fitch was represented by one lawyer, there were like 14 on the other side, so many that I heard the Judge asked them that if this was not such a big deal, why was so much money being spent to defend against it? That's a good question, isn't it!
I think Ronald Fitch is the one being a dick.
John Doe was objiously not trying to fool anyone into thinking that Ronald Fitch would e-mail out an unflattering cartoon of himself. "Ronald Fitch" was just a pseudonym chosen especially to give no clue of the originating party and ensure anonymity, as well as identify the subject of the cartoon.
Proof of defamation (or is it slander?) requires:
1. proof of intent to harm
2. proof of material harm
3. proof of falsehood
I think #3 will produce most of Fitch's trouble in getting actual damages, whether or not he ever finds out who John Doe is. Parodies always bring out a particular subjective point of view.
I would think John Doe would want his identity to be known, but then again, I haven't seen the picture. Does anyone happen to have a link the the picture?