Slashdot Mirror
Craigslist Prankster Sued, Argues DMCA Abuse
destinyland writes "Though Sunday's New York Times dubbed him a spokesperson for internet trolls, Jason Fortuny's just been sued in federal court. Fortuny re-published over 180 responses to a fake sex ad on Craigslist in 2006 — but he's finally been located and issued with a summons. The victim argues Fortuny violated his privacy, and that the photo Fortuny re-published was copyrighted. Fortuny argues he re-published the photo to stand up to the victim's bogus DMCA notice, and that the gullible victim had voluntarily provided the photo. In a motion to the court Fortuny even argues that he helped publicize a privacy risk on the internet, whereas 'bringing legal action against me may punish me, but it won't change or even impact online culture.'"
'bringing legal action against me may punish me, but it won't change or even impact online culture.'
I guess the punishment is what his victims want.
OMG getting sued is such epic lulz for a troll, right?
Classic forum troll behavior when they get in trouble they are surprised and inset that they were actually helping. He does point out an uncomfortable truth though, there will always be forum trolls to annoy and confound the masses with their stupidity and ill-logic.
I wouldn't consider this guy a troll. A prankster, maybe, but not a troll. Come on, though. Re-publishing responses to fake sex ads is just comedy GOLD!
But if you punish enough criminals, you DO change and impact the culture.
This man is damaged piece of crap. I feel sorry for him, having been abused as a child, but that does not excuse him taking out his crap on the rest of us.
He is a semi-professional 'troll', going around pissing people off and laughing at them.
He routinely engages in low-level criminal actions, knowing that he is unlikely to get caught and arrested for doing things that are the equivelent of spray painting a car.
I hope he finally gets what he so richly deserves, legal punishment.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
The guy may well be legally in the clear (although his argument that Craigslist's disclaimer that "you may be exposed to Content that is offensive, indecent, inaccurate, misleading" allows him to legally engage in fraud strikes as ... unlikely). But there's no question that he's a jerk, and his whiny, pompous defense of himself makes him even more of a jerk.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
I think at least one marriage was broken up because of this ordeal. It struck me a seriously a-hole move of his, and not very funny.
Moderation: +1 pwnage
Right, because the respondent didn't already have problems with his marriage.
The article does not explicitly say anything about his lawyer, and it sounds like he is doing this on his own. Whether he is right or wrong it will probably not matter unless he can find himself a decent lawyer. Going into legal proceedings without a lawyer is a train wreck in progress.
The only thing worse than trying to find sex on the internet is to get legal advice on the internet. Either way you are going to receive it the same way.
Anyone thinking of complaining that the summary is worthless without pics, near the bottom of TFA there is a link to the full list of responses and photos at Encyclopedia Dramatica.
Be warned, it's NSFW ... in fact IMO it's not even safe if you're simply trying to maintain an appetite in anticipation of lunchtime
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
Pretty stupid troll if you ask me.
He knowingly told people his name and what he had done in that NYT article, so now his victims are trolling him IRL.
Error establishing a database connection :(
Asshole or not, it's not his fault if some married guy can't keep his dick in his pants.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
He goes onto a site and begins with a bait picture (which is a lie) to entice someone into a private conversation and then publishes the response. Anyone who thinks this is good natured humor knows little of human nature. This activity is particularly nasty because it often entices the dark side of owns nature to come out and then lays shame on them so this fucking worthless blogger can have something to write about. He was not conducting and experiment to prove any hypothesis, he was just looking for something to write about because his mind is very uncreative. Candid CAMERA THAT WAS FUNNY BECAUSE IN THE END THE PARTICIPANTS WERE LAUGHING TO. HERE THAT IS NOT THE CASE
Wow. "I swear it's not my fault honey, blame the hooker". The husband (I assume) responded to a SEX ad on Craigslist and it's the fault of the prankster.
If I were that guys wife I'd send a thank you to Fortuny for helping me cut my losses.
Sounds like the Comedian who went to a telemarketers conference and started calling all the hotel rooms at 3 am and published the results.
you will note that fortuny has a history of sexual abuse as a child, that his family turned a blind eye towards. which goes far, pop psychology wise, to explaining what would motivate him to do his craigs list "expose": an attempt to find empowerment over an issue which means helplessness to him psychologically
so, in a way, his trolling is just therapy, catharsis. which is my whole theory of trolling: far from pointless negative and twisted, online trolling is merely a way to jettison asocial impulses harmlessly (relatively harmlessly) on the internet
having said that, and fully appreciative of the fact that free speech fundamentalists will come out in support of fortuny, i say to you free speech fundamentalists: no law or government can protect you from the consequences of what you say. in other words, there are elements of speech which have every expectation of protection. then there are elements of free speech, that, while a good argument can be made for their official, societal level acceptance, doesn't mean some asshole somewhere isn't going to get upset and try to do something about what you say
insulting pictures of mohammed, for example. yes, a sound understanding of free speech means that insulting pictures of mohammed should be tolerated. however, a legal, societal understanding of tolerance on this issue does not protect you from the anger of religious fundamentalists who could care less about tolerance
you don't have protection from the consequences of what you say, regardless of the legal environment. making enemies of random guys looking for easy sex is not a situation where a idealistic expectation of free speech without consequences gets you very far
remember that about free speech: it has consequences. if you get upset about that idea, or expect government to somehow protect you from the consequences of what you say, you really don't understand the whole notion that with freedom comes responsibility, which is the only notion that will keep speech truly free
like any right in this world, it carries with it responsibility. shoot your mouth of without any regard for conesequences, and you will discover that consequences happen, that not everyone in society is a tolerant ethical individual
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I'm not vouching for infidelity and don't tell me this prankster was out to do any good. He was doing it to humiliate these people. Still, in the end it clearly does illustrate that you have to be careful what you send over the tubes.
Moderation: +1 pwnage
Fortuny argues he re-published the photo to stand up to the victim's bogus DMCA notice, and that the gullible victim had voluntarily provided the photo.
Ah yes, because as we all know, voluntarily providing someone a copy automatically gives the person full rights to re-publish.
Fortuny even argues that he helped publicize a privacy risk...
Let me guess, this fuck-up of human being is representing himself? He'll soon find that an excuse that might have worked in middle school for an innocent prank, will not work in court for seriously anti-social (and in some cases, damaging) behavior.
1) Don't send your personal contact information to strangers on the internet, especially not in answer to a sex ad on Craigslist, especially not attached to a picture of your erect penis, because doing so is very likely to cause you all manner of trouble. If you do such a thing you are a twit.
2) If you are in a situation in which your life would be ruined if you were known to be into BDSM, *don't make it known that you're into BDSM*! If you do, you're a twit!
2) If you demonstrate that someone is a twit, they are more likely to get cross and sue you than to stop being a twit.
Sure, the guy was kind of a jerk and the whole thing is desperately unfunny like most trolls. But that doesn't mean he should be punished because there are so many twits about.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
He was featured in a NY Times Magazine article about trolling, so I think he flies the troll flag rather proudly.
...I mean three! I mean three lessons! Oh.... argh.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
It COULD be comedy gold if you stripped the real identities from the responses before you make fun of them (even then it's a little prickish, considering you BAITED them). If you reveal the real identities of these duped people, it's not comedy. It's just being a mean-spirited, malicious asshole.
A kid who busts his ass stupidly trying to jump off a roof in a stunt--funny. Throwing a kid off a roof for fun--felony.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
The marriage was broken up because the guy wanted to cheat on his wife but got caught instead. The prank actually did a wife a favor.
I have no sympathy whatsoever for this guy. If you want to sleep around then suck it up and get a divorce. Promising to be faithful and then sneaking off behind her back is beyond contempt.
Richard Pryor is comedy gold, too. But that doesn't give me the right to post transcripts or recordings of his material online, even if they were given to me personally by him. Just because I send you an email with a picture in it doesn't transfer the copyright of that material to you, nor does it give you a license to republish the material. His only fair use argument is going to be satire or parody, and that seems like a bit of a stretch. Not impossible, but he'll need a friendly court and a good lawyer. IANAL - JP (Just pontificating).
We are the 198 proof..
I highly recommend it to those of you who have access. From the description given of this Fortuny guy, he deserves all the misery he gets and then some: the Craigslist stunt was far from the first time he's used the net to hassle people for the sheer hell of it.
From the perspective of the guy who was trying to cheat, maybe - but I'm guessing that the wife who found out her husband is trying to hook up on the interenet is glad to know, even if she isn't happy with the knowledge.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/magazine/03trolls-t.html?scp=2&sq=troll&st=cse
A kid who busts his ass stupidly trying to jump off a roof in a stunt--funny. Throwing a kid off a roof for fun--felony.
Oh, great. NOW what am I supposed to do on weekends?
if you look for sex on the internet you are getting into legal trouble, and if you look for legal advice on the internet you are going to get fucked
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Just because I send you an email with a picture in it doesn't transfer the copyright of that material to you, nor does it give you a license to republish the material.
Er, actually, it does, or at least, it can.
Rule of Slashdot #0: You and people like you are not representative of the larger population. - A.C.
Well, I guess its time for a good-ol-fashioned Internet ethnic cleansing.
Speaking of which, do you think this was the right crowd to taunt? Getting sued might be the least of his worries.
but if you understand the number of reasons why vigilante justice is wrong, then you understand how the manner in which he got his commeuppance is wrong
condemning fortuny is not standing up for the cheater. its standing against vigiliante justice
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
From reading the article, it seems clear that he has caused intentional harm to these people.
I think a good attorney should be able to get some money out of him, especially if he's not investing in a good defense attorney.
3) If you're going to violate the DMCA, you should join the Air Force first.
Really? I've bought and sold legit stuff on Craigslist. A lot easier than dealing with ebay.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
Seriously, though, who is responsible for that? The cheater is more responsible than the prankster, by many orders of magnitude. If I have an affair with some lady and then tell her husband and the marriage breaks up, nobody is going to sue me for the act of disclosing infidelity. (Uhh.. at least not in America, where this happend. I suppose the situation in some parts of Europe could be more interesting.) Arguing copyright violation is one thing, but the publishing of the picture did no more harm to the marriage than a careless word could do.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Slashdot is full of trolls...should we get rid of it, too?
Stasis is death. Embrace change.
"I hope he finally gets what he so richly deserves, legal punishment."
Good luck on your lawsuit against him! From the langauge of the email, you must be very upset it's only legal punishement you can provide!
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
Fortuny: 'bringing legal action against me may punish me, but it won't change or even impact online culture.'
Judge: 'No it won't change or even impact online culture, but you're being punished for being a twat. Now give me my fucking pictures back, and get the fuck out of my courtroom.'
Karma: Bad. (As in Good?)
Perhaps she'd have preferred if the rest of the world didn't find out at the same time.
Perhaps he'd never have gone through with the meeting?
Perhaps someone else thought it'd be fun to reply to an ad on craigslist in their friend's name and enclose a photo of their friend? That sounds like a pretty likely scenario amongst friends who play jokes on one another. Imagine if one of your friends did that and before you even found it, your 'reply' to a sex ad was posted on an internet site and gathering thousands of hits.
Sorry for the double-top post, but...
How is this ANY different than Chris Hansen on Dateline NBC in "To Catch a Predator." Other than the "bait" not pretending to be 17, what's the difference?
One troll lies and uses anonymity on the web to damage people. The other uses lawyers. Not much difference, really.
Anonymous does not forgive, and we do not forget.
We will deal with the plaintiff.
Sounds like the Comedian who went to a telemarketers conference and started calling all the hotel rooms at 3 am and published the results.
Got a link for that?
Stasis is death. Embrace change.
Come on, though. Re-publishing responses to fake sex ads is just comedy GOLD!
Re-publishing responses to fake sex ads, but keeping identifying details anonymous? Comedy gold to some.
Re-publishing responses to fake sex ads and revealing identifying details? Pure douche-baggery.
AccountKiller
Yeah its "hilarious." Its a severe breach of privacy. If you like that joke, then I'm going to start a fake suicide hotline and replay the tapes on the web. I'll even insert my own amusing commentary. I'm not a troll, I'm "helping." Hey, if those people didnt want to be made fun of then they should not have been suicidal to begin with!
I hope this guy gets taken to the cleaners for what he did.
So was the marriage "broken up" because the husband responded to online sex solicitation -- or because he got caught?
Guess I'll have to just bookmark this baby. Nothing like free appetite suppressants to help get back my girlish figure...
"comedy GOLD"?
You're that guy that rented American Pie XI aren't you?
I didn't know so many men sent naked pictures while replying to a personal ad.
(nt) means no text
The vast majority of people that I know who have been taken in by fraud are trying to do something illegal or immoral when they are taken advantage of.
The Nigerian 419 scam only works with people willing to break the law - so the people who are taken in by the 419 scam are not 'innocent bystanders' they are amateur con men (and women) who got conned
Looking for sex on craigslist? Seriously - how is someone who got embarrassed trying to get a girl on a FREE service where you can post just about anything for sale (at least until it gets flagged) in any way a victim?
To use an old, albeit highly relevant, cliche: If you play with fire, you're going to get burned.
I did it for Johnny.
Providing counseling to a suicidal individual, and the records associated with it, falls under guidelines regulating medical records.
This case could be interesting. I know there is a radio station in chicago that reads responses to their fake sex craiglist ads as part of their morning show.
Recent NYT article on trolls, including Fortuny
I think more serious than men getting into trouble with their wives is the (alleged) fact that a couple of people lost their jobs.
Professor, their STARTing to catch on too US.
We need more time (11:81.0pm).
their is no moon,
~%%%%%
Really? I've bought and sold legit stuff on Craigslist. A lot easier than dealing with ebay.
Well, I've known several people to try to use it. All were approached exclusively by cash-cheque-forward-money-scammers, and one got burned for almost a grand. None of them got approached by a single legitimate person.
The only venue in which I've heard of anyone having success with Craigslist is anonymous forums. Like this one. Not knowing anything about who you are, it's just as likely that you personally rip people off and want to keep the money train rolling as it is that you legitimately use the service. Your referral, therefore, means nothing.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Exactly. Who is to say that person hadn't also replied/met/whatever with other people advertising on the site, or with coworkers, etc.
A kid who busts his ass stupidly trying to jump off a roof in a stunt--funny. Throwing a kid off a roof for fun--felony.
Somehow I don't see how 'throwing a kid off a roof' and making the faces of cheating assholes public are connected.
Don't want to be humiliated? Don't do bad things.
I was just doing research when I downloaded all those kiddie porn pictures.
For one, I find it hilarious that your name falls right into your first few lines.
Anyway, yes, your points are all valid. I have not heard of many scams involving legitimate activity on Craigslist, either. Most people I know who were scammed were trying to do the equivalent of buying speakers out of the back of a van.
Seriously, people. This guy put out a honeypot . And those of low moral character took the bait. And he alleges that he learned from this (expecting no responses, getting nearly 200). IT Security folks do this all the time. He just took the technical security solution, and made it a social security solution. (Nevermind that the term "honeypot" actually originates closer to Fortuny's actions than the IT solution.)
And, I bet that those wives who filed for divorce over this are thanking Fortuny for exposing their (now or soon-to-be) ex-husbands for the cheaters that they are. The married men who responded obviously weren't thinking too much of their vows.
That said, I do think they had a reasonable expectation of privacy, which was broken. Fortuny could have got his point across just fine by smudging the photos before posting them.
if someone thinks something is wrong and seeks justice on an issue, they are being a vigilante. doesn't matter what is actually legal or illegal, what matters is what they think is right and wrong
if you start shooting people who do a poor job at parallel parking, you are a "vigilante" in search of "justice" in your mind, regardless of the fact that poor parallel parking skills are not illegal
which is one of the reasons why vigilante justice is wrong: it is determined by the vigiliante, which, as you note, often delineates sharply from society-wide definitions and laws about right and wrong
so i don't know why you think it is valid to point out that someone is not a vigilante because they aren't dutifully following actual laws on the books. as if such a consideration ever had anything to do with what motivates any vigilante, ever, or has anything to do with the criteria for labelling someone a vigilante
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Your argument is not valid. This is not vigilante justice because cheating on your wife is not against the law, and her finding out about this and leaving you is also not against the law.
It's a metaphor. The "vigilante" in this scenario is Fortuny, not the wife. The common principle is that two wrongs don't make a right.
Sexually humiliating strangers isn't funny, and Fortuny should get the living crap beaten out of him for this. Hope the judge sends him up the river or at least fines his ass into bankruptcy.
I think at least one marriage was broken up because of this ordeal. It struck me a seriously a-hole move of his, and not very funny.
No one marriage was broken up by a respondent looking to cheat. I'm not saying the guy is not an a-hole but being an a-hole isn't illegal...if it were slashdot would be a digital ghosttown
The only venue in which I've heard of anyone having success with Craigslist is anonymous forums. Like this one. Not knowing anything about who you are, it's just as likely that you personally rip people off and want to keep the money train rolling as it is that you legitimately use the service. Your referral, therefore, means nothing.
You seem to be quite paranoid about these con-artists. Paranoid to the point of believing that anyone who doesn't condemn Craigslist is likely a con-artist himself, and is trying to lure you back into their organized crime ring.
Do you also believe that the government is monitoring your brain waves?
Sounds like the Comedian who went to a telemarketers conference and started calling all the hotel rooms at 3 am and published the results.
Got a link for that?
I would pay to see that.
Had the married person not been responding to such an ad, there would have been no immediate cause for dissolution.
The fact that the married person was responding to the ad implies that there were already issues in that marriage.
If people wouldn't choose to do immoral things, they wouldn't suffer the consequences of them coming to light.
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
YEAAHHHHHHHHHHHH
There's nothing in the street
Looks any different to me
And the slogans are replaced, by-the-bye
And the parting on the left
Is now the parting on the right
And the beards have all grown longer overnight
I'll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around me
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
Then I'll get on my knees and pray
We don't get fooled again
Don't get fooled again
No, no!
Yeah, because trying to find a renter for your spare room or sublet apartment is illegal and immoral. The scam works because they pretend to be a student enrolled in university and ask you to forward the balance of the rubber cheque their "parents" wrote to some third party to pay for books or furniture or some other sort of fee.
That aside, the guy in question here is a victim of fraud. He responded to someone who put forth that they were a woman looking for a man, except the whole thing was fraudulent, like a sting operation being conducted by someone who has no authority to do so.
It doesn't matter that he was revealed to be looking for sex. What matters is that he was suckered into having his dirty laundry aired in public while those who would pass judgment on him have their skeletons comfortably locked away in the closet.
As for the malicious asshole who likes to pretend he's a woman and shame people for recreation, well, he belongs in a shallow grave. He's malicious, and a coward, and a liar, and he screws peoples lives up for sport. I'd quite happily shoot him in the head with my own hand and go back to eating my lunch.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Let's ignore the marriage. A couple people lost their jobs and many, many people lost their privacy. Answering a personals ad and providing contact information (something a guy who answers a personals ad should do to prove he's not a threat) is not a crime. Now if someone gets their hand on Fortuny, *that* will be comedy gold.
in other people's business?
say you see child abuse. well yes, get involved. many other examples: yes, get involved. too often people say "its none of my business" and let a crime they witness lisde. no, this is unethical
however, issues of sex and marriage are complicated. maybe they have an open marriage. maybe the married couple are separated pending divorce. maybe the wife refuses the husband any sex, etc.
as for my last example: lets talk ethics, shall we? if a wife refuses to have sex with her husband, is her husband duty bound by marriage to remain celibate himself? can he rightfully seek sex outside the marriage if his wife refuses sex?
90% of the time, the guy is probably just a cheating asshole. but sometimes you are not doing any good by butting in to other people's business (although, of course, in many many cases where you see something ilegal or unethical going on, you have every right, no duty, to get involved)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The comedian was Tom Mabe, the album was A Wake Up Call for Telemarketers
Only place with samples I've found were on Rhapsody. Scroll down to the "Hotel Calls". They're not as funny as some of his other stuff where he just outright leads a telemarketer on, but they're funny in the sense of, you can tell the guys are tired as hell and they're getting a taste of their own medicine.
Here's a press release from before the album was made: http://www.reversespins.com/telemarketing.html
It's not funny because being dishonest with your spouse isn't funny, not because the spouse found out what was happening.
People do embarrassing things every single day that they don't expect to be exposed to the world. Most other people understand and generally respect that idea when they deal with their fellow human beings (the "Golden Rule" that helps us all to live together in relative peace).
So sure, I could go into a public restroom at my office every day, snap covert pictures of my co-workers who have small dicks, and post them on the internet. But I don't. You know why? BECAUSE I'M NOT A HUGE FLAMING DOUCHEBAG!
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Not true actually; fair use also takes into account what distribution will do to the market value of the distributed work.
In a nutshell, if it's worthless, you're going to have a very hard time proving copyright infringement.
The only way they'll get him is in a civil suit for harrassment or libel.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
If I were that guys wife I'd send a thank you to Fortuny for helping me cut my losses.
If I were that guy's kid, I'd ask Fortuny if he'd like to tell me anything about the Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy, or Santa Claus. I'd then thank him for shattering all my childhood illusions and ensuring my exposure to a long drawn out custody battle that will leave me an emo kid who feels rejected and unloved by my parents. Finally, when I run away from home, become a child prostitute in order to survive, and subsequently become addicted to crack, I'll be really glad Fortuny was there to set my life on its proper course.
Sarcasm aside, you sound like you're in a loveless relationship... either that or you've been spanking it alone all your life. If I were to lose my SO in such a way, I might be upset about the cheating, but I'd be even more upset about losing my SO, whom I care for very deeply... Your response indicates to me that you're a bitter person who deserves pity, or a callous one who doesn't understand love very well.
I buy and sell on Craigslist all the time. I have never had a problem but then I follow the rules clearly branded in bold letters on every response email you get:
** CRAIGSLIST ADVISORY --- AVOID SCAMS BY DEALING LOCALLY ** Avoid: wiring money, cross-border deals, work-at-home ** Beware: cashier checks, money orders, escrow, shipping
Deal ONLY in person and ONLY in cash and things stay sane.
if you look for sex on the internet you are getting into legal trouble, and if you look for legal advice on the internet you are going to get fucked
Which simply means if you are searching for sex on the internet, just go on a lawyer forum, or ask for legal advice.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
I've had success with Craigslist. Multiple times. I've found an apartment in which I currently live, I've found a bike rack for my car which works great, I sold my old car. I've also been approached by scammers, but it's Craigslist and it's easy to catch scammers and just not respond to them or deal with them at all. All you have to do is meet in public for a cash transaction with a friend around.
This sig isn't original enough, it's time to come up with something witty...
No, he did not bait these people. These people were already looking for a way to cheat on their wives so it wouldn't have mattered if the guy posted these ads or not. These men would have found someone else.
Baiting is when you induce someone to do something which is otherwise wrong. I.E. Telling someone to sell drugs to someone else so you can catch the other person buying drugs but then turning around and arresting you because you sold the drugs (not the best example but the quickest).
Your analogy at the end fails because, as just stated, the guy didn't do anything to entice these men to cheat on their wives. If it wasn't this guys ad, it would have been someone elses these men responded to.
Already modded so posting AC.
The only way they'll get him is in a civil suit for harrassment or libel.
I don't think you could be sued for libel if you posted someone's own message verbatim.
You have to specifically state that you're transferring rights, when you're transferring, so really it doesn't.
The real question is how much does correspondence fall into traditional copyright protection for literary works?
The ownership of a two party conversation can be disputed; the post was a response to a request posted on the board...That could qualify it as a solicited work, which could make the copyright fall into a work for hire category, like the answer to a test question which, though written by the student, belongs to the professor.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
as the first 3 involve an exchange of money for sex, which is illegal
and by "acceptable" i mean acceptable by current prevailing societal norms. my own personal norms finds nothing wrong with prostitution, as long as it is highly regulated to prevent abuse, human trafficking, disease, etc.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
matchstick men: "Make sure that whoever you're conning isn't conning you".
MP3 Search Engine
Well, I don't defend this guy. I'm all for sending photographs of my penis to strangers on the Internet.
I just think it's a shining example that not everyone shares your views and will expose such things to the world, regardless of the letter of the law, or whatever consequences they may face.
Right, because the respondent didn't already have problems with his marriage.
Thanks for a perfect example of the sort of bullsh!t logic the trolls use to justify the harm they cause for lulz.
So sure, I could go into a public restroom at my office every day, snap covert pictures of my co-workers who have small dicks, and post them on the internet. But I don't. You know why? BECAUSE I'M NOT A HUGE FLAMING DOUCHEBAG!
But, what if your coworkers snapped pics of their own junk, then emailed them to a stranger on the Internet?
Was the marriage broken up because of the prankster, or was it broken up become one of the parties was a cheating scumbag and got discovered by the spouse? There is a very significant difference.
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
is clearly an exercise in vigilante justice
http://www.google.com/search?q=fortuny+vigilante
i don't know why you find it so difficult to accept the word's usage in this manner, it is clearly within the realm of valid meaning for the word. i don't know why you think you have a point to prove
are you something like a grammar nazi? am i going to get a citation from the dictionary police? (snicker)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Perhaps someone else thought it'd be fun to reply to an ad on craigslist in their friend's name and enclose a photo of their friend? That sounds like a pretty likely scenario amongst friends who play jokes on one another. Imagine if one of your friends did that and before you even found it, your 'reply' to a sex ad was posted on an internet site and gathering thousands of hits.
ooh, the fun one can have with their boss' personal info and an anonymous email account...
Wow -- you're a pretty hard-core skeptic, aren't you?
My wife and I have used craigslist a number of times. While I *have* seen the cash-cheque-forward-money-scammers a few times, in my experience there are a lot more honest people on craigslist than scammers. YMMV, of course.
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
Well I guess we know how your first marriage ended.
I'm not vouching for infidelity and don't tell me this prankster was out to do any good. He was doing it to humiliate these people.
Can't we do both at the same time?
Honestly, I don't buy that his actions were guided merely by a desire to "do good". On the other hand, it doesn't seem impossible that he imagined this project might have some beneficial effects. It's informative about the lack of privacy/anonymity of online communications. It's discouraging people from engaging in this sort of behavior. It's exposing some creepy individuals for what they are. It's showing some interesting facets of human behavior.
Yes, it's also humiliating some people. I'm not sure that this in and of itself is an awful thing. Sometimes people should be humiliated when they do something bad or stupid. It sets an example of why you don't do bad and stupid things. The main problem that I see is that it has the potential to be such a far-reaching and long-term humiliation. When something is put on the internet, anyone in the world can see it, and it can stick around forever. Essentially, these guys can never walk into a room for the rest of their lives and be able to trust that the people in that room haven't seen these emails and pictures. That's pretty rough.
and likely you're afraid they'd return the favour ;)
MP3 Search Engine
it is a biological need though. but you can be in a marriage with someone where absolutely every facet of the relationship is fulfilling and nurturing, except the sex
in which case, an open marriage, or even a crime of omission about telling your wife what you were doing while she turns a blind eye, is superior to divorce, don't you think?
or should a nurturing, productive, successful marriage be jettisoned, just because sex occurs outside the marriage?
i am of course speaking in the hypothetical, and of course, the majority of extramarital affairs are by cheating assholes, but not the vast majority. and so one shouldn't be so hasty to call out the cavalry on an issue that is complex and subtle, not simple and straightforward
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
If I were that guy's kid, I'd ask Fortuny if he'd like to tell me anything about the Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy, or Santa Claus. I'd then thank him for shattering all my childhood illusions and ensuring my exposure to a long drawn out custody battle that will leave me an emo kid who feels rejected and unloved by my parents.
And he'd be right if he pointed you back to your father and said, "Nope. Thank that guy over there for shattering your childhood."
I don't like Fortuny or his ilk, but he does have a few good points. The plaintiff shouldn't be using spurious copyright infringement claims to get back at him. Most of the arguments the plaintiff has really don't apply to this case. However, Fortuny does deserve to be sued (albeit in the correct jurisdiction) for damages. It doesn't matter if he intended to harm the victim or not. If damage was caused, he should pay the plaintiff for his trouble. But it should be done the right way that doesn't involve the DMCA at all. As always IANAL
That said, I do think they had a reasonable expectation of privacy, which was broken. Fortuny could have got his point across just fine by smudging the photos before posting them.
I'm not sure if you can expect to much privacy when responding to a stranger on an anonymous forum to engage in acts of borderline legality.
Define 'bad things'.
I fail to see how sex between consenting adults qualifies, even if it is 'kinky'.
Infidelity and lying can certainly be bad things, but not everyone who replied to his ad was a 'cheating asshole'.
those who push the limits of free expression into unethical territory deserve each other
if you shout fire in a crowded theatre, you deserve the guy who videotapes your transgression and publishes your social security number and street address on the internet. buth are wrong uses of speech. but, in a way, they are to be expected and they deserve each other in a twisted way. same with fortuny and his "victims"
free speech is not speech without consequences. speech without consequences simply doesn't exist. everyone should remember that, and then open their mouths
free speech is a concept that applies to and is appreciated by the great ethical responsible middle majority of society. but free speech does not protect you from the evil, the stupid, and the intolerant fringes of society
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
If I were to lose my SO in such a way, I might be upset about the cheating, but I'd be even more upset about losing my SO, whom I care for very deeply..
Then don't leave your SO when he/she cheats. That's your choice.
I didn't threaten anyone. I simply expressed the level of regard that I have for scumbags such as this, and what I consider an appropriate response. I do hope the guy who got his life screwed up takes care of the guy though. Be nice to read a follow up about how he got run over in a hit and run and didn't survive.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
I agree, it is sad that we are creatures of habit, do you think that guy who is suing responded only to that email alone. I am sure he isn't new at this, and if it is done to protect his wife, then hell yeah, I side for the defendant.
However, I am not sure how someone responding to an add let's say on lavalife or eHarmony would feel the same as everyone is now, I mean, this is the only guy to come forward???
So ok, he felt abused, but so what did you expect going to Craigslist and posting, might as well bid on Ebay....> ....
seriously, what the hell is the internet coming to???
I didn't threaten anyone. I simply expressed the level of regard that I have for scumbags such as this, and what I consider an appropriate response. I do hope the guy who got his life screwed up takes care of the guy though. Be nice to read a follow up about how he got run over in a hit and run and didn't survive.
Really, now. Because the following quote, from "ShieldW0lf", uid 601553 on http://slashdot.org/ seems to convey his intent to murder the individual referenced. I have a feeling that individual is Jason Fortuny.
As for the malicious asshole who likes to pretend he's a woman and shame people for recreation, well, he belongs in a shallow grave. He's malicious, and a coward, and a liar, and he screws peoples lives up for sport. I'd quite happily shoot him in the head with my own hand and go back to eating my lunch.
It COULD be comedy gold if you stripped the real identities from the responses before you make fun of them (even then it's a little prickish, considering you BAITED them). If you reveal the real identities of these duped people, it's not comedy. It's just being a mean-spirited, malicious asshole.
So, I'm to take it that people should not be held accountable for the actions that they take online?
I understand the outrage, and even the desire to punish, but this is purely the result of a shattered ego. Anyone who responded to the ad with a proposition was under the impression that they could do it without suffering the embarrassment that comes along with it. The moment that it went public is the moment that they were held accountable for their actions.
If someone doesn't want to suffer embarrassment for their actions, perhaps they shouldn't act in an embarrassing way?
You need to restart your computer. Hold down the Power button for several seconds or press the Restart button.
is a self-appointed protector of justice
by the very nature of logic and reason, one who self-appoints themselves as protector of justice is also someone who HAS to be self-determining what "justice" is as well
for example: you see someone using a word on the internet in a manner you deem unacceptable. so you hound him to the bitter end of the 453rd comment in a retarded neverending thread, thereby standing up for applie pie, grandma, and the american way
so sorry, no more replies for you, i've been trolled long enough, mr. vigilante ;-)
xoxoxoxox
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Cheap Laptop paid for by Cash at Pawn Shop....Check
Wireless Network Card paid for by Cash ..... Check
Ubuntu running on it ...... Check
Free or Leeched Wi-Fi Network Connection Far away from own house.... Check
Open Yahoo Fake E-mail account .... Check
Post on Craig's List ...... Check
Humiliate crazy sex0red up person on net who doesn't realize the Golden Rule of the Internet .....Check
Getting away with it..... Priceless
Oh BTW,
Golden Rule of the Internet: The Whole damn net is buyer beware and while sexy babes may hang out on the internet you will almost never run across on, instead it will be some trucker getting his kicks.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
Yeah, you're exactly right, because chances are, the cheating husbands probably never actually cheated on their wives. This was probably the only time they ever entertained the idea of extra-marital sex, and they probably only responded to the ad because Fortuny was soooo good at enticing men.
Without a doubt the evils of the pending (?) divorces are far worse than the potential side effects of being married to a cheating spouse. After all, no one ever catches...I don't know...AIDS, perhaps?...from someone they are married to, right? </sarcasm>
Your post was waaaay heavy on the melodrama. Do you really think that every kid whose parents divorce wind up "an emo kid who feels rejected and unloved...run away from home...become child prostitutes in order to survive, and subsequently become addicted to crack"? Don't be stupid. Divorce sucks, and yeah, Fortuny certainly appears to have some anti-social tendencies, but the blame for the failed marriages lies with the husbands, not with Fortuny. If they had had the self-control to keep their pants zipped, their marriages would have stayed together.
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
There are cases where that isn't required eg. sending to a public mailing list, where the act of sending implies a license to reproduce the message.
Sending between two people I'd expect to be private but you're still implicitly granting the recipient the right to own, store and archinve a copy of that mail.
It's kinda off topic, But when you mentioned dealing only with cash. The lady i bought my PS3 from "excellent deal btw" had sold some clothes to another Lady on Craigslist and it was a fairly low amount like 60.00. The lady paid her in cash.
She goes to store and tries to spend it only to find out it was fake/counterfeit. I gave her a Money Order but she was there when I purchased it so she knew what she was getting.
Craigslist is just a bit more prone to this kind of crap than other venues but it's no better or worse than some. "with popularity comes notoriety"
As for the personals. Half the "decent????haha" looking hookers in Fresno use it for connections.
Inane Comments are Generously Disregarded
"I can't push you into the fire," [Fortuny] explained, "but I can look at you while you're burning in the fire and not be required to help."
[...]
"I hack, I ruin, I make piles of money," Weev boasted. "I make people afraid for their lives."
Look at the ever-popular Profile of the Sociopath.
The DSM-IV's diagnostic criteria alone describes each of them:
1. Since the age of fifteen there has been a disregard for and violation of the right's of others, those rights considered normal by the local culture, as indicated by at least three of the following:
A. Repeated acts that could lead to arrest.
B. Conning for pleasure or profit, repeated lying, or the use of aliases.
C. Failure to plan ahead or being impulsive.
D. Repeated assaults on others.
E. Reckless when it comes to their or others safety.
F. Poor work behavior or failure to honor financial obligations.
G. Rationalizing the pain they inflict on others.
2. At least eighteen years in age.
3. Evidence of a Conduct Disorder, with its onset before the age of fifteen.
4. Symptoms not due to another mental disorder.
Apparently, the people you know are not very intelligent, considering they fell for a scam. There are many many users on Craigslist who use it quite successfully, it just takes a little smarts. If you can't handle that, then newspaper ads, eBay, and signs in your yard are going to be just as scary for you.
- oZ
// i am here.
Actually, no, that's (as in many other cases) just a thin veil for another time-honoured troll technique: adding (more) insult to injury by blaming their victim.
E.g., the "it's your fault if you can be insulted in the first place" idea was even featured in a recent NYT article, linked to on /. too. See, suddenly it's not him who's being a troll by calling the journalist incompetent, it's the journalist's fault and revealing that he got "defensive" by asking, "why? what did I do?" In reality, the trolls themselves are very quick to get insulted too. The pointing out that "shortcoming" is really just a way to heap extra insult on the victim.
E.g., in this case, it seems to me like the same applies. The whole "raising awareness" is just a thinly veiled way of saying "it's you who's gullible." It just adds that extra jab.
I mean, if you think about it, it doesn't even try to look at all helpful or believable in that role. The excuse boils down to, basically, "I'm an arsehole and doing X just to show that arseholes exist and can do X." Where X was actually pretty obvious to everyone in the first place.
If he thinks that that kind of behaviour is actually helpful, then I offer to raise his awareness to the fact that he can have his head bashed in with a brick in a sock, by demonstrating it on you. Hey, I'm just being equally helpful. It's just teaching him to watch his back ;)
If it's not an extra jab at the victim, then I'm seriously curious what kind of a deranged mind would think that that's being helpful.
It's not even some online phenomenon. People do things on trust every day IRL too. E.g.,
- if you ever had a photo of your girlfriedn naked, or conversely she had one of you, then one of you trusted that the other won't use it in some humiliating way
- you leave your home unguarded, on the implicit assumption that the neighbours won't then bash your door in and steal all you have
- you pay with a credit card at a restaurant, basically trusting the waiter to not copy the data and make other purchases with your money
- you hop in a taxi and, essentially, trust the guy or gal that he won't kill you and dump your corpse at the first oportunity to do it unseen (more than one girl guessed wrong there, and got raped before being killed too.)
- you give a 50 euro bill to a taxi driver for a 11 Euro trip, and trust him that he'll give you 39 Euro back. He _could_ just say, "what? you gave me nothing" and even call the cops, and it's your word against his.
- when you open your front door for the mailman or some utilities guys, you trust them to not mug you and rob you instead. (Again, some people guessed wrong there.)
Etc.
We _are_ "gullible" like that, because nobody can live in a bunker and guard their back 100% of the time. So we have some laws against those kind of things, _and_ we essentially trust people at least to not be the stupid kind of predators. You know, the kind which gains disproportionately little compared to the harm and penalties, or even makes a personal loss in the process too.
You trust, for example the taxi driver to not shaft you out of 50 Euros, because, frankly it's not worth it. He can only do that a couple of times, before he makes a much bigger loss than that.
And some people trusted a perfect stranger with their photos, because it wasn't obvious what he'd have to gain by using them.
And he's raising awareness to what? That he's a prime example of an arsehole who does it just for damage sake? I don't need anyone was that blissfully ignorant to that possibility.
So, again, it seems to me that the whole thing was just one last jab at the victims.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
The marriage was broken up because the guy wanted to cheat on his wife but got caught instead. The prank actually did a wife a favor.
That is very, very questionable. It is quite possible that she would have preferred not to know about it. It is quite possible that she would have ignored an attempt to cheat except the information was made public and couldn't easily be ignored. Maybe she would have preferred to raise her children together with their father and this "prankster" prevented it.
...it's not his fault if some married guy can't keep his dick in his pants.
It's also not his fault that some people are blind - but that doesn't make it OK to lure blind people into traffic. He's like a vulture that finds a sick animal and pecks its eyes out.
A married man who's secretly into BDSM is overwhelmingly likely to have serious issues. I wouldn't disagree at all that such a man needs help - but I find it highly unlikely that public humiliation is the right form of help.
Basically, the troll guy wanted to hurt some people and he thought it would be socially acceptable to hurt people with sex/relationship issues.
fuck the "victims" - the world needs more accountability. maybe if everyone got "caught", the world would loosen up a bit
Use it locally and do deals in person in a public place. People are less likely to rip you off if you're in range to punch them in the face. No protective shroud of anonymity. You either meet in honesty or don't meet at all. If you can see the product you can probably get a good handle on whether you want it or not too.
From the earlier Times article on slashdot:
"I first contacted Fortuny by e-mail, and he called me a few days later. 'I checked you out,' he said warily. 'You seem legitimate.' We met in person on a bright spring day at his apartment, on a forested slope in Kirkland, Wash., near Seattle. He wore a T-shirt and sweat pants, looking like an amiable freelancer on a Friday afternoon. He is thin, with birdlike features and the etiolated complexion of one who works in front of a screen. He'd been chatting with an online associate about driving me blindfolded from the airport, he said. 'We decided it would be too much work.'
Maybe he should have blindfolded the reporter...
One last thing: Sometimes I wonder; "Is that someone's signature? Or do they type that at the end of each post?"
People like this are completely useless, and all his high-and-mighty rhetoric about "messages" and "trust" reads like the inane drivel a ninth-grader would scrawl in his Mead notebook after getting shoved by the bullies in gym class. Dressing your bullshit up in high-school "philosophy" doesn't make you any less of an asshole, but it sure does make you look more stupid.
In the end, nothing he does, including his Craigslist stunt, is about "messages" or "public service". If that's all his goal was -- to show that there's a lot of people out there into this sort of thing and willing to cheat on their spouses -- he could've erased or blurred the names and other personal information of the people who responded. But he left it all intact, showing that his goal was really to "lulz" and humiliate people to whom he feels superior.
It's all about how he feels superior to the target and wants to get attention. Well, he got attention. Good work.
Also, did anyone read his hand-wringing, whiny letter to the judge in this case? His tearful sobbing about how he doesn't have the money is quite hilarious, but there's also this gem:
Great argument there, champ. Even if you buy it, which I don't, at best it shows that he's an unhinged idiot willing to do anything he wants and is incapable of considering the consequences, which is hardly an argument in his favor.
Or this:
Yeah, Jason, you're a real hero to the "community".
What a pissant.
mirrorshades radio -- darkwave, industrial, futurepop, ebm.
Isn't this similar to "To Catch A Predator" or "Perverted Justice"? Only those are praised instead of reviled like this guy. How is what he did different from anyone else? I'm not complaining about what you said mind you, I just find the similarity interesting.
I agree that his ploy was like a social honeypot, but I don't think that makes it okay. The intentional damage it did to actual relationships makes it different enough, in my opinion, to be wrong.
I'm also not sure I agree that these wives are glad it all happened. It's one thing to have your husband cheat on you privately and another to humiliate you publicly.
This was really just a form of vigilante entrapment. It's not okay for the police to engage in entrapment, so why is it okay for Fortuny to do it?
Boom Shanka
Sounds like this is hitting a little close to home for you. :D
It is if he is the one enticing the married guy to take it out...
If you look through the court documents, the plaintiffs had quite some difficulty serving Jason Fortuny. They finally had to resort to emailing him, which isn't normally proper service. However, Fortuny took the emailed complaint and posted a story about being sued. That showed that he knew about the complaint, which gave the plaintiff ammunition in requesting that the court accept the emails as adequate service of process.
Fortuny's subsequent letter was not well received by the court:
Jason Fortuny is well on his way to losing this case through a default judgment. At they very least, he could have gotten a half-hour of legal advice for only $35 if he had tried looking for a lawyer. A half-hour of advice would have been enough to help him avoid making some serious mistakes from the get-go.
I'm not vouching for infidelity and don't tell me this prankster was out to do any good. He was doing it to humiliate these people. Still, in the end it clearly does illustrate that you have to be careful what you send over the tubes.
Is that kind of like placing child sex ads and then filming people entering a house to have sex with children, and then jump out and say "HA HA! You're on TV you dirty little scumbag!"
This is just another "To catch a predator" type show. The people caught didn't sign any privacy document, I'm sure. This is just a new form of candid camera.
I wouldn't consider this guy a troll.
Perhaps you haven't heard his name before...
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/magazine/03trolls-t.html?_r=3&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
Don't want to get thrown off roofs? Don't go on roofs where people might throw you off.
I agree that these idiots shouldn't have emailed the stuff they did. That doesn't justify the response.
How nice of you to post them back to back to prove HIS point. He didn't threaten anyone.
The phrase "I'd quite happily... and go back to eating..." doesn't express intent, it expresses how such an action would affect him, or as he states his "level of regard".
"I do hope...hit and run..." likewise isn't a threat.
Both are pretty remorseless and anti-social, but not actually threats.
(Sort of funny in an ironic way to me that my AC word to type in is "disarm").
It's not entrapment when someone else does it because the definition of entrapment includes "government officials" in it. As Fortuny isn't a government official, we fail the first test.
Further, committing adultery, while legal grounds for divorce (in many jurisdictions that still require any reasons whatsoever), is not a crime, thus we fail the second test.
Even if Fortuny were a government agent pursuing people for committing an actual crime of adultery (yeah, right, politicians banning adultery? They'd lose their favourite pasttime, right after spending our money!), would this be an illegal entrapment? From "The 'Lectric Law Library's Lexicon", I see a definition that requires three things:
First, the idea for committing the crime came from the government agents and not from the person accused of the crime. These men were perusing a personals section of an on-line classifieds site. They were already thinking of finding new girlfriends/sexual partners while married. Fail. Second, the government agents then persuaded or talked the person into committing the crime. Simply giving him the opportunity to commit the crime is not the same as persuading him to commit the crime. This one appears to be more subjective. However, based on the fact that there was but a single ad, and not continuous taunting or pressure from Fortuny, I'd say this is a fail, too. And third, the person was not ready and willing to commit the crime before the government agents spoke with him. See the first point. They were perusing a section of Craig's List which was for this purpose. They were ready and willing to commit the "crime" already.So, no, this is not entrapment. There isn't a single similarity with entrapment here. This is merely allowing people to make fools of themselves and then following up by actually showing the fools for what they are. Going up to an undercover cop and buying a dime of heroin isn't entrapment. Nor is an undercover cop buying from a street dealer. This isn't even close.
No, he didn't, he conveyed no intent, I was going to say he conveyed a desire, but he didn't even do that. He expressed an opinion that he believed he would feel no remorse.
Imperfection in use of language, especially that with legal meaning, not a wise thing.
http://www.torrentvalley.com/dw.php?id=1259769
Ethics committees are only legally mandated for specific categories of researchers, basically institutions receiving federal funding or trying to get things (e.g. new drugs) approved by the federal government. There is no law requiring them for all sociology studies; in fact, it's quite uncommon for, say, market-research experiments to be approved by an ethics committee. It's not even clear what ethics committee they'd apply to---when I do human-computer interaction studies, I apply to my university's ethics committee, but only because my university requires it as a matter of university policy.
In addition, even if you are at an institution that requires such approval, and doing research that would require approval, it isn't actually illegal not to get it. Absent violating some other law, the only sanctions are professional and institutional ones---a journal may refuse to publish your work, or your university may sanction you, or if the university itself is frequently not overseeing studies it may get its federal funding revoked.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
That's a bad example. People who call a suicide hotline are looking for help, while this guy was looking for a way to cheat on his wife. A better example would be a "how to spit in people's food and get away with it" hotline.
Expressing an opinion is not a threat. He said he would be happy, not that he would ever do it. There are lots of things, both legal and illegal which I'd be happy to do, but never will.
How about I do what he did but do it for gay personals, then publish a list of 'known gay people' on the internet. Any closest individuals will not appreciate it.
Same difference. Just because one practice is morally wrong doesnt mean you suddenly have a right to publish the crap out of it. In fact, many people in the US consider gay relations to be morally wrong and would have no problem with this scenario the same way you have no problem with the cheating scenario.
Disclaimer: I know Jason F. personally and think he is a cool guy. The whole reason that he's being sued for 'copyright violation' is that there is no real crime here. He is not a criminal and those people aren't victims. He pretended to be something he wasn't to elicit a response. People sent him nasty and embarrassing things voluntarily and what they believe about the intent or pretense of the situation is immaterial. If somebody exposes themselves to complete stranger it's their liability. I have no sympathy that a bunch of irresponsible pervs got baited into a trap because of their gullibility, lack of foresight, lack of restraint, and general idiocy. Nobody forced them to do anything, all the 'victims' did was set themselves up for failure and embarrassment.
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
So, if he were wearing a police hat and/or a reporter's hat, it'd be okay?
Aka reality TV shows, "To Catch a Predator", etc. One can also include congressional hearings and court stands, though that tends to be about forcing people into revealing their dirty laundry, not suckering them.
I hope you bring a lot of bullets because you have a long list.
PS - I don't think "for the common good" is a get out of jail free card. Nor do I think "for the common good" is the only defense for something like this. Ie, I'm undecided even if things turn out to be it just being one huge trolling exercise, meant to humiliate people.
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
Well, I've known several people to try to use it. All were approached exclusively by cash-cheque-forward-money-scammers, and one got burned for almost a grand. None of them got approached by a single legitimate person.
They must have been pretty stupid to have not seen how that is quite clearly a scam.
Re-publishing responses to fake sex ads is just comedy GOLD!
Schadenfreude is only funny when it's not real - three stooges, bugs bunny, etc. Hurting real people is wrong, evil, sociopathic.
However, according to Wikipedia, a troll is "someone who posts controversial and usually irrelevant or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum or chat room, with the intention of baiting other users into an emotional response[1] or to generally disrupt normal on-topic discussion.[2]"
So no, he isn't a troll. He's a sociopath. Are you?
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
What? The infidelity is to blame not the person exposing the infidelity.
I find being offended by me offensive.
Oh boohoo. A bunch of cheating husbands got exposed as being the scumbags they are. Pardon me while I have no sympathy.
And I suppose you'd like to start a free service that provides full fraud prevention, identity verification services, and a full "paper" trail with signatures along with a classifieds ad section, right? It's a freaking classified ads site. It's not that much different than your local newspaper. Stop thinking that it's eBay, it's not. People were scamming each other through the newspaper in the old days, too. The only good thing about the newspaper is that there's a paper trail if you decide to suck it up, admit you were conned, and sic a lawyer on someone. Even then, the percentage of cases that had a positive outcome was pretty low. It's free. When you go to outdoor flea market, you can get scammed. It's the same principle. If they provided all those services, it'd cease to be free and open.
Fortuny certainly appears to have some anti-social tendencies, but the blame for the failed marriages lies with the husbands, not with Fortuny.
Internet trolls, by their very nature twist the truth. Any asshat with an internet connection could have gone to someone's Facebook, swiped a picture or two, and made the rest up. The basis of the story is Fortuny lying about being a 27 year old brunette woman looking for someone to spank her... So do you really think he lied before, but he couldn't possibly be lying now? Being a plausible liar is THE defining characteristic of an internet troll.
Feel free to continue feeding this troll though. He's the internet version of the Jerry Springer show, and you're one of the crowd of morons barking and cheering him on.
Yes, it's also humiliating some people. I'm not sure that this in and of itself is an awful thing. Sometimes people should be humiliated when they do something bad or stupid.
Who are you (or the sociopath at the heart of this) to judge the actions of others, the actions of total strangers? You don't know these people; maybe the guy was in an "open marriage". Maybe he was single. maybe his wife had been fucking his boss and he wanted revenge?
I do more than enough bad shit myself to go judging anybody else, and I try NOT to do bad shit.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
What the internet needs is some way to inflict a good old fashioned punch in the face when confronted by the equivalent of an obnoxious asshole. There is a reason that people like this loser don't behave this way in real life...
Life needs more saving throws.
The prank actually did a wife a favor.
It caused her the sort of pain that you probably can't even imagine. I know, because I was the victim of a cheating wife, and it took paxil for me to let her go. I would have been far better off never having met her, but barring that I would have been better off (as well as my children) if I'd never known of her adultery.
Tami is the same way; she's married to a serial adulterer. But love is blind, deaf and dumb. It does, however, smell.
If you've never been the victim of a cheating spouse you can't possiby have a clue, especially if you have never been in love with a cheater.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
And he'd be right if he pointed you back to your father and said, "Nope. Thank that guy over there for shattering your childhood."
Oh, so Fortuny arrange a date and met the man... is that where his pictures came from? Because, ya know, that would be pretty solid proof.
However, he didn't do that, did he? He claims he simply lied on a message board to obtain them. He could have just as easily started typing in email address at myspace, pulling pictures of men when he got a hit, and then posting malicious lies when he got a picture. He could have been doing both. The basic premise of Fortuny's story is.... he's a liar. You'd have to be pretty gullible if you didn't at least wonder if he's lying now.
If someone doesn't want to suffer embarrassment for their actions, perhaps they shouldn't act in an embarrassing way?
Sure. We'll have everyone who has never done anything they wouldn't want the whole world to know about cast the first stone.
Who are you (or the sociopath at the heart of this) to judge the actions of others, the actions of total strangers
If I make someone else's actions public, that doesn't necessarily mean that I'm judging them. Or at least, my judgments don't necessarily need to be very relevant. In fact, let's assume that what the person is doing is perfectly fine-- well then, what are they so upset about? If you're in an open marriage, then why are you so concerned about your wife finding out that you're trolling for sex on Craigslist?
The problem isn't that I'm judging them. The problem these men are faced with is that the people around them who know them, who are not total strangers, are judging them. That's what they're upset about. And that they've judged themselves to have done something "wrong", or else it wouldn't be such a horrifying revelation to have it made public.
And whether or not it's wrong, obviously it's stupid. Not just the trolling for sex on Craigslist thing, but the fact that they've given their real names and pictures along with embarrassing statements to a total stranger on the Internet. I think we can all agree that it's not smart.
Of course, someone will read my post here and have the knee-jerk reaction about privacy being important, and the dangerous sentiment of "if you have nothing to hide, then you won't mind the government searching your house. But this guy isn't "the government" and we're not talking about "a search of your house". We're talking about people who've made essentially public statements (when you send to an unknown email address, I'd consider that equivalent to a "public statement") who are then upset when their statements were made public. If those e-mails were going to be so radioactive to their own lives, they should have considered not sending them.
Of course, if those e-mails were perfectly fine and acceptable for thier own lives, then it seems like there's no problem.
While I don't condone the actions of this "troll" (although I think the more correct term in this case is asshole), if you share your dirty laundry to someone you should be aware of the fact that whatever you divulge to someone might be divulged to others by that person.
If you're too trusting of people, you'll be stabbed in the back sooner or later (more often sooner than later). Some people could say that my attitude shows trust issues, but I'd like to think it's really more of whom you trust.
I would assume that most people by the time they marry have learned this valuable lesson, especially considering the amount of assholes there are, but it would seem I am wrong.
I believe in giving credit where credit is due. Likewise I believe in giving blame where blame is due - period. You don't like being embarrassed? Don't do embarrassing things! It's really that simple. People need to be responsible for their own actions and accountable for their own actions. It is, after all, the truest form of who and what they are - how they act and behave. You don't like how you act or behave? You're embarrassed by it? Well then sonny that's your own fault and in your own hands to control. It is exactly your character. encouraging people to hide such things is deceitful. Live your life as you would have other people see it and stop hiding your bad behavior in an attempt to excuse it.
I can never understand when people say "I had a bad experience with a company but I won't tell you their name"!!! What sort of bullshit is that?!? If you had a good experience with company X you'd be recommending them. If you had a bad experience instead you protect them by not disclosing their identity?!? Why!!! Isn't that exactly the kind of information that is useful to the next guy? Isn't that exactly the kind of information that causes companies to clean up their acts? Yet you protect them! And after they treated you bad!!!
The principal is simple - you do good, you get rewarded and praised. You do bad, you get punished and admonished.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/magazine/03trolls-t.html?pagewanted=2
When Jason was 5, he said, he was molested by his grandfather and three other relatives. Jasonâ(TM)s mother later told me, too, that he was molested by his grandfather. The last she heard from Jason was a letter telling her to kill herself. âoeJason is a young man in a great deal of emotional pain,â
There is no justification here whatsoever. And in case he is not deranged, I hope he gets what he asked for in his prank post on CL - brutal ass-pounding in the prison.
Buying a CD gives me the right to own, store and archive a copy of that CD, but not the right to redistribute it.
What's inane, though, is that we're trying to nitpick our way through copyright law in a case that has nothing to do with the domain of activities copyright is meant to regulate.
If I take a picture of myself to send in a response to a personal ad, that picture is not a creative work. Copyright can be applied to it only to the extent that the law does an insufficient job of drawing the boundaries between what can or cannot be protected.
If I hire a studio to take my portrait, they probably do retain a copyright on that picture. This is borderline reasonable -- they should be putting creative work into staging the shot, etc. In that case, I probably have no right to send a copy in reply to a personal ad in the first place.
In any case, if we trace back to the root purpose and language of the Fair Use clause (as opposed to getting hung up on various fair-use guidelines that have been developed alongside the law to cover specfiic frequently-occuring scenarios like satire, parody, etc.), I think it's tough to argue that fair use wouldn't apply to this republishing.
If any right was violated, it was a privacy right. Copyright is not there to protect privacy, and using it in that way is an abuse that further weakens thw law with respect to its intended purpose. I have no respect for those who abuse the law by stretching it to shoehorn in "whatever that guy did that I don't like".
But really, why does everyone feel the need to choose between "the 'victims' are scum who got what they deserved" or "Fortuny was a jerk who violated their rights"? Both are probably true. While I don't think Fortuny is guilty of copyright violation, I'm not sure if he violated any actual privacy-related laws, and I'm betting he did violate the CL terms of use. And on the other side of it... maybe it's none of my business if some guy tried to cheat on his wife, but it is his wife's business.
It's kind of rude to post the pictures of people when you don't know that the person emailing you the pictures is even the person in the picture.
Dude deserves what he gets. Entrapping people who are doing nothing wrong at all. Weird maybe. Wrong no.
Please stop stalking me, bro.
Is this the same circletimessquare who called for the "freelance assassination" of the rulers of Burma?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
When it's called a social honeypot, there is some expectation of having a goal of learning and understanding whatever it is you're studying. In this case, the only motive was to humiliate people. There is no redeeming value to what he did, other than perhaps some sociologists noticing it and getting a few thoughts. There is no real data there that can be used for anything, no methodology.
The guy will burn for doing it (and rightly so), since no judge will see any intrinsic value in what was done, does not seem to fall under fair use, and there was an expectation of privacy.
The marriage was broken up because the guy wanted to cheat on his wife but got caught instead. The prank actually did a wife a favor.
That is very, very questionable. It is quite possible that she would have preferred not to know about it. It is quite possible that she would have ignored an attempt to cheat except the information was made public and couldn't easily be ignored. Maybe she would have preferred to raise her children together with their father and this "prankster" prevented it.
Exactly. I don't condone infidelity, but there are a lot of relationships that have a sort of "don't ask, don't tell" situation going on. Some partners would simply prefer not to know what the other does, and putting all of this information online isn't helpful to either partner. It's also possible that some of these people were in open relationships, but would have preferred not to share their private life with the world.
Now, with that said, if my wife were cheating on me and one of my friends discovered this, I'd hope they would tell me privately, so that my family wouldn't be humiliated, and I could deal with that information as I saw fit.
The real question is how much does correspondence fall into traditional copyright protection for literary works?
If it's written down, it's protected. Period.
That could qualify it as a solicited work, which could make the copyright fall into a work for hire category, like the answer to a test question which, though written by the student, belongs to the professor.
No, simply soliciting work doesn't make it a "work for hire", you have to have a signed document for it to be a "work for hire". Even though copyright law states that phonorecordings are works for hire, the recoprd label still needs a contract.
The professor has rights to the student's work because of all that paper he signed to get into school. Read your own some time; you specifically signed away your rights to those answers.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
"Sometimes people should be humiliated when they do something bad or stupid. It sets an example of why you don't do bad and stupid things." Who the hell are you dude? Who the hell are you to judge them? Everybody has their weak moments in their life. He didn't go out and hurt anyone. His wife may be sleeping around, and this may be the victim's way of getting back. How do you know enough to judge? Besides many of his victims may not even be married. Will that make the troll's actions less hurtful?
Sorry to reply to myself, but carrying that thought one step further... let's say Fortuny's job hunting.
Result, epic troll. And for added credibility, actually do make the deviant sex post and mix those responses into your forged ones. Once a few people admit to answering sex ads, everyone will be assumed guilty on message boards everywhere. Given he is a known troll and admitted liar, it's very plausible, whatever his motivation, that he did something very similar, if not exactly that.
Hmmm, perhaps like an ex-hacker getting job offers in security, Fortuny will start getting job offers as a political advisor... the job would certainly suit a character assassin like him. Imagine the kind of neo-con hit job he could devise if he had Obama's personal email address.
I never said that I don't have a problem with what this guy did. I think he's an ass. I was simply pointing out that the suicide hotline analogy was bullshit.
By the way, do you know what the state of his marriage was? Do you know anything about him at all? But you will happily say that the victim's pain is justified. Come out of your religious conservative rat hole, open your eyes, mind and heart and breathe some fresh air.
Wish I had mod points today. Posting anonymously not because of fear of -1 moderation but because of privacy concerns.
He could have just as easily started typing in email address at myspace, pulling pictures of men when he got a hit, and then posting malicious lies when he got a picture. He could have been doing both.
And, had he done this, you would have a case for libel. Given that the lawsuit is for copyright infringement, rather than libel, I would say it's a pretty safe bet that the man did exactly what Fortuny said he did.
Yeah, I suppose you're right-- maybe he just pulled a picture from MySpace where the guy had innocently posted a picture of his genitalia.
Of course, you'd think that the victims would then be claiming libel, which AFAIK isn't the case. They're just claiming that he had no right to post private communications publicly, and not denying the validity of the emails. But making private conversations public isn't illegal. If you tell me you cheated on your wife, and then I tell your wife, I'm not breaking a law, even if I lied to you to get that information.
And if Fortuny lied, why isn't this man suing him for libel, rather than copyright infringement?
Yes, it's also humiliating some people. I'm not sure that this in and of itself is an awful thing. Sometimes people should be humiliated when they do something bad or stupid. It sets an example of why you don't do bad and stupid things.
What did these guys do that was bad or stupid? There are people out there who enjoy sex other than that between a man and a woman united in love and holy matrimony with the lights out in the missionary position for the sole purpose of procreation. I know, I know, that sounds crrrrraaaaaazy to you, but I hear that some people do actually enjoy sex acts that you may not. The men here responded to this ad in good faith, and instead had their sexual preferences aired for the entire world to see, forever.
So, what did they do that was bad or stupid? They didn't do anything illegal. Is it just because They're interested in a kind of sexual relationship that you do not agree with that it's now "bad and stupid?"
How about this instead. What if you were looking on, say, eHarmony, for a nice, attractive, educated young lady to chastely court and eventually marry, so you responded to an ad from someone claiming to be a nice, attractive, educated young lady, with your picture and a description of yourself. But it turns out she's actually some sociopath like Jason here, and instead creates a website in which she posts your picture and your real name and the text of your email, and mocks you for being such a loser and thinking you had a chance with this fake girl, who's way out of your league (loser). Oh, and then republishes your picture with lolcats-esque text over it, like "I'M A DOUCHEBAG!"
Did you really deserve that? For what? For responding honestly and in good faith to an internet ad relevant to your interests? What did these guys do, responding to this ad, that merits a public shaming, expect being more sexually adventurous than most?
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
In the US, truth is an absolute defense to libel suits.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Like when you throat-punch a guy on a resperator. It's not like he didn't already have problems breathing.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Don't want to be humiliated? Don't do bad things.
What about the men who had their names and pictures published who were not married, but single guys into BDSM, who responded honestly and in good faith to this ad? What "bad thing" did they do for which they deserve to have their sexual preferences indexed by google for all eternity?
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Still, in the end it clearly does illustrate that you have to be careful what you send over the tubes.
Personal responsibility. While I think the person who posted the pics was indeed malicious and deserves whatever he gets, the "victim" made the decision to give some random person his photo and risk his marriage over it.
I shrug at both of them as both are deserving of their fates.
What I find interesting is this guy is trying to make this an issue of free speech. He opines that this will have chilling effects to bloggers everywhere. Horse shit. What about the right of people to freely engage in unorthodox or unpopular (but not illegal) behavior? What about the chilling effects this might have on them. Oh, you don't care about freedom that much do you?
Personally, I feel the right to privacy is an inalienable one and necessary for a free society. Yeah, I read 1984 as a kid and no, I don't want to live in a world like that. So much so that I'm qualified expert with the M16A2 and M9, and am proficient with the M203, M2, M249, M60, Mk19, and M1911. Yeah, I like freedom that much.
Hell, I've had girlfriends who like a little spanking every now and then. All in good fun I say. There's a whole subculture out there who takes it to extremes, but as long is it's consensual, it's none of my business. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and all that.
So douchebag here fraudulently elicits responses and posts them for lulz and now is whining to the judge that he has no money to defend himself when one of them drops the hammer on him. Cry moar nub. Stay out of the kitchen if you can't stand the heat. I feel not an ounce of compassion for you. These people are minding their own business doing their BSDM thing and what they don't need is a jackass like you "exposing" them for not "protecting" their privacy. Maybe some of them are married, still not your business unless you know their wives. And what about the single ones?
The world needs deviants. What it doesn't need is people like you trying to chill their free association. Hell, the world even needs jackasses like you, but this time, you crossed the line. So man up and borrow the money, take some cash advances on your credit card, hock your car, and hire a lawyer. Declare bankruptcy and learn that when you mess with someone personally, some times they're gonna mess with you back in a way that's going to hurt you, like in your wallet.
I don't approve of either of those, but at least they are trying to target behavior that is actually illegal.
I hate to break it to you, but adultery is illegal in several states in the USA. For example, a very quick search on Google reveals http://www.vanwagnerwood.com/CM/Custom/Adultery.asp that it is illegal in Wisconson.
I am not condoning the troll's actions.
I'm not sure I agree with you but it's an interesting subject. I think by "closest individuals" you meant "closeted individuals", right?
If so, here's the thing. Are you really in the closet if you start responding to anonymous postings on a message board with your full personal details, picture (including face), real email address, home address, and phone number? To me the expectation of privacy goes along with the expectation of trust. If you willingly give information to somebody you don't at all trust, then privacy is out the window.
Just because one practice is morally wrong doesnt mean you suddenly have a right to publish the crap out of it.
So you believe they shouldn't have the *right* to publish it? Not just that it's not nice to do? I disagree with that completely.
They're just claiming that he had no right to post private communications publicly, and not denying the validity of the emails.
How much money can you get out of a libel claim? With copyright, it's a max of $150,000 per offense. The plaintiff is asking for $75,000. I think that's adequate motivation for not filing a libel suit. This one is an easy victory, and although the final amount will likely be much lower, a big settlement would sting Fortuny much worse than any punishment the court would likely deal out for a libel claim.
But making private conversations public isn't illegal.
Reposting a creative work verbatim is illegal. It's copyright infringement. Reposting the picture is copyright infringement too. If Fortuny didn't have permission to repost, he's in violation of the law. It's open and shut.
What did these guys do that was bad or stupid?
At least stupid: sending an e-mail with their name and picture, detailing things that they feel are deeply private, to an anonymous email address. They don't know whose e-mail address it is, or who has access to it. Hell, it could have even been a distribution list going to thousands of people-- they had no idea. Even if you don't think there's anything wrong with trolling for anonymous sex on the internet, that's at least not-so-smart.
How about this instead. What if you were looking on, say, eHarmony, for a nice, attractive, educated young lady to chastely court and eventually marry, so you responded to an ad from someone claiming to be a nice, attractive, educated young lady, with your picture and a description of yourself. But it turns out she's actually some sociopath like Jason here, and instead creates a website in which she posts your picture and your real name and the text of your email, and mocks you for being such a loser and thinking you had a chance with this fake girl, who's way out of your league (loser). Oh, and then republishes your picture with lolcats-esque text over it, like "I'M A DOUCHEBAG!"
I'd be a bit annoyed and think they guy was an asshole, but what grounds would I have to sue? And it wouldn't really be anything to be ashamed of on my part. Still, I'm generally smart enough to attempt some level of anonymity on the Internet. It might not be highly effective anonymity, but I'm not airing any dirty laundry to people I don't know.
If the hat fits, put it on. Seriously, don't want to get to the front page of a site because of lewd or abnormal behavior then don't do it.
People get caught for what the really are and still think they are the victim here.
This is such a travesty it boggles me to no end.
Jason Fortuny is a Greifer. Plain and simple. All anybody would need to do to show that the whole scheme he concoted was out of pure maliciousness, and not the "benevolent social experiment on privacy" that he claims it was, is to let the court research Fortuny's prior antics. The defense really doesn't need to do much with creating a case, since Fortuny's prior history of sociopathic antics has dug his own grave for him.
Anybody with half a brain would immediately notice that he not only has been disowned by his own mother for his 'greifing', but he has a pathologicas and sociopathic lust for harassing people for the sheer joy (yes, I say joy) of causing others emotional distress and harm.
These shitwits are the modern manifestation of "Sensationalistic Journalism", but they are anything but journalists.....
Maybe Fortuny's prior history will finally catch up with him and knock enough sense into him so he finally realizes that just because he has a small penis doesn't mean he has to act like it and make everybody else's life miserable in the process.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
Seriously, people. This guy put out a honeypot . And those of low moral character took the bait. And he alleges that he learned from this (expecting no responses, getting nearly 200). IT Security folks do this all the time.
No, we don't. I've not seen someone in IT put out a honeypot in order to catch non-criminal actions and then humiliate the people they find. A honeypot is for catching those attempting illegal access of systems. What these people were going for was not illegal. A honeypot is for preventing actual loss and damage to a system. He was in no danger of loss, but saught out the people actively (not a passive honeypot that sends nothing other than in response to others).
And, I bet that those wives who filed for divorce over this are thanking Fortuny for exposing their (now or soon-to-be) ex-husbands for the cheaters that they are.
I bet they aren't. Most spouses know something is up. They do. They decide (consciously or unconsciously) that they don't want to know what. He did them a disservice for humiliating the spouses as well as the respondants, and in a public manner. They probably knew something was up, but played along for the kids or whatever. When it is made public, they have no choice but to confront it, and I would guess that if it was discovered privately, more than one of the broken marraiges would have stayed together.
The married men who responded obviously weren't thinking too much of their vows.
So I guess that makes immoral actions ok. As long as someone somewhere might possibly find some good (even if no one actually did and he didn't do it with good intentions), then it should be done.
Fortuny could have got his point across just fine by smudging the photos before posting them.
No, he couldn't. His point wasn't to show that there are bad people out there. His point was to find some people and humiliate them. With a smear, you wouldn't have known who they were. He didn't want to do a public service. He didn't want to prove a point. He wanted to be cruel, and it isn't as cruel to smear, so he couldn't have and still accomplished what he wanted. He's evil. How do you know? Because he wronged someone, then blamed then for being mad that he caused them harm. I can't recall anyone ever uttering "It's his fault for being mad" who didn't do something mean and unnecessary first.
Learn to love Alaska
Bullshit. While Shieldw0lf no-doubt is an internet-tough-guy, what he said in no way indicated that he WOULD kill this guy, only that he would enjoy doing so. A threat has to indicate actual intent to perform the act.
I'd enjoy breaking into Fort Knox and stealing all the phat loots, but I won't do it for a few reasons, social and legal. No intent. Similarly, Shielfw0lf would ENJOY a world where he could defend, as he sees it, the nice people from the predatory jerks in the same fashion that he'd be lauded for killing a more obvious predator like a child killer or something.
"I would enjoy having sex with your mother." That doesn't mean that I'm threatening to, just saying that if it came to that the act would be enjoyable.
Knowing an asshat isn't what reflects poorly on GGP. It's insisting that he's a "cool guy."
"The use-mention distinction" is not "enforced here."
Reposting a creative work verbatim is illegal. It's copyright infringement. Reposting the picture is copyright infringement too. If Fortuny didn't have permission to repost, he's in violation of the law. It's open and shut.
There has to be such a thing as fair use, or else there really isn't any first amendment. Let's say I sent a letter (confessing to a crime, perhaps) to a reporter, who then printed it in a newspaper. Can I then sue him for copyright infringement for quoting me?
After all, what is humiliation? Posting a picture of a piece of a monkey's body for other monkeys to see? I'd pay someone to post nude pics of every person on the planet if it'd end our body taboos...
I can't condemn making people feel bad because telling a religious person that their belief that god animates a cracker is silly makes them feel bad, yet imnsho needs to be said. Our anti-hate laws are getting close to making it illegal to insult someone over their beliefs, "your belief in abortion makes you equivalent to a murderer", "your god was a con man, your religious rules made-up and arbitrary, and the enforcement of them are killing people", etc.
Those things need to be said, especially any that are wrong like "your skin color makes you worthless" so that people can tell the person who says it just how worthless and stupid they are, and as an afterthought explain in detail why they are wrong. Without being able to say these things, in words that truly express how we feel, we aren't truly free. We're enslaved by the idea that all ideas are equal and above ridicule.
So no, I can't say it should stop either, even if it did hurt some people's feelings.
I can certainly see why you're so upset about this, seeing as being publicly associated with your online statements about 'happily' shooting Fortuny in the head, characterizing bogus Craigslist Personals as fraud (is it breach of contract when nobody will sleep with you?), and justifying getting sued in federal court because some people were embarrassed would have you rightly ostracized as a sociopath.
I'd be a bit annoyed and think they guy was an asshole, but what grounds would I have to sue? And it wouldn't really be anything to be ashamed of on my part. Still, I'm generally smart enough to attempt some level of anonymity on the Internet. It might not be highly effective anonymity, but I'm not airing any dirty laundry to people I don't know.
It's only "dirty laundry" because of prudish American culture. The only reason people are so dismissive of the victims is because the circumstances involved kinky sex. These guys probably aren't ashamed of their sexual tastes, they just don't feel the need to announce them to the world. They had a reasonable expectation that they were engaging in a private conversation. Instead they were the victims of fraud. "Fraud" may be grounds to sue.
And I hope the lawsuit IS successful, and then I hope the other 170-odd guys sue him, too. Jason is a sociopath whose sole aim was to inflict emotional distress on these people and their families. In a less civilized age, people like Jason tended to find themselves knifed in an alley and dumped in a river. Sadly, these days, lawsuits will have to do.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Dunno bout you, but if it wasn't clear already I learned that people on the internet pretending to be hot women might not actually be hot, or women.
Besides, we have a word for "no real data there that can be used for anything, no methodology", we call it "history". Things happen, for what seem like (and may be) random reasons, but only in looking from far enough back that you are part of the event do we start to see the social implications, and then further back we see the historical results. People attempt to learn from history, to avoid repeating it.
It's funny. The "data" here are more real (being that there was no researcher bias, ill-performed test, etc - it simply tautologically is, and is a perfect example of itself) than they would be if there was a large study done. The study would attempt to be more complete, but would present aggregate data only and have filed off the outlying points.
So sure, I could go into a public restroom at my office every day, snap covert pictures of my co-workers who have small dicks, and post them on the internet. But I don't.
But if you sent out an anonymous letter to your co-workers asking them to send you pictures of their small penises, and they did it, and you posted their names and penis pics on the web, that would be kinda funny.
Asshole or not, it's not his fault if some married guy can't keep his dick in his pants.
Exactly. It's the damn pants' manufactures fault. Stupid things open up a hole right in the groin region, and now I'm flopping around like a fish out of water.
Computers don't make mistakes. What they do, they do on purpose.
If they're single, then what's the damage? People know they're heterosexual? Ditto if they're in an open marriage. It's odd, but not against the law or anything. The real damage from this is to those whose infidelities this exposed.
Or, you could say, the real gain is to those whose trust is no-longer being abused by the cheaters.
Everyone else involved? They had someone show pictures of their genitals to other people. Oh horror! People will know they like sex! Weird sex. Oh no!
In other words, quit blowing this out of proportion you concern troll.
Instead they were the victims of fraud. "Fraud" may be grounds to sue.
Really? Is there a lawyer in the house that can comment on this?
It's only "dirty laundry" because of prudish American culture. The only reason people are so dismissive of the victims is because the circumstances involved kinky sex. These guys probably aren't ashamed of their sexual tastes, they just don't feel the need to announce them to the world.
Well, then, it seems as though there isn't much damage done. There are lots of things that I'm not ashamed of but don't feel the need to announce them to the world. However, if someone were to announce those things to the world, it probably wouldn't cause me much distress.
I don't think my wife would buy that logic. I suggest you try again.
Maybe #4 can be, "If you're going to incessantly insist that other people are twits, then proofread your post."
This:
Followed by the sig:
*snarf*
UTF-8: There and Back Again
Yes. I posted a response to a slashdot post to keep my Craigslist scamming going full-steam ahead. Nothing gets by you. I shall call you "Old Eagle Eyes".
You just have to use a little bit of intelligence... if it seems to be too good to be true, it very often is. But if someone's selling a set of nice couches fairly cheap because they want to get rid of them? My wife got a nice microfiber loveseat and chaise set for $500. Buying them new would have been about that much per piece. I met a few girls I went on a few dates with, never really amounted to much, but it wasn't ever a bad experience. You just can't trust it any more than the bulletin board at the local supermarket. Treat it as such, and you'll be fine.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
Oh, okay, so because they're not as smart as you, it's okay to hurt them. Do you steal change from mentally handicapped kids, too, because after all, if they're not smart enough to protect themselves, they're perfectly acceptable targets.
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I hope he gets off scott-free. Good for him for exploiting the scum of the earth. Stupid scum of the earth at that. If you don't want something known, don't tell other people. And for god's sake, how much of an idiot do you have to be to send pics and then have faith that the stranger you sent them to will keep them private?!!
If he is cheating on his wife, he is exposing her to STDs. He needed to be caught.
Thou shalt not use tools thou does not understand, lest they rise up and smite thee
I don't condone adultery (it is a violation of marital fidelity and trust, after all), but dude...
There's a pretty big diff there between what is essentially considered a moral failing (the adultery), and the actual crime of active pedophilia.
Also, consider: there is a TV show out there called "Cheaters", that actively humiliates folks who decide to take their bedroom activities outside of the relationship (even when not married). But, even in the case of that show, IIRC the "cheater" has the perfectly legal right to have his face and name obscured (else the show's producers end up eating a lawsuit... pretty much like the one we're discussing).
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
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Why people of "low moral character"? Just because someone's sexual preferences (and potentially even the rules in their current relationship) differ from yours doesn't make them of "low moral character". Did he only publish the pictures of those who were of low moral character or were in closed relationships?
It seems like the plaintiff here is no saint, but it does not follow that no "good" people were caught up in this nonsense. Unlike a honeypot where you can probably deduce what evil is going on, how do you judge the morals or good of an attempt to establish a sexual relationship?
On top of doing many unsuspecting wives a favor, he provided the rest of us with the hilarious results.
I hope he walks, and then does it again.
I know several sites that say anything submitted to them becomes their property. I fail to see how this is any different. If you send it to me, I will gladly do whatever the fuck I want to do with it and there is absolutely nothing you can do to stop me.
but the blame for the failed marriages lies with the husbands, not with Fortuny. If they had had the self-control to keep their pants zipped, their marriages would have stayed together.
I don't mean to single you out because others have said something similar, but I have to take issue with this statement. According to most marital research, by the time the relationship has gotten to someone cheating, it is already past the "failed" stage. In other words, the cheating is a symptom of a failed marriage, it's rarely the cause of it. Claiming the couple would have stayed married "if only the man had kept his pants zipped" is simplistic and inaccurate. A marriage fails because both parties screwed up.
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"Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief."
They used the Internet instead of going to the local BDSM club. Everyone lost, the club shut down, and the conservative won.
So if you are single and into BDSM, go hang out at the local establishment for it. This way you have no fear of Internet scams and can meet lots of interesting people.
Responding to random Internet ads for sex, common sense tells me, isn't a wise choice.
it was supposed to be a dumb joke, a play on concepts, but someone modded my comment as "insightful", which i don't really understand. there is nothing wrong with using adultfriendfinder
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
It doesn't matter, the principle is the same. The only difference is in what you find morally reprehensible, and in which cases you think the person whose personal details are published "deserve" to have their shit aired. You "feel sorry" for suicidal people, but you don't for the "bastard who cheats on his wife." Both would be have the same legal grounds, and both would fit this kid's mantra of "don't ever trust anyone ever."
Let's change the analogy then: what if I set up the hotline and only published the details of people who wanted to commit suicide because they were cheating on their wives and didn't feel they deserved to live?
Did you ever notice that *nix doesn't even cover Linux?
Okay, in the vast majority of cases, this is correct (although there are people who have sexual addictions, and consequently in such cases, there is nothing the other spouse could have done to prevent the failure). Not knowing the people involved in the failed marriage(s) mentioned in TFA, I have to assume that it was a failure of both parties, and I will concede the point to you.
Having said that, nothing in this argument invalidates my main point: Fortuny was not the reason the marriages failed. Period.
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
Really? Is there a lawyer in the house that can comment on this?
That's basically what the lawsuit is claiming, that Jason willfully lied and misrepresented himself with malicious intent to do harm. Regardless of the victim's personal feeling about their lifestyle choices, they did not wish to have said choices broadcast to their families and employers. This caused them emotional distress and perhaps financial loss, as it may have effected their employment status.
Jason's a sociopath and a miscreant, skirting the edge of the law, but hoping to god it protects him from the violent retribution of the 170-odd large, musclebound sexual deviants he sought to embarrass and injure for absolutely no reason other than his own amusement. What a freaking idiot...
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Count one: Violation of copyright act
Count two: Public disclosure of private facts
Count three: Intrusion upon seclusion
Count four: Injunctive relief
So I don't know if that list is supposed to be exhaustive, but it doesn't seem to include fraud (but is injunctive relief a charge? The list might be wrong anyway. Don't know. IANAL.) But what I was asking was whether what he did technically met the qualifications to be considered "fraud".
My point is that I can fully understand people being upset at Fortuny's actions, but I'm curious as to whether there's any actual merit to it. Copyright violation seems a bit silly, not in keeping with the intent of "copyright", but I don't know whether it can technically be considered that. It doesn't seem like he intruded into anything, but reported what others had volunteered to a stranger.
Adultery is illegal is some states. The laws are rarely enforced, but are there. Most states consider it a civil tort (I am no lawyer) which could affect divorce judgments, influencing property and custody situations. Also, When the next wave of Fundamentalist Christianity(tm) hits, expect a slew of new anti-adultery laws designed to "Preserve the Traditional Family(tm)"
I suppose I should have been more specific about the word "fraud." By "fraud," I mean that he was lying, misrepresenting himself with intent to do malice. The lying and misrepresenting for malicious purposes is more of the mens rea for the other charges. "Public disclosure of private facts" is the hurtful part, but it's only really punishable if you meant to do it, or you did it out of gross negligence.
If he had somehow learned of these men's behavior and accidently let it slip, that's one thing, and he's not likely to get sued for it. The fraudulent behavior (that is, lying and misrepresenting himself) shows that his actions were willful and malicious.
This is a civil case, not criminal. We all know you can sue anyone for anything, and sometimes win. I am not a lawyer, but from the looks of this case, we have a unrepentant sociopath who willfully lied to and mislead people in order to cause them emotional and financial harm. There's no question the guy did it (he freely admits it and boasts about it), there's no question it was willful (he was completely responsible for writing the ad, posting it, and compiling and posting the responses online), and there's no question it was malicious (his intent was to embarrass these men and cause them harm).
Now, should these men have fallen for the trick? No, of course not. But just because the trick was played on idiots doesn't mean we don't punish the trickster. We prosecute people who prey on the elderly and the retarded, too.
If the victims can show significant harm (shouldn't be too hard) I would really hope they could get a judgement against the person who willfully and maliciously harmed them, regardless of method.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
First, nice trolling.
But second, I'm not trying to hold myself up as being too smart to be hurt. Hell, I could do something stupid, get caught with my pants down (metaphorically or literally), and get myself into a bad situation. I believe strongly that people deserve mercy and pity when they've made mistakes.
My overriding sentiment throughout my discussions in here have been that this should serve as a warning: actions have consequences. You may not want your pursuit of sex to have consequences. You might think there shouldn't be consequences, or even convince yourself that there won't be consequences, but somewhere along the line there probably will be. If not from this guy, then from something else.
Because actions generally have some kinds of consequences. And if you're not prepared to deal with the possible (and even likely) consequences that stem from people knowing your actions, then it's best not to participate in those actions.
However, where I really came in on this discussion was somewhat on the defense of these people, the "victims". Not because what they did was necessarily right or good or even acceptable, but to have your secrets aired on the Internet is quite a punishment, due to the scope of the Internet. When something is posted on the Internet, for all you know, that information may be accessed by the entire world for as long as people continue to exist.
So, on the one hand, I think that there may be times when doing the wrong thing should result in some level of public humiliation, as a punishment and as a deterrent. Maybe there are times when having your loved ones know you did something bad is appropriate. But unfortunately, the Internet age raises this all to a new level. Doing something bad could mean that all potential loved ones and employers will always know that you did this bad thing, and get to experience it freshly with a simple Google search, even decades later. That really stinks.
But then, that too should serve as a warning to people posting things online, and also serve as a warning sign to society that the Internet's total recall can be a double-edged sword.
I said this earlier, but it bears repeating. He hasn't been charged with fraud because he has not committed fraud. It is only fraud when the victor (heh, never put victor victim together before) gets some form of personal gain out of the situation. Since there was no gain, there is no fraud.
The guy pulled a lame prank and nothing more; some people thought it was funny, others thought it was a violation. I didn't think much of it one way or the other as I fail to see the humiliation (I can see how some may be in violation of there marital agreements, but that is there problem, not Jason's). It certainly isn't something deserving of punishment.
Honestly I am surprised that there are so many conservative views WRT this subject on slashdot. People have genitalia. People like sex. People like wierd kink and nonsense and indecent internet exposure via email. So what? If he posted an ad offering a free patching lathe, and then posted all the responses on his blog what would the crime be then? And would you have the same feelings about the situation? What is it about sex that makes everyone so frenetic?
On a side note: It's articles like the one the NYT posted and this Metaarticle as well that reinforces the trolls. They see how much exposure they might get and so it is recapitulated. Your posts are troll candy. if you don't like it there is always that other internet with the blackjack and the hookers.
Sometimes, life itself is sarcasm...
To use an old, albeit highly relevant, cliche: If you play with fire, you're going to get burned.
Not if you're wearing a fireproof suit. If you know what you're doing, you'll probably be able to win at the conman's own game. Obviously many people don't, and they get suckered.
I, for one, find the experiment to be pretty interesting. In this day and age, with all of the sexual diseases and access to so much information on people via the internet...you would think that there wouldn't be that many people jumping at the chance to hit up some slut they've never even SEEN much less met via the internet. In that hand, I would totally support this sort of experiment in showing the public that they should watch their promiscuity and take note of who they date. People can bone anyone they want - but do they really want to bone someone whose hitting up anything/everything that squats their junk and says "c'min git it"? So to that extent - it's a good experiment to make people aware that there's a reason STD's are pretty much everywhere.
That's where my sympathy for this guy ends. He could have still posted on the internet with this experiment in a MUCH more classy way. I would never have revealed faces and would have blurred out identifiable tattoos. To purposely not take those measures is just asking for trouble and it ruins any sense of credibility gained by claiming it was an experiment for the good of public knowledge. What he did was let everyone know WHO was being so promiscuous, not just keeping it an anonymous public notice.
The plaintiff probably won't get very far. He volunteered the information - which went to a public server outside of his intranet. There IS implied risk every time you do something like take a promiscuous picture or make an email with that kind of content and send them off to someone you've never met - much less even know if they exist in the first place. The guy even said "if you're real" or whatever, understanding that it's probably a bot - so he was pretty much scattering the same email around to a bunch of ads and hoping one panned out. That doesn't exactly imply that he was keeping a healthy amount of skepticism about him and withholding any incriminating content. If the guy was really that embarrassed within his family/community, he really should have thought about that before scattering his image/sexual fantasies around the internet like buck shot. Everyone has fantasies and things they'd like to keep private - especially sexual - but that's why they don't do that.
John Hargrave does some similar stuff on www.zug.com
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
don't feed the trolls?
Look at the media attention this guy is getting.
This is possibly the most successful troll ever.
Me lost me cookie at the disco.
Ah, so first I'm creating straw men, and now I'm trolling. Any other logical fallacies you'd like to apply?
"So, on the one hand, I think that there may be times when doing the wrong thing should result in some level of public humiliation, as a punishment and as a deterrent."
The problem is that last time I checked, trying to hook up with people on craigslist wasn't wrong--in fact, you might notice a large portion of the site specifically dedicated to that purpose. Posting personal info of any sort may be unwise, but that's not the same as 'wrong' or 'deserving of punishment.' The punishment levied against these guys was without mercy or pity, and for that reason I feel sympathy for them. You can talk all you want about how this serves as a lesson, but there are strong moral grounds for rejecting the idea of using people merely as a means.
In closing, I'm not trying to compel you to feel sympathy for these guys or their plight; I'm simply pointing out that a callous disregard for other people is exactly what Jason Fortuny displayed in pulling his obnoxious little prank. Maybe the world wouldn't be such a hard place if there weren't so many assholes out there trying to prove how hard it can be.
Well, you aren't the guy's wife, and you know nothing of the situation they were in. I've met couples who were happily in "open relationships", but didn't want it getting out to the neighbors or friends. I knew a woman who was well aware that her husband was cheating on her but was willing to ignore it for professional reasons. (No, not Hillary.) Maybe the husband and wife both hated the marriage but didn't want to get an actual divorce for religious reasons which would drag their families into it, but didn't much care if the other was discreetly getting some on the side.
None of these are particularly likely, but none are so far-fetched as to be completely out of the question either. The point is that you can't judge the "victims" here based on what morals you're imposing on what you imagine the situation to be, which may have no reflection in reality.
Furthermore, plenty of the responders were unmarried, without serious girlfriends. They were harmed just as much by this stunt. All so some "lulz"ing whiner who hates the world because he was molested as a kid can feel better about himself, and dress it up with a bunch of BS rhetoric about how he's "proving things" and sending "messages". The message in this case being, I suppose, that guys will respond positively to hot women asking for sex. SHOCKING! Jason Fortuny, journalist extraordinaire.
mirrorshades radio -- darkwave, industrial, futurepop, ebm.
There has to be such a thing as fair use, or else there really isn't any first amendment.
Ummm, the second thing you said... Welcome to slashdot! Why do you think the GPL was designed and intended to be the antithesis of copyright?
Copyright law has all but destroyed your right to free speech. It's being used to suppress political speech, erase history, and assign private ownership to ridiculous things like silence.
Besides.... do you really think you have a right to speak freely after you watch people hauled off in shackles for reading the First amendment?
Let's say I sent a letter (confessing to a crime, perhaps) to a reporter, who then printed it in a newspaper. Can I then sue him for copyright infringement for quoting me?
No, but if you send it in, they print it, and then you try to reprint that section of the newspaper, they come after you with a DMCA takedown. citation
I guess my main bullet point in this presentation would be to say that free speech is dead in the US... dead and gone. Long gone. Private interests trump your right to speak freely here.
Any other logical fallacies you'd like to apply?...[snip]...The problem is that last time I checked, trying to hook up with people on craigslist wasn't wrong--in fact, you might notice a large portion of the site specifically dedicated to that purpose.
um... I don't know... does this qualify as a bandwagon fallacy? "Lots of people are doing it, so it can't be wrong"?
Anyway, if there's nothing wrong with it, then why are people claiming that Fortuny has ruined people's lives? You can't really ruin someone's life by disclosing that they've done something that is considered to be "acceptable". If there's absolutely no problem with what these men are doing, then making their behavior public shouldn't be considered a "punishment".
Maybe the world wouldn't be such a hard place if there weren't so many assholes out there trying to prove how hard it can be.
Maybe the world wouldn't be such a fucked up place if there weren't so many people refusing to be accountable for their own actions.
Wait until the other John Does start suing--for "lulz."
It doesn't matter. It wasn't Fortuny's job to expose any existing marital problems. My wife was a victim of marital infidelity by my own out of character actions many years ago. And while we eventually were able to work through it by years of counseling, if it were to be made public what I did, it would hurt her as much, if not more so, than it did me (the public outing). There's no reason to kick these victim's of cheating while they're already down. I've seen first hand what it can do to a family... my own.
One word, one man. Who gives a sh1t if you're trolling for BSDM on Craigzlizt... and you get caught out by our boss/wife whatever.
I wonder if s/BSMD/homosexual/gi would have elicited the same outpouring of vitriol against consenting adults doing what consenting adults occasionally do? Booh-- he's cheating on his wife! What if he was scoping out their next 'play game'? Would that make him different, any less immoral?
(personally, I'm not 'into' either, but you have to see the parallelism, surely)
Don't you think people have a right to know if their partner is cheating?
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
"If there's absolutely no problem with what these men are doing, then making their behavior public shouldn't be considered a "punishment".
Oh, of course. After all, if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear. Good citizens shouldn't have a single aspect of their lives that they wouldn't be comfortable sharing with the in-laws, their coworkers, the local newspapers. I mean, if you didn't want the whole world to know about it, you wouldn't be doing it, right? I mean, what could be more despicable than going to a website and trying to hook up with a willing partner for NAUGHTY THINGS?
And seriously, if you're going to invoke the concept of personal responsibility, then you can't avoid acknowledging Fortuny's role in all this. He made a choice to do something that negatively affected other people; those people may have been 'wrong' to make themselves vulnerable to him, but that doesn't make Fortuny less of a dickanus. So you can spout whatever BS you want about the morality of what these guys chose to do, but that doesn't let the asshole off the hook for what he chose to do.
Oh, of course. After all, if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.
Sorry, but that sort of line has a little more weight when you're talking about the government actively going into your house or your personal belongings. This is a case where a private citizen is reporting on the behavior he sees from other people. They got caught doing something they didn't want to get caught doing, fine. That happens. Nobody likes it when it happens to them, and that's all understandable. But if you're going to blame the consequences of your actions on the guy who caught you, you're kind of missing the point.
None of this means Fortuny is a "good guy". He might be a total asshole. But that doesn't make him responsible for these men's actions.
No, he's just another flavor of naive.
Jason, I wish you could go to jail and experience anal sex against your will. Because what you have done for your own cheap amusement is true evil. You deceived 180+ people about something that has grave emotional consequences, also royally fucking with their trust. I hope it was worth it to you. And I hope you're comfortable being a famous liar. If I passed you on the street and I happened to be carrying a bat, I couldn't promise that the day would end bloodlessly.
No, he's just responsible for their exposure, which is the direct cause of the harm. Of course that doesn't completely ameliorate their responsibility, but where do you draw the line between 'innocent victim' and 'deserves whatever they get?'
The prank actually did a wife a favor.
It caused her the sort of pain that you probably can't even imagine. I know, because I was the victim of a cheating wife, and it took paxil for me to let her go. I would have been far better off never having met her, but barring that I would have been better off (as well as my children) if I'd never known of her adultery.
Tami is the same way; she's married to a serial adulterer. But love is blind, deaf and dumb. It does, however, smell.
If you've never been the victim of a cheating spouse you can't possiby have a clue, especially if you have never been in love with a cheater.
All I can tell you is that I'd rather be alone than have a sham relationship built on a lie, and that I would definitely want to know because deciding not to know would be tantamount to burying my head in the sand.
If love is blind, deaf and dumb, it's because people become blinded and deafened by their emotions. That's a choice; you can choose not to do it. You can also lose your personal and emotional independence (in fact giving those up to a woman is all too easy) in a relationship which may explain why you had to be dependent for a while on something else as a substitute, in this case an SSRI, Paxil. The single biggest mistake men make is that they completely surrender their allegience and independence to a woman to the point where she starts to feel like a second mother to them. By that, I mean they forget the need to be content with their lives on their own and then share that life with a woman who is also content on her own, which is how two healthy beings relate. While she might love him deeply, no woman, even a non-cheater, can respect a man who makes her feel like she's another mother to him (especially in terms of emotional well-being).
I won't say whether similar things have or have not happened to me. You will need to make up your own mind about that, although you might feel a temptation to take the easy road and say that they haven't and therefore you can dismiss what I say as the musings of a man who doesn't know what he's talking about. If that comforts you, feel welcome to it. But there's no way in hell I would ever call myself a "victim" of a cheating spouse. I would call myself a poor judge of character who saw what he wanted to see when he was overcome with emotions and allowed himself to think that he knew a woman and what she was about when he really did not (don't confuse what I am saying here -- emotions are fine; being at their mercy is not). I would take responsibility for my choice of being with her and I would learn everything I could about what I wasn't paying attention to, what I missed, what I disregarded or rationalized away, that could have let me see it coming. The first step to doing that (learning to see these things coming) is to stop telling yourself that it's impossible to do that.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
He's partially responsible for their exposure, but the men themselves are also partially responsible for exposing themselves. But ultimately, Fortuny is not responsible for their lives, their actions, etc. He is not responsible for keeping their secrets. If they want their secrets kept, they should keep them instead of sending them to anonymous people over the Internet.
I know where I draw the line between "innocent victim" and "deserves whatever they get", and the men in this story are just nowhere near either of these. They're not innocent, they're arguably not victims, and nobody particularly deserves having their personal lives spread on the Internet, which as I've said, is unfortunately a punishment that is far-reaching and indefinite.
And yes, I think this is a punishment, because these guys were obviously doing things that they themselves don't believe is appropriate. Sending these e-mails back to their wives and families would have been an asshole move, but perhaps they might have deserved that in some way. These emails being on the Internet where they can never be erased from public record is extremely unfortunate. But I when the chickens come home to roost, I have a hard time blaming the guy who opened the gate and let them back in.
But hey, maybe your sexual tastes are normal enough that you don't need to use tools like the internet to find your match. Lucky you.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
Nice red herring, but what he did has nothing to do with that.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
Does shooting people in the head with your hand really work? I thought a gun was required for that sort of thing...