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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.
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.
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.
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.
In cases like these regular old judges can dish out the hurt just fine.
If theres anyone you really really do not want to get on the bad side of, its a judge (or the courts).
Since when do people serve court orders by email...?
In the same world where an Nigerian official needs your help to spirit US $10M out of the country...
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
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.
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.
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?
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?
Same person? Worse, those were both signed by the same font , nobody's signature is involved. The Eric Morgan "signature" uses a slightly larger point size. The lowercase a and n characters are a clear giveaway, I did a comparison of parts of the "Sundance Vacations" text which was all in one point size. The characters are a dead even match.
I wonder if the attempt to "sign" the document using a font was just dumb forgery, or a clever attempt to avoid culpability. After all, there's no actual handwriting on either of these supposed signatures, so QD can't compare the text to anyone's handwriting to prove who did this.
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
Libelous statements are made every day, designed to harm. Harming someone by lying is blatantly illegal. Sure it happens on teen TV shows and IRL often enough, but consider a systematic system of making false bad reviews about a company. It will harm them financially, and the perp should be held liable, and the courts should have the power to stop them.
And once found out and served an injunction, if the court order is violated they will rightfully be jailed since they clearly can't be trusted to not break the law out in public. Sundance was obviously trying to claim libel for protected speech, and not getting very far.
But an order like this basically raises the consequences for lying, once you're shown to be a liar.
At this point, Sundance Vacations could be in a heap of legal trouble if the courts or Metafilter want to go after them. There's interference with Metafilter, forgery, possibly impersonating an official, and potentially other big problems they brought on themselves. I suspect Metafilter's harm is minimal and this exposure (also protected speech) should be punishment enough.
Well, there are anti-libel and slander laws which could legitimately be brought to bare on one company speaking untruthfully about another.
FTFY