Slashdot Mirror
UK Court Order Served Over Twitter, To Anonymous User Posing As Another
SpuriousLogic spotted this story on the BBC, from which he excerpts: "The High Court has given permission for an injunction to be served via social-networking site Twitter. The order is to be served against an unknown Twitter user who anonymously posts to the site using the same name as a right-wing political blogger. The order demands the anonymous Twitter user reveal their identity and stop posing as Donal Blaney, who blogs at a site called Blaney's Blarney. The order says the Twitter user is breaching the copyright of Mr. Blaney. He told BBC News that the content being posted to Twitter in his name was 'mildly objectionable.' Mr. Blaney turned to Twitter to serve the injunction rather than go through the potentially lengthy process of contacting Twitter headquarters in California and asking it to deal with the matter. UK law states that an injunction does not have to be served in person and can be delivered by several different means including fax or e-mail."
So what about all the other Mr. Blaney's? Or am I missing something about specifically what copyrighted material is being infringed?
claiming to be this guy in various contexts. Streisand effect here we come.
Women are like electronics: you don't know how damaged they are until you try to turn them on.
Time for me to delete my social networking accounts methinks, it's lost all the glitter and sparkle as my eyes have been gradually opened to the loss of privacy they effect and the risk of identity theft they engender. I've watched facebook degenerate into an oozing fest of self indulgence and crappy quizzes about peoples aura/star sign/some other mystic crap or how good they are in bed, and too many of my friends now use it to grandly announce every mundane detail of their life to the world as if they're some sort of celebrity and we're all supposed to be deeply concerned about them cutting their pinky finger or enraptured by their new haircut, etc etc. A friend related similar sentiments to me earlier today, saying people were using it as if it were twitter.
:P)
What concerns me the most is the loss of privacy entailed in having an account with any of these sites, knowing that cops and employers can pull up all this info instantly... it's a worry. Enough ranting for me, I'm going to delete my facebook account and my twitter account (which I created once and used never
This post was made in complete sincere seriousity; as such any attempts to derive humour are doomed to instant failure.
IANAL, but if the person in question is not a UK citizen, does the UK law, which says the injunction can be sent by fax or email, apply?
Three cheers for finally serving a court order against that anonymous coward bastard. He's always cluttering up slashdot with horse porn stories, trolling posts and all sorts of objectionable and inflamatory shite. Maybe now the Internet-web-thingie will be easy to use and headache free and we'll only ever have truth posted! Yay!
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Disclaimer : IANAL , But I'm smarter than some so called legal professionals who put disclaimers at the end of the text NOT the beginning - duh!
I believe its a discretionary power of the court and as such is done by application typically with supporting evidence that normal methods have been tried without success or that they are less applicable due to the location of party.
(I had occasion to help provide the supporting evidence which led to such a succesful application)
What if Donal Blaney is his real name? Or better yet, since names can apparently be copywrited, what if the Twitter Donal Blaney is older than the Donal Blaney at Blaney's Blarney? Can the Twitter Donal Blaney sue the other one to force him to change the name of his blog?
*twitch*
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=intensive+purposes
THAT out of the way...
There's a bit of a difference between your case of the real James Bond and Ian Fleming's James Bond. The real James Bond wasn't a spy, and Ian Fleming certainly wasn't trying to pass of the books' character James Bond as if they were the real James Bond-the-spy.
The real james bond was an ornithologist, says wikipedia with some citation to lord knows whether it's a credible source, but whatever.
This Donal Blaney chap, however, is complaining that somebody else posting under the name Donal Blaney is actually trying to pass themselves off as being this particular Donal Blaney chap... using not only his name, but his picture, his actual blog's name, etc.
Whether or not he has a case will be up to the courts to decide anyway, but I do believe he's got -a- point.. even if it's not a very sharp one, given that twitter does usually look into these things to make sure celebrities get to use their own name if a fan or foe set up a twitter account with that celebrity's name and was posing as them.
( not too sure what they do if it's really just an account from somebody else with the same name and they do -not- pose as the celebrity; I should hope they'd tell the celeb to go take a hike and open a new account under a different name. )
His blog. http://donalblaney.blogspot.com/
Now go comment internet and Donal. May anonymous never find offense with what you are doing, or this might just be throwing water onto scalding oil.
If the target of this injunction is anonymous, how can the writ be enforced? If he (or she) decides to ignore it, there seems very little that the server can do. It sounds to me like there is a good chance that the law will be shown to be an ass in this case.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Stop posting as me,
I'll sue!!!!
you have been warned
Ahh yes, you're right . . . I was completely ignorant, but thanks to your measured and intelligent response I did a bit of research and am suitably chastened. Thanks.
Nice rant but the twitterer is being served an injunction and not being sued at all . . .
Twitter is the delivery method, not named as a party to an action. If you mail someone an injunction, you are not serving an injunction on the post office, you are using the post office to serve a third party... same thing here.
For what is thought to be the first time Twitter is being used to send a court order to a user of the Twitter service.
Yet another reason not to use the thing.
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
You can attempt to trademark your own name, but it rarely holds up in court, especially against the many fair use defenses. I should know. I run a website that had to deal with a WIPO dispute from a woman claiming her name was trademarked (decision here, full details and all case files here). Her argument was similar that a person could misunderstand my site to be hers, but even if that were true, there are cases dealing with that specifically, finding it to be acceptable for public comment purposes (form of protest). One of the funny things is she registered the mark only after I put up the website about her.
I said STOP impersonating me!
Um, 2 things:
1. If he's posting anonymously, how is he using a name (I've quite possibly missed something, being as it is that I don't use twitter)?
2. More importantly, what if said anonymous person has the same name as Donal Blaney?
I am, and that is sufficient.
Trademarks are not the same thing as copyright. Copyright covers creative, intellectual, scientific, or artistic forms, or "works". Names are generally not considered to be part of that. Even if there was a possibility of having a copyright on a name, this guy wouldn't own the copyright, but his parents do. They "created" the name.
The twitterer isn't actually using Donal Blarney's name, they're using the name of his blog. Maybe he's claiming the name of the blog as a trademark? Most of the news reports seem to be parotting the law firm, who say that the twitterer is "breaching the copyright and intellectual property of the blogâ(TM)s owner," which is some uselessly vague bollocks, unfortunately, as it doesn't say what the intellectual property involved actually is.
"Modding down to bury an inconvenient truth doesn't change that truth but does make you look foolish"
Modding is anonymous, no one looks like anything.
What's stopping me from mailing, twittering and faxing a few million people injunctions?
The same thing that's stopping you from sentencing a million people to 20 years in jail. Only a court can issue an injunction.
Aren't they called "twits" ?
What a depressingly stupid machine.
The law firm serving the order is Blaney's own law firm. The whole thing sounds like a publicity stunt. The reason Blaney isn't serving the order in California is because it would be worthless: you can't copyright a name, and people have a right to anonymous free speech and satire. For an anonymous author to use a slightly offensive variation of Blaney's name to make fun of him and his positions is precisely what US free speech laws are about.
Yes, but that's not what the article implies. It says he was posing as Donal Blarney, not copying his work. All in all I think Donal is doing this not to get something removed from the internet, but for attention, and to portray himself as some sort of martyr/avatar of justice who stands up against the legions of internet ruffians. He's more or less an attention seeking troll and I think we all play a part in the guilt of feeding him. Take a look at his blog and tell me he doesn't strike you as the sort of person who would do that.
I am the REAL Donal Blaney, and I am appalled at these blatant attempts to smear my name and reputation on the Internet. Rest assured that all such attempts are being monitored and recorded and that all those who attempt to act in such fashion will be prosecuted to the full extent of the laws pertinent to the case. The REAL Donal Blarney
Nevertheless, how do you take legal action against people you don't even know what country they're in?
How many tweets does it take to serve an injunction? Breaking down legal verbiage into 140 character chunks must be a job in itself.
Dude, seriously? You do realize that getting a court to issue an injunction requires first filing suit. That's why the first sentence of the wikipedia article calls an injunction a remedy at equity. It's something that a court of equity can issue as part of a judgment to make the parties whole again.