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City Sues To Prevent Linking To Its Website

Posted by kdawson on from the nolo-mi-tangere dept.

Mike writes "In what appears to be a first-of-its-kind case, the Sheboygan city attorney ordered Jennifer Reisinger to remove a link to the city's police department from her Web site. The city went further, she claims, launching a criminal investigation of her for linking to the department on one of her sites, and in response she's suing the mayor and the city. 'The mayor decided to use his office to get back at Jennifer for her efforts in the recall and picked this to do it,' said her attorney, Paul Bucher. It appears this will go to court, and the question will be can a city (or any business or Web property) stop people from posting a link to its site?"

3 of 429 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Did the editor read the last paragraph? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Not only that, but she is suing for $250000 (not inc punitive) for what seems like them just asking her to take down the link.

    Also, from TFA she seems to be quite racist (probably exactly the sort of McCain voting lunatic who is going to condemn us to four more years):

    A recall site she created later showed a Fourth of July parade photograph of Perez with a U.S. flag that had been digitally replaced with a Mexican flag and the caption, "Power to illegals?"

    If /. wants to pontificate about censorship they should do it in the cause of a more upright citizen.

  2. The bigger question... changing the legal system by compumike · · Score: 0, Troll

    So, yes, this is silly, but ultimately this is just one example of a bigger phenomenon: people filing stupid lawsuits, where simply the burden of defending oneself is overwhelming / not worth it. This happens for many reasons: lawyers are expensive, court simply takes time, etc.

    Is there some way we can modify the legal system so that these kinds of frivolous suits die quickly and cheaply? Like an online peer review thing, where there's an anonymous, rotating committee of reviewers who can triage filings and vote to reject them? This has its own problems too, of course -- the rule of the mob emerges.

    So I'm not sure what the solution is, but it seems like we have to think about how to make it about two orders of magnitude cheaper/easier to defend oneself in court against frivolous suits.

    --
    Get started with electronics: Microcontroller kit for Linux/Mac/Windows. Do it with your kids!

  3. Re:The bigger question... changing the legal syste by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    ...It wouldn't even matter if she's the second coming of Hilter(queue Godwin), using the police to intimidate or harrass someone who hasn't done anything wrong is illegal, immoral, and unconstitutional, and saying "Oops we're sorry" when you get caught doesn't get you off the hook...

    I completely agree, except that it's "cue", not "queue".