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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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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..
Only if the dude suing is actually hurt/offended/upset.
If he's being sued for the LULZ, it's EPIC FAIL.
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
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
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.
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.
Can you elaborate? I've heard the story vaguely before, but I'm not aware of him damaging other people's property. As far as I've ever heard, all he does is post the responses he receives to his Craigslist ads. What else is he doing?
I don't feel too bad for Fortuny for getting sued, because he doesn't seem like that nice a guy, but I also don't really see where what he's doing is a crime. IANAL, but how is this different from all the other situations? If I had a website documenting letters I had received from my grandfather, without my grandfather's permission, would that be illegal? Seriously, I'm interested in these sorts of legal things.
Mostly, I don't even think this guy is doing anything all that immoral. I don't particularly recommend e-mailing pictures of your penis to anyone if you're going to be ashamed if friends/family find out. E-mail isn't all that private/secure to begin with. But I especially wouldn't send it to random people you don't know.
Seems like people were trolling for sex on Craigslist and they got caught. Later, they wish they hadn't gotten caught. When people get caught doing something they don't think they're supposed to be doing, they generally wish that they hadn't gotten caught. There's even a part of me that's glad that this guy is out there. The Internet is this place where people think they can do whatever they want and never get caught because it's so big and anonymous. They do some awful things sometimes and they're even careless about it. I think the whole system could use a little accountability.
Admittedly, on the other hand, I wouldn't particularly want my entire online history sent to my parents or my boss. And this is one place where I think this little experiment highlights another problem with the internet: it might never forget. I mean, send one embarrassing e-mail when you're a teenager, and it might get posted somewhere, cached, stored in archived, etc. 50 years later you're running for president, and it could pop up in the news. That's the reality we might be faced with in the future. Our whole lives documented, stored, indexed, searchable, and public. It's probably better that we realize this early on.
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?
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.
Providing counseling to a suicidal individual, and the records associated with it, falls under guidelines regulating medical records.
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
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
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
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.
matchstick men: "Make sure that whoever you're conning isn't conning you".
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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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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?
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.
But is it illegal?
No.
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.
Cocky is more like it. He thinks he's got superior intellect that will allow him to abuse the "loopholes" and get out of any jam he encounters. Arrogant people like this are the reason for the word hubris.
In other words, he doesn't mind releasing his name because he thinks he's got the game to back up his mouth.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
All you have to do for me to sue you and collect is cause damage to me or my property, on purpose or by accident.
It takes more than that (assuming the judge/jury isn't on crack). You'd need to demonstrate that I damaged you or your property in a way that I am somehow legally at fault, having done something that I didn't have a right to do.
If the people of the US had known that George Bush and Dick Cheney had been convicted of drunk driving before ELECTION NIGHT the nightmare that has been the Bush legacy might never have happened.
First, that was known, and people didn't really care. But ok, let's instead assume that the candidate you would most like to be president (Obama? Clinton? Paul?) was going to win the election, and then it came out that, when he/she was a teenager, he/she had written a post online which seemed to advocate the holocaust (but perhaps was taken out of context). And that suddenly caused them to lose the election to someone like Bush. Would you feel so happy about that?
Or might you feel that, even had they actually had written something stupid or done something stupid, there was some point at which that act should fade from public memory?
I don't approve of either of those, but at least they are trying to target behavior that is actually illegal.
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
"Nothing they wanted is in any way, shape or form abusive or harming anyone."
You haven't read the whole original 'experiment' I see. Some of them were clearly looking for people to abuse. Quite coincidentally you mentioned 'To Catch a Predator' where potential abusers are caught and unmasked.
Our society is a little manic where it comes to 'consent' and 'abuse' when taken together, which is why when abuse complaints are lodged in some cases they can't be withdrawn. This is due to the nature of abused partners sometimes being so involved with the relationship that they want to gloss over that they are getting abused. Is exposing some of those potential abusers less important than exposing child molesters? Are consenting abusive relationships just not worth the same attention?
I'm not saying Jason is an altruist vigilante out to stop abuse. I'm saying that if 'To Catch a Predator' is within social norms, so is the craigslist experiment.
Perhaps Jason does deserve some comeuppance as you say, and he was banned from the Seattle LJ group among other things (ironically the NYT article is likely to be catalytic in the process of getting him unbanned that is going on right now), but does he deserve to be financially liable for exposing some jerk for who he really is? I still say no.
People should be proud of who they are as people in a way that the can display to the world. Funny enough, Jason strikes me as such a person. If all these people are embarrassed by who they really are, they shouldn't be suing, they should be changing themselves until they have something to be proud of.
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