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MetaFilter Founder Says Vacation Firm Forged Court Docs To Scotch Review
IonOtter (629215) writes Matt Haughey, founder of MetaFilter, has challenged a Cease & Desist letter from Sundance Vacations, a seller of time-shares with a reputation for aggressive sales tactics and suppression of criticism. Only this time, it seems that the plaintiff may have forged court documents ordering Mr. Haughey, Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Bing and other search engines to remove any and all mentions of the links and posts in question. Legal blog Popehat has picked this up as well, prompting Ken White to wryly note, "...Sundance Vacations is about to learn about the Streisand Effect." The story is gaining traction, and being picked up by Boing-Boing, as well as hitting the first page of search results on Google.
The real problem is that, for some reason, a court DID order that entity A
"who was no longer allowed to speak negatively about the company online".
How exactly we've created a judicial system with arbitrary power like that is the problem.
Now the uberpower judicial system will (rightfully) attack Sundance Vacations, and we can all rejoice. Rejoice in the power we've given dudes in robes to declare "i am the law!".
SV is not going to care about the Streisand Effect if they are in prison for the next 40 years, which is something that happens when you forge court documents.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Since when do people serve court orders by email...?
Imagine a world where it was legal to run up to people on the street, punch them in the face and take their money, and it was illegal to fight back.
Most "normal" people wouldn't do that because they know inflicting pain on random people for personal gain is wrong. But a subset of society would become muggers because it would be an easy way to make money.
Now punching wouldn't work on everyone because some people are big, some people are tough, some people are immune to pain, and some wannabe punchers aren't very good at punching. But it would work often enough that a group of amoral people would make a living by causing strangers harm.
Back in the real world "high pressure sales tactics" are completely legal. But instead of inflicting physical pain, they inflict psychological and emotional pain in order to achieve the desired results. Just because some people are immune to these techniques doesn't mean we should allow the most vulnerable among us to fall victim to them. And we shouldn't allow those who willingly employ these tactics to walk around freely, flaunting the fruits of their misdeeds.
Sadly US courts have deemed "puffery" to be legal when there is no fundamental difference between most advertising, high pressure sales tactics, and outright fraud.
Deleted in 2008:
Current article is a POV rant that lacks notability and the article has historically swung from a POV rant to a POV brochure, mainly edited by single purpose accounts. Despite repeated requests, sourcing is from poor or primary sources. The lack of good, reliable secondary sources means there is no way to produce an article with appropriate balance and suggests the company is not notable enough for an article in the first place. Recommend deletion.SiobhanHansa 14:41, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
Not re-created since???
A few years back, my better half and I got snookered into one of these meetings with a time share outfit - Do not remember who. They managed to disguise themselves as a "Vacation club" with "special deals".
When we got there ,it was apparent in a New York city minute that it was a time share. But we decided it might be fun to sit in on. Big Mistake.
So we listened to the spiel from the salesman about the place, looked at the sample apartment setup, and then asked about the price.
He must have figured he had us on the hook at that point. But my wife and I then whipped out the calculators. Given that the time-share was essentially a mortgage grade loan, It was pretty easy to see that it would cost us about 7Kilobucks a year for one week we couldn't control, just for the roof over our heads. Not travel, not food, notthing but a condo type apartment. And that their mortgage setup would take us into our 80's. And that we'd end up billed for repairs as in a condo association.
After we pointed that out, things got weird pretty quickly. Dude would not stop, despite us telling him we just weren't interested. We even told him that we didn't care about the "free weekends" at their other resorts, and didn't even want them, because we would probably have to listen to another sales pitch.
Dude even blocked the doorway after we got up and tried to leave. I eventually threatened to call the police, and he finally gave up.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I recall that only copyright infringments can be enforced in this way, and in no way does this constitute a copyright infringement.
The challange against Sundance Vacations is the right move to make. If Sundance Vacations ever contact me in any form, I will consider such contact to be harassment and a response will follow. Including a response on the Sr. partners of the law firm representing them.
Laws be damned.
Forged court documents....from a lawyer's office....and now we're talking about being a lawyer being disbarred.
It appears that we've Slashdotted popehat.com. After a number of tries I managed to get the page into the Coral cache. You'll still have to wait for the browser to timeout on its attempts to load images from the source.
Dude even blocked the doorway after we got up and tried to leave. I eventually threatened to call the police, and he finally gave up.
I was at a home show a while back and talked to a guy whose entire business was "getting people out of timeshare agreements".
That's how awful time-shares are, and how effective they are at bullying people into bad decisions: breaking time-share agreements is a viable business model!
That guy was probably a scammer. There are tons of scams out there that "guarantee" to sell your timeshare or get rid of them for you for several hundred dollars or more up front. And what always happens is that you never hear from them again.
And that's the thing with timeshares is all the hidden fees and they jack up the fees every year and you can't get out of it. Some folks are so desperate that they will GIVE you their timeshare. I even once had someone offer to pay ME to take it off of their hands because the annual maintenance fees were killing them.
My wife once paid $99 for a cheap room in Orlando but we would have had to listen to a 2 hour sales pitch for a timeshare. I said, I have no desire to visit Orlando. There is nothing there of interest for me. And if someone blocked the exit on me, I'd punch their lights out after kicking them in the balls and then I'd call the cops and then sue. She was able to get the $99 back because it was a timeshare offered by some big hotel chain.
Timeshares, extended warranties, variable and index annuities are all products that let me know that no one ever went poor underestimating the stupidity of people.
Sundance Vacations is a company/corporation, as such it cannot do things. It is individuals who do things on behalf of company. This is important. The court is going to be very pissed off with forged court orders being used. They should prosecute the individuals who did this forgery and fine them personally and massively or even better put then in jail.
If Sundance Vacations is made to pay a fine, then this will be seen as part of the cost of doing business. The criminals who did this will not really suffer much and just be more careful the next time that they want to threaten someone. If the individuals have to pay the penalty then hopefully this will stop this ever hppening again - not only at Sundance Vacations but at other corporations that might think of doing this.
There is not enough personal liability within corporations for criminal actions with the result that crooks try all sorts of things knowing that at the very worst they could lose their job and have to find another. If individuals have to pay the penalty (money and/or jail) this sort of thing would be less likely and we would all be better off.
OK, so you learned a new vocabulary word today. Don't make it the other person's problem.
All of the 'freebies' they offer never make up for the basic fact that sellers are desperate. The complex stuff they offer is only there to hide the fact that the primary market is a rip off in comparison.
Of course, you do need to accept the fact that you get less 'choice' on the secondary market. Still, it always makes more sense, if you can afford the time and effort to look and find a reputable website
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
I'm not sure who's suing whom. Or what they're suing about. Or if they're suing. Who's the plaintiff? What links? Is /. using bots to write articles now?
I want to see them subjected to the Hood effect, named for the Attorney General of Mississippi.
As a coincidence, the headline of the current most recent "Latest News" item on the Attorney General's website is "Pontotoc Woman Going to Prison for Forgery."
You should pick up a dictionary some time. They're full of interesting words.
Merriam Webster
transitive verb
2: to put an end to scotched rumors of a military takeover>
First Known Use of SCOTCH
15th century
Oxford
verb
1 [with object] Decisively put an end to: a spokesman has scotched the rumours
Origin
early 17th century (as a noun): of unknown origin; perhaps related to skate1. The sense 'render temporarily harmless' is based on an emendation of Shakespeare's Macbeth iii. ii. 13 as ‘We have scotch'd the snake, not kill'd it’, originally understood as a use of scotch2; the sense 'put an end to' (early 19th century) results from the influence on this of the notion of wedging or blocking something so as to render it inoperative.
Is it me, or does "Sundance Vacations" and "Eric Morgan" on the second document (a consent order it seems) look like its signed by the same person? Obviously, "Sundance Vacations" can't sign a legal document as a company (unless corporations are officially people now).
This whole thing was just a big prank, and there was no crime involved.
Sincerely,
Sundance Vacations
Where should all slashdot posts be sent so that you can check them for words you happen not to know so they can be replaced with words you do happen to know?
Archaic slang. Scotch, circular-file, 86, nix (as opposed to nichts) . . . pick one you like. I've got more.
You might enjoy this documentary -- http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2125666/
LOL Plaintiff and Defendant have the same handwriting in the PDF Look at handwriting for Sundance Vacations and Eric Morgan on the dubious court document. The "N"s are identical. Other characteristics are similar as well.
Explain to the salesperson you've seen far better (or the same)) timeshares for much less on the resale market.
Lots of sites with resales including Ebay. Usually I can find the exact timeshare, at the same location for 10 - 20% of the "new" price. Not that I'm buying that either.
I suspect it will be enough for them to rebrand themselves. They probably run several brands already. The sad part is the way they are allowed to operate that way at all.
The headline is ambiguous. You can 'defend' it with snark and a dictionary citation, but that doesn't change the ambiguity.
"Vacation Firm Forged Court Docs To a Scotch Review" is just as likely an initial interpretation as "Vacation Firm Forged Court Docs To Scotch a Review"
"To take down" is a much more accurate and less ambiguous verb to have used in this headline.
As they say:
Time flies like an arrow.
Fruit flies like a banana.
The problem is the way "Scotch" used in the headline, it can be either a verb or an adjective. This is compounded by "Court" also working as either a verb or an adjective. I was scratching my head for a minute trying to figure out why it was worth forging documents intended to court a review of an alcoholic drink.
The question posed was "What does it mean to "scotch" a review?". Check the definition of "reading comprehension" for more details.
I never MetaFilter I didn't like.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
I was scratching my head for a minute trying to figure out why it was worth forging documents intended to court a review of an alcoholic drink.
No you didn't. Stop lying.
woh! I see I got modded down into oblivion. I had never heard "scotch" being used as " Decisively put an end to". It seemed rather derisive. I'm still a little curious about the origins of the word. Looking up the Etymology of the word, it seems it might be from an old old word, and is not derogatory towards the Scots as I thought that it might be.
I'm not sure why curiosity or a sense of Not Assholism deserved to be modded down, but OK... Sorry Internet. Sheesh.
Yes, because EVERYONE on slashdot reads the articles and fully understands all the issues before posting.... sheesh. It was just a question. Questions are good. They help us learn. Snark? Not so much...
I wasn't referring to you. Your question was fine. It was the other guy who didn't properly read your question and so said it was ambiguous.