Smearing Toddler Reputations Via Internet: Free Speech Or Extortion?

retroworks writes "Crystal Cox, a Montana woman who calls herself an 'investigative journalist,' was slapped with a $2.5-million judgment last year for defaming an investment firm and one of its lead partners. Cox had taken control of the Google footprint of Obsidian Finance and its principal Kevin Padrick by writing hundreds of posts about them on dozens of websites she owned, inter-linking them in ways that made them rise up in Google search results; it ruined Obsidian's business due to prospective clients being put off by the firm's seemingly terrible online reputation. After Obsidian sued Cox, she contacted them offering her 'reputation services;' for $2,500 a month, she could 'fix' the firm's reputation and help promote its business. The Forbes Article goes on to describe how she tried to similarly leverage attorneys and journalists reputations. Finding some of her targets were too well established in google rank to pester or intimidate, Cox moved to family members, reserving domain names for one of her target's 3-year-old daughter. Forbes columnist Kashmir Hill makes the case that this clearly isn't journalism, and establishes a boundary for free speech online."

Comments

Re:I think the key...

[MasseKid]

Just because you prefer 45 ACP doesn't mean everyone does. A 9mm would have done just as good of a job.

Obligatory Grammar Lesson

[HTH NE1]

reserving domain names for one of her target's 3 year old daughter.

One of the three... daughters... who are old... that the target... adopted... a year ago?

That is a very ugly and incorrect phrase. First, "3-year-old" needs hyphens when used as an adjective for "daughter". Also, leading with "one of" leads the reader into thinking something in there is going to be plural: either "daughters" (if the target had more than one 3-year-old daughter) or, more likely, "targets", which would form the possessive "targets' " (apostrophe trails the s iff the -s suffix signifies a plural). And mixing prepositional possessive phrases with bare possessives is just asking for parsing trouble.

That link-text is more readable as:

reserving domain names for the 3-year-old daughter of one of her targets.

or, the less likely:

reserving domain names for one of the 3-year-old daughters of her target.

that the target had twin girls, or, if even less likely hyphenation error was misconstrued:

reserving domain names for one of the three year-old daughters of her target.

suggesting the target had triplets, each being one year of age.

Whoever edited that submission needs remedial study.