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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.
Good point, but where is the boundary between "sharing with your friends" and "publishing" these days? If I post those comments on Facebook, and allow everyone to see my profile, its publishing, but when I only share them with my friends, its OK? What if I let everyone in my network see it? Frankly, I'm almost a bit scared to "publish" something I don't own inadvertently...
My freshman soc prof told us how _not_ to do research if we wanted to get published. I think the book was called the Lavender Tea Room if I remember. Guy hung out at public restrooms, took down license plates, got their address and then went door-to-door surveying. "Hello, sir. Wife? Kids? Occupation?" Discovered that a surprising number of regular family guys will stop by the restroom for a quick blow on the way to work. Sociologically interesting but no way that book was going to get distributed even without releasing subject names.
Does this mean that people who get nasty cease-and-desist letters from lawyers are in the wrong for posting them publicly?
Why is the page and info still up on encyclopedia dramatica? Should it not be removed?
So, these people felt nobody had any right to their private information. That's why they sent it to a complete stranger on the Internet.
This is a good question, and it's one area where electronics really have created a new gray area. In the past publication required making physical copies, which involved a certain amount of effort, and even if you weren't getting paid one could infer from the expense you put out yourself that you were creating value that wasn't going to the original author. Nowadays I would expect a decision to hinge upon whether access was active or passive, how much effort went into it, and the number of recipients. Those numbers might all be different than they would be with paper, but you can bet the courts will get around to setting them. Meanwhile, my motto is better safe than sorry. I might republish an evil C&D letter mainly because, even though it's technically illegal, it would be almost impossible to get a judgement against me for doing it. But forwarding something that wasn't meant to be forwarded to more than a couple of people -- or to anybody if it's of the nature of what this fuckwad solicited -- could very well be on the wrong side of a line that's still not very clear.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
34K on a default judgment? Default judgment means he lost because he never showed up. How did you spend this much against a guy who never showed up to defend himself?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
My main issue with that is viewing this as a private person to person conversation. These are emails that are sent to a completely anonymous email address that the sender has no idea what's going to happen to them.
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. 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, or is that your own damn fault for not realizing what that number did.
So what if i make an email address that forwards your email verbatim to an email list? Is that the same, or do you expect more privacy from an anonymous email address than an anonymous phone number?
Look, I have no problem with expecting privacy on person to person conversations. However, I have a very hard time considering an email sent to a completely anonymous email address with which you have had no prior correspondence to be a private person to person conversation.
If there's anything more important than my ego around, i want it caught and shot now.