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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.
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.
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
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
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.
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. So, you have a consequence that is legal that follows a behavior that is legal. That is not part of the definition of vigilante justice, no more than your boss is a "vigilante" if you get fired for telling him to fuck off.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
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.
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.
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
Yeah, personally, I've tried to live my life by a basic rule: If I would be too ashamed to handle everyone in the world knowing what I'm doing, then don't do it. It kinda mostly works most of the time, and has kept me out of a lot of possible trouble. The main problem is that people sometimes don't think I'm too much fun.
Now, that's not to say that I don't do anything that would shame myself. It's just that it's a level of shame that I can handle. Like let's say I were interested in BDSM, I would look at it as having two choices on what to do about that. Either I don't engage in it because I wouldn't want to carry around that level of shame, -or- I would have to learn to embrace that it was part of who I was sufficiently that, if for some reason I had to explain it to my mother, I could handle it. That's not to say I would try to get so comfortable about it that I would seek out a conversation with my mother, but I would try to figure out what those impulses were in me, and exercise them in ways that I wouldn't have to feel overly ashamed of.
The basic way that I see it is that shame is instructive. Shame is your psyche's way of telling you that you think there's something wrong with your behavior. So if you're ashamed, you should engage your psyche in a sort of discussion, and try to discover whether there really is something wrong with your behavior. If there is something wrong, then strongly consider *not doing it*. If there isn't something wrong, then try not to be so ashamed. It's not really quite that simple, but it's a lot simpler than most people seem to think.
So yeah, overall, I agree with you (I think). If your life will be ruined by trolling for BDSM sex with strangers on Craigslist, then maybe you should consider not doing that.
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.
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.
"To Catch A Predator" is also rather stupid, but the difference is that in one, the person intends to meet someone for an illegal purpose (sex with a minor) and in the other, the person intends to meet someone for a completely legal purpose (sex with a consenting adult).
The other, less important difference is in the attitude. Most people would argue that "To Catch A Predator" accomplishes something at least partially useful, and for better or worse, what "most people" think is usually what's important in law. But this guy pulls his stunts for the sole purpose of being a jackass and humiliating people so he can have "lulz" with his fellow blogtards. It's only after he gets in trouble that he begins his furtive explanations and backpeddling about how it was all really for the common good, an argument I don't think anyone takes seriously.
mirrorshades radio -- darkwave, industrial, futurepop, ebm.
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?