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.'"

Comments

Punishing one criminal

[gurps_npc]

NEVER changes or impacts the culture.

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.

Actually, that's a related technique

[Moraelin]

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.

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.