Slashdot Mirror
Yale Students' Lawsuit Unmasks Anonymous Trolls
palegray.net writes "Two female Yale law school students have used the courts to ascertain the identities of otherwise anonymous posters to an Internet forum, with the intent of prosecuting them for hateful remarks left on the boards. At a minimum, the posters' future legal careers are certainly jeopardized by these events. While I'm not certainly not supporting or encouraging hateful speech online, these controversial actions hold potentially far-reaching consequences for Internet privacy policy and free speech." According to the linked Wired Law article, "The women themselves have gone silent, and their lawyers — two of whom are now themselves being sued — are not talking to the press."
Hateful speech is not illegal. False claims that substantially harm a person ARE illegal under slander/libel law. This law applies whether the comments are online or on the playground.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
This is a pretty straightforward bit of libel...Even on the internets you have to be careful if you're explicitly slandering someone by name.
Illegal is illegal, and if these monkeys were dumb enough to put up all this crap under handles that they accessed from their homes, then they're screwed, and it's hard to see how they ought not be.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Internet privacy policy
Expect none
Free Speech
Slander and libel are illegal
Just about covers those two concerns.
The problem is... it is.
Companies are going to great lengths to search for anything particularly incriminating on people that are applying for a job, and when you're starting out in a law firm - where your basically doing bitch work anyway, and your #1 job is fitting in - anything that they could find that could make a person look bad is going to be held against them. No one has any privacy left anymore, so things that used to get passed off as "kids being kids" have long-reaching consequences later in life. I cry for that.
With all that said, no, I don't think that this case sets a good precedent. The fault here is anyone that would listen to anonymous slander and use it against the women in question for any reason.
Let's stop dilly-dallying and just change "-1: Overrated" to "-1: Disagree" or "-1: Doesn't Subscribe to Groupthink".
Offensive speech is still free, so long as it is a matter of opinion and not fact. I can say 'John is a jerk' and be protected by the first amendment because it is not libel if it is my opinion of somebody. If I say 'John has herpes' (and he doesn't) that is libel because it's a demonstrable, objective state that can be proven to be untrue, rather than a difference of opinion. Threats aren't protected speech either. I don't know why this is a big deal, some people made threats and were given what they were due. I'd expect the same to be done to anybody who made threats. If it were just libel I might be more concerned, as the effects of libel on the internet are less clearly defined. Libel is more 'effective' between people in meatspace because of reasonable differences in the level of trust. I simply wouldn't trust every nasty rumor on the internet as a matter of what I would think of as common sense, but I might trust the same rumors from a close associate in person.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
... they have no reasonable grounds to be suing.
If they have no reasonable grounds for suing, then their lawsuit will be rejected by the courts. If they do have a reasonable grounds for suing then the courts will hear their case. Most Slashdotters forget to put IANAL disclaimers in their comments when making legal claims.
There's a big difference between saying "So-and-so's business practices are suspect" and saying "So-and-so gave me herpes and I'm going to kill them."
This wouldn't be too bad if potential employers and romantic interests weren't so damn nosey -- imagine kicking ass in a job interview for a good position only to discover that you were turned down because your psychotic, jealous ex with a lot of time on their hands gamed Google(or created a fake MySpace page) and made you out to be a drunk, zoophile, or worse!
Dosen't matter if the incendiary posts were written by people called "HitlerHitlerHitler" and "GoatseFan1" -- the hiring manager may think, "Hmm, he/she sure does have a lot of enemies" or "I'd rather not have all that controversy attached to somebody who works for me." Same applies to potential romantic interests.
I think this points to how anonymity is *usually* used for evil, instead of good like most geeks think about it.
One lawsuit can't prove that something is "usually" true or false. What it shows is that in at least 2 cases (one for each of the trolls) anonymity is used for evil. You need a lot more than 2 cases to say that the majority of anonymous people on the internet are using it for evil
You should know by now that IANAL is implied for any post of legal opinion on slashdot. With rare exceptions (Ray Beckerman comes to mind), I'd assume the "IANAL" even if the poster writes "IAAL".
Hell, it's not just legal opinion. I take anything written on slashdot with a grain of salt. If it's a topic I know a good bit about, I can normally figure out if a poster is talking out their ass, or if they might have something to add to my understanding.
If it's a topic I know little about, I don't even bother trying to determine if someone knows what's going on. I figure I'm better off at wikipedia for decent base-level information.
IANAL. Of course.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Using that logic I can make any speech illegal and exposed to retribution. Either Free Speech is an absolute right, or it is no right at all -- there is surprisingly little gray area in -between.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
seriously?
Maybe because she doesn't want her name further associated with scurrilous rumors...
So you can post whatever you want under the guise of anonymity, full stop? Free speech has never meant freedom from consequences. Forgetting that is a dire mistake to make.
ACs are modded -6. I don't read you, I don't mod you, I don't see you. Don't like it? Don't be a coward.
As long as the anonymous troll trolls with other anonymous trolls, everything is fine. These idiots were smearing the real names of future competitors in order to ruin their careers before they even have started.
I personally can't wait until the top entry in google on their names will be "got sued by Jane Doe for defamation", together with a link to their highly professional statements. I'm sure it will greatly enhance their careers in the fast food industry.
I'm aging rapidly, I bought a new game and had no idea if my machine was good for it.
Granted, hate speech is a somewhat subjective issue,
What body is going to decide what exactly is hate speech on the Internet?
Oddly enough, there is a body whose job is to determine the facts on matters that are somewhat subjective, and alledged to be harmful. That body is called "a jury."
No one has any privacy left anymore
Privacy starts at home, kids. If you don't want a future employer seeing pictures of you drunk and naked at a frat party, don't put them on the internet!
Seriously, the biggest privacy problem we have these days is people thinking that everything is private unless they explicitly make it public, but reality doesn't work that way. Nobody goes walking down the street naked, then claims their privacy was violated when people looked at them. Well, the internet is no different. If you want something on the internet kept private, you have to make it private, otherwise it's public.
http://www.mhall119.com
I think you are missing the point. This isn't about suing for being offended, or using the law to hit back at someone for saying something mean. The anonymous postings in question clearly meet the legal threshold for libel (accusing someone of having an STD is automatically considered libel without proof of damages in most jurisdictions, I believe), and may meet the legal threshold for threats. These are actions which have been illegal, and legally punishable, for centuries. That they take place on the Internet makes no qualitative difference, and shouldn't.
It is standard and reasonable for courts to issue subpoenas in order to ascertain the identity of someone who has broken the law.
The main differences here from printed libel to online libel are 1) that the publisher (owner of the web site) is, in many cases, likely to be off the hook, because hosts of online forums are not usually considered responsible for what those forums contain unless they control their contents (or fail to respond to DMCA requests); and 2) the reasonable expectation of damages is actually higher than it would be in print-- consider that, say, a New York Times op-ed that appeared only in print form and accused you of something vile and damaging to your reputation might be read by a few hundred thousand people and remain forever unread by all 6 billion or so people who never happen to encounter that day's paper. With the expectation that any potential employer will Google your name to see what turns up, however, the audience for online public libel is unlimited.
I don't see anything unreasonable or controversial here; the only thing wrong was originally including the host of the web site in the lawsuit, which probably was an understandable mistake given that we don't have many years of precedent yet for who is responsible in what sorts of online offenses.
It is a post to an online web forum. If anything the people running that forum should be the ones being sued. If the comments were that far out of line they should have been removed by the people running that forum.
People in general need to grow up and realize that not everyone in the world is going to agree with you or like you. Many will even hate you for what ever their reason. That is life, get used to it.
If an online forum can trash your chances of getting your career going, then that speak volumes for society. And not in a good way.
Flame away.
If you leave a bomb anonymously we'd all want you tracked.
Both hate speech and the bomb are an attack. So why not, freedom of speech shouldn't really enter into it unless what is said is true.
So if they posted something true as a judge that would be my requirement. Show me that it is a lie in which case I'll pass the order to bring them to be held accountable. Otherwise if it is truth well pants you can't sue over the truth (can you?)
Besides when was it freedom of anonymous speech?
No, you got it wrong. You can post whatever you want, full stop. Which part of "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech" you don't understand?
Every aspect of the Bill of Rights comes with a big ole asterisk. (Freedom of Speech/*Hate Speech, Right to Bear Arms/*Fully Automatics, etc. etc.)
"Whenever you do a thing, act as if all the world were watching."
Beer is proof that God loves us, and wants us to be happy.
I saw this more as a Clear and Present Danger argument, although I am not sure if that is how it was presented. Yelling "fire" in a crowded theater, and so forth. Threatening to rape and murder a classmate is a pretty good way to have ones privacy justifiably suspended to ensure the safety of those threatened.
People just need to learn that just because you said it on the internet doesn't mean the statement carries no weight.
"Fuck you" is not nearly as threatening as naming a person, especially a female, and then discussing how they should be sodomized.
I'm not sure those two are analogous. Without having reread the case, I seem to recall that the women in question did not seek out the forums in question. Their pictures were put on the board, and then the comments started flying. When they then joined the board, (again, afair) seeking to have the pictures removed, they were then subject to even harsher comments, including the rape ones.
You, on the other hand, have joined the game yourself, and aditionally you have joined the chat, which is an optional extra, of your own volition. Aditionally, while "I'm going to rape you" might be a breach of conduct on Xbox Live (I don't know if this is the case), in most fps' this is the 'norm' where you attempt to psyche out your opponent. No adult of a reasonable mind will expect the speaker to seek out your address (is this even possible through Xbox Live?) and hunt you down.
However, on this board, not only were the women's pictures posted, their names and addresses were posted, and considering the vitriol spewed forth on the boards, even I, being a VERY common sense kind of guy, would not put it beyond the assholes and idiots* on the boards to actually following through on their threats**
Of course, I'm not in any way, shape or form a lawyer or had any law training. Hell, I'm not even from the US.
* In my humble and non-medical/-psychological opinion, since I am not refering to mental retardation
** Considering the writing, the constant agitation by the other posters etc, I do not consider the comments "innocent", "joking", "ironic", "sarcastic" or even "humourous"
Just as important - the court found in favour of the plaintiffs, so obviously the judge (jury?) found the threats to be credible and the derogatory comments to be libel. If you do not like that ruling, you need to write your congressmen and tell them why. Don't email, don't fax. Send them a physical letter, preferably handwritten. At least that's what the usual comments on the subject around here advices.
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
How is their right to freedom of speech being violated? They're not being censored. As noted above, freedom of speech does not mean freedom of consequences, but you seem to be ignoring that and saying it does.
And you just insulted them. I think you're proving their point. you seem to think you can hide behind anonymity and say whatever you want. What if you couldn't? I can guarantee you that if you called me a bitch on an internet board and lived anywhere near me you'd get punched in the face. Clearly, what you're advocating is that your identity be protected. That has nothing to do with freedom of speech.
Why not? Just because you'd rather it wasn't? What if a lot of other people don't feel the same way? Because a lot of people don't. And before you start calling everyone who disagrees with you stupid and trying to make out like they're morally wrong for not allowing you to get off scot-free with abusing people online anonymously, I have to wonder why you so apparently want to make sure that you can still troll others and keep your identity a secret.
In short, grow up. If you don't have the guts to say something and let it be known that you said it, you should keep it to yourself in the first place.
I dream of a better world... one in which chickens can cross roads without their motives being questioned.
Well, I'm sure the day will come that even fast food joints will check up on their applicants. Just how many places do you think will want to hire someone to work alongside women and serve food to women, when they have repeatedly not only shown themselves to be womenhaters, but actively threatened to rape them repeatedly in the ass?
My guess is "not many".
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
If you don't want a future employer seeing pictures of you drunk and naked at a frat party, don't put them on the internet!
And what's to stop someone else from posting that pic of you drunk and naked at the frat party?
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
Normally I would agree with you, but you are misinformed about what really happened (I admit the article doesn't say much).
This story has been on slashdot a few times. Here's what really happened, if I remember correctly:
- Guys posts pictures of women and comment on the forum (she's a 9! she's a 4! such a bitch i'd rape her! etc.)
- Women ask site owner to remove pictures and offending comments
- Site owner laughs at them, and informs posters that the women in question asked for the pictures to be removed
- Guys don't like it ; they literally start stalking these girls, take more pictures of them (at the gym?), and start posting threats.
- Women sue.
Read this again. These girls got stalked and threatened. I don't care if it's on the internet or elsewhere ; when someone stalks you, takes pictures, and threatens to assault and rape you, it is wrong, and these women have a case. The whole thing about it affecting their career etc was only true at the beginning (the first pictures and comments posted). This thing got a lot more serious afterwards.
Privacy starts at home, kids.
What if you are home and Google Street View is in your driveway looking in your backyard or your window?
Hate speech is fully protected speech, unless uttered in a way as to provoke immediate violence (and even then, it's not the speech per se, but the intent to incite violence, that is the crime). Fully automatic weapons would have been protected by the second amendment in any rational world, since the context is clearly the right to bear military arms.
The big ole asterisks are flagrant violations of the constitution, not exceptions to it.
If we don't want people walking down the street with AK-47s and RPG7s and surface-to-air missiles, we should amend the constitution, not pretend it doesn't say what it obviously says.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Anonymity can be used to prevent otherwise unlawful repercussions. It doesn't much matter that Congress makes no law if the moment you blow the whistle on the local police department, you get indefinitely harassed with bogus, trumped up charges.
Anonymity can be an important part of free speech. The line between it being necessary and harassment is very fine, indeed. Usually, it depends upon who the speaker is talking about.
In order to claim slander, there are two prerequisites: first, the allegations must be false, second, someone must believe the allegations to be true. Unless they can prove there is someone somewhere stupid enough to believe in anonymous posts they read on the internet, there are no consequences to that trolling.
That's oversimplifying to a huge degree.
First of all, there are slightly different laws in different states. I'm not sure what the laws in this case are. If they are as you say, then fine, ignore the rest of this post.
A defamation claim can be made for just about any reason. If someone says something negative about you, you can take them to court for it. You've laid out the common defenses to a defamation claim--if it's the truth, in the US, you'll probably lose the case. If it's not true, generally, you have to prove that there was malicious intent. Believability is only one aspect of malicious intent. A statement could be slanderous without being believable ("Jane Doe kills puppies for Satan!"). Of course, if you are a celebrity, you have a higher burden of proof. Now, the alleged slanderer must have knowingly lied. If the guy heard from another guy that I (a celebrity) fucked a goat, and they publish it, I probably won't win the suit.
One of the most common defenses against such suits is that the person was stating an opinion. That's a whole separate can of worms. It's all really quite complicated.
In this case, it sounds like the trolls were making statements with the intent to defame competition, so that the trolls would get opportunities that these Jane Does would otherwise have received. I have no doubt that the Janes will win, unless the trolls made it quite clear that they were expressing opinion, and weren't attempting to state facts about the Janes.
Problem with this statement "Don't put them on the internet" is this - many of these photos on the internet were not posted by the individual claiming a desire for privacy.
Facebook is a horrifying example of this. I have a friend who's facebook photos are nice and clean and show him as he (99% of the time) is. Shown right below that are the 300+ photos in which friends have tagged his face in so that people know they are of him. So... the 1% of his life in the last 3 years in which he made mistakes and did things that look ridiculous (wearing a bra on a dare, that type of stuff), are now plastered on the internet, and he cannot do anything about it.
So... yes, true privacy is dead. Long live the False Sense of Privacy.
Before commenting on the Bible, please read it first
Huh? Okay, let's do a little experiment here. You must have a female relative or acquaintance somewhere who can get online. Now, send her an email or post on a forum she visits a lot of insults and threaten to assault/rape her. Indicate that you know who she is in real life. See how she reacts.
Now, try to imagine how you'd feel if exactly that happened to a woman you happen to care about, like, say, your mom or a sister. "Idle threats"? Sure, a threat to rape your mom or sister might be idle, but I'd bet you'd take it seriously. I know that if it were me and I found out who he was, I'd want his ass in jail for threatening me with bodily harm. It's little different from a guy calling you and telling you he's coming to your house to rape you. Simply put, it's not a matter of childish threats. It would be pretty damn scary, in fact.
Christ, the number of guys here defending these guys rights to threaten women online makes me wonder how many wannabe-rapists there are on slashdot. If I ever meet any of you in real life, keep in mind that I'm a redneck from the southern US and I will shoot you if you try anything. Yeah, we get a little upset when rape threats start flying around. What did you expect, them (or me) to just giggle and ask if we can get you another beer? Jesus.
I dream of a better world... one in which chickens can cross roads without their motives being questioned.
AC's name is Dave Bubbleshits & he lives over in the blue house behind the college. He's a dumb bitch-ho who should be raped daily.
There's a huge difference between anonymous flamebait directed at other anonymous people. These guys weren't directing it that way. They were giving specifics, in some cases names. This wasn't your normal trolling, this was cyberstalking & cyberbullying at it's worst. Done in person, it would be bad enough, but 4 years later, those comments are still the first thing anyone - including a prospective employer - sees when they Google these women's names. A libel is definitely called for here.
Most of the time the person who is drunk and naked at a frat party isn't the one posting pictures on the internet. It would be impossible to count the number of times an ex-boyfriend post a passionate private video to an online porn site, or a passerby post a youtube video of an embarrassing moment.
Of course, people need to be careful about where and when they get drunk and stupid (never?) and who they allow to video them doing the nasty (no one,) but that doesn't make it right to post private moments, nor does it mean that the victims of that kind of invasion of privacy deserve the consequences.
If anything, I think it's a problem with our society that we are so ready to ostracize someone for being human. Most of us have done some stupid things we regret. Those that have not are either lieing or boring as hell. Few of us were caught on video doing it.
Libel != freedom of speech.
If you damage someone because you knowingly made false statements about them, they can sue for compensation of those damages.
And what's to stop someone else from posting that pic of you drunk and naked at the frat party?
Errr....I dunno, perhaps you taking charge for your own actions and not getting drunk and naked at a frat party?
One thing we should have learned by now, damned cameras are everywhere. Either take responsibility for your own actions, or expect the inevitable to happen.
It's your right to be offensive. There are no laws against that.
True. But there are laws against slander, libel, stalking and assault. All of which were, arguably, committed by the posters under an assumption of anonymity. I read a lot of their posts a year or so ago when this hit /. the first time, and these guys were definitely over the line of offensive.
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
This is not about privacy. It is also not, as the submitter wants us to think, about "Freedom of Speech".
Freedom of speech is the right to say what you think if you don't thereby infringe on other people's higher valued rights (by committing libel). It's not the right to hide behind a false identity and make libelous claims.
It is also not "privacy" to go out in public, use a fake name and yell something, independent of whether it's true or not.
Privacy is the right to decide for yourself how much of the "things you don't do in public" becomes public (that's a vague definition, given).
There is no reason to protect the identity of trolls. There is a reason to protect their right to say their honest opinion, however stupid it may be -- but not their wish to make libelous claims and go unpunished.
I don't know the context of this "threat", not having read the forum in question
There's your first problem - before passing judgment, it would be good to do at least a bit of cursory research.
but what do these women do when someone says "Fuck you" to them at a party or driving a car? Do they go running for a lawyer? In both cases, the threat would be much more credible than some anonymous net poster.
And there's your second problem - in spite of admitting that you've read nothing about this, including apparently the article, you're ready to make ad hominem attacks.
On the off chance you read this, the grandparent poster was wrong - the threats were graphic and specific, listing the girls' names, photos, and class and gym schedules. That becomes a credible threat.
All bans on weapons(guns or otherwise) have done throughout history is create a victim society, mainly due to the fact that the people they are trying to keep from getting said weapons will have them anyways. They aren't going to care that they aren't supposed to have them.
This part I would call "wishful thinking". Allowing weapons to everyone has never minimized the number of victims. Theories saying that it should do so have been brought forward several times, and some of them actually sound pretty logical. But they all have collided with that strange thing named "reality" and crashed badly.
It's one thing to troll a board anonymously and call other anonymous members names because it's quite apparent that sort of behavior is silly childish trolling, but it's a whole different thing when the trolling is targeted against someone's real name.
The damage is greatly worsened when you know both the anonymous troll and victim are related in some way geographically or attending the same university. That's when the threats become elevated from stupid trolling to a real threat because the troll has demonstrated he has the desire, ability, and means to carry out that threat. Then consider the troll has the advantage of surprise because the victim has no idea who that person is. It could be a lab partner, a teaching assistant, the person sitting next to her in class. There's no way to know. At this point we're way past harmless trolling. We're in the realm of felony behavior.
There is a very long history of men sexually victimizing women. Idiot trolls, such as these, use that knowledge to magnify the hurtful effects of their threats. It demonstrated they were consciously and willingly performing this behavior. Conscious intent plays a huge factor when determining if something is a crime. It clearly was in this case.
And finally, even if these trolls weren't intending to carry out these threats, one could argue they were acting to recruit others to do it on their behalf. So now the victim has to worry about not one individual, but all individuals.
I'll tell you this: for those women, that situation was a fucking scary place to be in.
Camping on quad since 1996.
What's really, really annoying is that these right-wingers who think it's OK to threaten to rape women because it's "not actually a threat", are probably the VERY SAME people who think that the police should be allowed to arrest someone at an airport for having a suspicious-looking beard and praying in Arabic.
Female Prison Rape in NY