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$74k Judgment Against Craigslist Prankster
jamie points out an update in the case of Jason Fortuny, the Craigslist prankster who was sued last year for publicly posting responses to a fake personal ad. The Citizen Media Law Project's summary of his case now includes a recently entered default judgment (PDF), fining Fortuny "... in the amount of $35,001.00 in statutory damages for Count I, violation of the Copyright Act; $5,000 in compensatory damages for Count II, Public Disclosure of Private Facts, and Count III, Intrusion Upon Seclusion." He has also been ordered to pay more than $34,000 in attorney and court fees.
This is exactly what I thought would happen, a large civil judgement, as I predicted in the original linked /. thread. Repeat after me: I do not own the content of letters I receive.. Letters you are sent are exactly like books you buy; you can keep them forever and read them all you want and even loan them to your friends, but you cannot publish them. This is an entirely non-controversial no-brainer in legal circles, no matter how silly you think it is, and it's why the guy got slammed. The extra helping of privacy violation is just icing on the copyright cake, and of course he gets the bill for feeding the lawyers too.
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but it was a Default Judgement, which means the plaintiff did not show. That is why he lost, not because there was a thorough review of the matter at hand.
Somehow I doubt this will be valid as a precedent in future lawsuits.
Because the guy went entirely too far. If he had posted anonymous copies of comments they had sent etc then it probably would have been tolerable as an 'experiment'. However, he posted photos, names, emails etc. - which is fairly brutal when shared on the net
On the over hand though, regardless of the false pretense, these people gave their data to him, and took a calculated risk as to whether the ad was genuine or not. It's not as if the data was stolen or anything. So it's a bit iffy, but overall, I'd say a good judgement
Again, though, a classified ads site is not the same thing as a web forum. If you replied in email to a person who posted an ad on the site, what would you expect to happen? Would you expect the person to post it publicly? No. That's what expectations are all about. It doesn't matter that he CAN post them publicly. If you follow your logic then there is no such thing as privacy. I could be having a "private" conversation with you, but be secretly recording it and then post it on the internet.
That's what we're talking about here, whether you can reasonably expect certain communications to be private or not. Personally, I would rather have the law say that there is such a thing as privacy than in your alternate universe where nothing is private.
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It's not based on the Constitution.
It's a tort. It's common law. It can be changed by statute.
I can't say I sympathise with that bloke much. He posted an ad, and the people who responded to it did so under the assumption that it would be confidential. Not the smartest assumption, but a reasonable one nontheless.
Then, he posts the responses, including names. While this doesn't hurt him much, it can easily lead to great embarrassment and potential destruction of reputation for those men.
Regardless of what one thinks of the activities the guys thought they were responding to (sounded weird to me, but I'm a bit of a boring prude), the guy who posted people's identities is an asshat, and I can't say I feel much, or really any sympathy for him. He sounds like little more than an asshat.
On a related note, I hope the asses who post those "feel free to come and take all my stuff" ads on Craigslist, that result in people's houses being stripped down to nothingness, also get sued. Those who respond to them and steal the poor bastard's items, too.
When these laws were passed, their may not have been any internet, web sites or forums, but there were newspapers, notice boards, newsletters, circulars and mailing lists, and telegraphs. An individual-to-individual communication is expected to remain exactly that, unless the person sending the information gives permission for the information to be made public.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violation_of_privacy
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Tedhnically they are, but it would be much harder to get an actual judgement against someone for doing that. Something like a C&D is regarded more like a public notice than a private letter, although there have been exceptions (the draconian gag order bound notices sent out by the NSA when it demands that you help them wiretap being a singular example).
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So you feel that women deserve to be raped and mugged if they make poor decisions?
Thanks for the Star Wars quote. It really cleared things up for me. I now understand that you must have a lot of time to memorize movie lines while sitting at home alone after having alienated any potential dates with your offensive logic.
So basically private information of yours that nobody has any right to should never be published openly unless you can show a public interest angle.
You can give your personal information to anyone you want but their rights to use it and redistribute it are limited.
Nick
Sounds pretty open and shut. Any idea why dozens of judges have consistently disagreed over the course of two centuries?
Hint: Freedom of speech doesn't mean you can't be sued for what you say after the fact. One reason for you to get sued is if what you said was false, but that's not the only one.
"Say I make a craigslist ad that says, "Hey, I'm looking for sex, call me at +4790369389, and you call that number, and it goes to A loudspeaker that broadcasts your voice to the public [oddstrument.com]. You call that number and yell out that you're looking for sex, and here's your name and email. Am I now liable for broadcasting your public information to the world,"
Yes, obviously.
"So what if i make an email address that forwards your email verbatim to an email list? Is that the same..."
Yes, obviously.
You set up an ad that claims a particular contact method is a way to initiate a private person-to-person contact. Someone foolishly trust you. Saying, "Sucker! You should have known I might be a lying douchebag" doesn't make you not a lying douchebag.