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Craigslist Prankster Sued, Argues DMCA Abuse
Posted by
timothy
on Tue Aug 05, 2008 09:41 AM
from the respond-privately-wink-wink-nudge-nudge dept.
from the respond-privately-wink-wink-nudge-nudge dept.
destinyland writes "Though Sunday's New York Times dubbed him a spokesperson for internet trolls, Jason Fortuny's just been sued in federal court. Fortuny re-published over 180 responses to a fake sex ad on Craigslist in 2006 — but he's finally been located and issued with a summons. The victim argues Fortuny violated his privacy, and that the photo Fortuny re-published was copyrighted. Fortuny argues he re-published the photo to stand up to the victim's bogus DMCA notice, and that the gullible victim had voluntarily provided the photo. In a motion to the court Fortuny even argues that he helped publicize a privacy risk on the internet, whereas 'bringing legal action against me may punish me, but it won't change or even impact online culture.'"
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News: $74k Judgment Against Craigslist Prankster 182 comments
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.
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Punishment (Score:5, Insightful)
'bringing legal action against me may punish me, but it won't change or even impact online culture.'
I guess the punishment is what his victims want.
Re:Punishment (Score:5, Insightful)
Was it a sociological case study which had been approved by an ethics committee first? I doubt it.
Parent
that has no bearing on legality, and not mandatory (Score:4, Interesting)
Ethics committees are only legally mandated for specific categories of researchers, basically institutions receiving federal funding or trying to get things (e.g. new drugs) approved by the federal government. There is no law requiring them for all sociology studies; in fact, it's quite uncommon for, say, market-research experiments to be approved by an ethics committee. It's not even clear what ethics committee they'd apply to---when I do human-computer interaction studies, I apply to my university's ethics committee, but only because my university requires it as a matter of university policy.
In addition, even if you are at an institution that requires such approval, and doing research that would require approval, it isn't actually illegal not to get it. Absent violating some other law, the only sanctions are professional and institutional ones---a journal may refuse to publish your work, or your university may sanction you, or if the university itself is frequently not overseeing studies it may get its federal funding revoked.
Parent
Re:Punishment (Score:5, Funny)
Public humiliation is no laughing matter
...except for the public...
Parent
Re:"Cool guy", eh? (Score:5, Interesting)
I think that's a dangerous slope, honestly. Irregardless of what you think of the people in question, the fact is that there was a level of trust there that was blatantly abused by your friend. To me, this is like that show To Catch A Predator; while some can argue that the people that are getting caught in those stings get what they deserve, I think it's a dangerous slope to resort to such vigilante justice by people ill equipped for the task.
You judge these people as perverts, among other adjectives. The fact of the matter is that these people were looking for mutual, consensual sex. Key words are mutual and consensual. Who is Jason to judge these people? Who are you? Nothing they wanted is in any way, shape or form abusive or harming anyone.
I do not share their views; I find the acts reprehensible. But I am not about to resort to vigilante justice to humiliate others. Even if there's no "crime", Jason deserves some comeuppance for how he's affected their lives, especially in a world where anything about you online - whether voluntarily put there or not - is grounds to affect your job, and other things that affect items in "real" life that have nothing to do whatsoever with that subject.
Parent
EPIC LULZ (Score:5, Funny)
*Sigh* (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:*Sigh* (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, yes and no.
It's no great accomplishment to trick people if they trust you. You can argue that people should be less trusting -- and I'd have to agree -- but for the hard-core troll, all trust is viewed as weakness, and the position they are taking is essentially that no one should trust anyone, ever. Obviously, society couldn't function in such a scenario.
At the end of the day, their "help" is not unlike shooting someone and then recommending that everyone start wearing ballistic armor. It's not an illogical suggestion, but it's more efficient to just apprehend the shooter than to supply everyone with armor.
Parent
Re:*Sigh* (Score:5, Insightful)
Yet my experience has been that hard-core trolls are generally outraged when the tables are turned and their trust is in turn violated. They can dish it out, but never take it.
It's impossible to generate an ounce sympathy for anyone in this story. Anyone who would pull such a prank needs a life, a soul, and a conscience to begin with. And any married man who would respond to such an ad is a contemptible idiot by definition.
Parent
Re:*Sigh* (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't say he's married, but i took "lost opportunity of keeping his family together", which could mean lots of things, as "my wife is leaving me because of you."
Sounds to me like his wife found out he was trying to pick up women on craigslist. He's blaming this guy for it getting out, instead of realizing it's his fault for trying to screw around. Given the choice between taking responsibility for his actions or suing, he chose to sue. That's the way I see it anyway.
If this guy was embarrassed about something he's into, taking pictures and sending it over the internet to someone he didn't know was obviously not the right decision. I never thought i'd say this, but for once i'm rooting for the troll.
Parent
Re:*Sigh* (Score:5, Insightful)
"Am I the bad guy? Am I the big horrible person who shattered someoneâ(TM)s life with some information? No! This is life. Welcome to life. Everyone goes through it. Iâ(TM)ve been through horrible stuff, too."
He's been through horrible stuff, so it's ok to put other people through it too. Yeah, life sucks. But that doesn't mean you need to make other people's lives suck more than they already do. The key is to learn to handle the sucky stuff so you don't get hurt, but without hurting other people in the process.
Parent
Actually, that's a related technique (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, no, that's (as in many other cases) just a thin veil for another time-honoured troll technique: adding (more) insult to injury by blaming their victim.
E.g., the "it's your fault if you can be insulted in the first place" idea was even featured in a recent NYT article, linked to on /. too. See, suddenly it's not him who's being a troll by calling the journalist incompetent, it's the journalist's fault and revealing that he got "defensive" by asking, "why? what did I do?" In reality, the trolls themselves are very quick to get insulted too. The pointing out that "shortcoming" is really just a way to heap extra insult on the victim.
E.g., in this case, it seems to me like the same applies. The whole "raising awareness" is just a thinly veiled way of saying "it's you who's gullible." It just adds that extra jab.
I mean, if you think about it, it doesn't even try to look at all helpful or believable in that role. The excuse boils down to, basically, "I'm an arsehole and doing X just to show that arseholes exist and can do X." Where X was actually pretty obvious to everyone in the first place.
If he thinks that that kind of behaviour is actually helpful, then I offer to raise his awareness to the fact that he can have his head bashed in with a brick in a sock, by demonstrating it on you. Hey, I'm just being equally helpful. It's just teaching him to watch his back ;)
If it's not an extra jab at the victim, then I'm seriously curious what kind of a deranged mind would think that that's being helpful.
It's not even some online phenomenon. People do things on trust every day IRL too. E.g.,
- if you ever had a photo of your girlfriedn naked, or conversely she had one of you, then one of you trusted that the other won't use it in some humiliating way
- you leave your home unguarded, on the implicit assumption that the neighbours won't then bash your door in and steal all you have
- you pay with a credit card at a restaurant, basically trusting the waiter to not copy the data and make other purchases with your money
- you hop in a taxi and, essentially, trust the guy or gal that he won't kill you and dump your corpse at the first oportunity to do it unseen (more than one girl guessed wrong there, and got raped before being killed too.)
- you give a 50 euro bill to a taxi driver for a 11 Euro trip, and trust him that he'll give you 39 Euro back. He _could_ just say, "what? you gave me nothing" and even call the cops, and it's your word against his.
- when you open your front door for the mailman or some utilities guys, you trust them to not mug you and rob you instead. (Again, some people guessed wrong there.)
Etc.
We _are_ "gullible" like that, because nobody can live in a bunker and guard their back 100% of the time. So we have some laws against those kind of things, _and_ we essentially trust people at least to not be the stupid kind of predators. You know, the kind which gains disproportionately little compared to the harm and penalties, or even makes a personal loss in the process too.
You trust, for example the taxi driver to not shaft you out of 50 Euros, because, frankly it's not worth it. He can only do that a couple of times, before he makes a much bigger loss than that.
And some people trusted a perfect stranger with their photos, because it wasn't obvious what he'd have to gain by using them.
And he's raising awareness to what? That he's a prime example of an arsehole who does it just for damage sake? I don't need anyone was that blissfully ignorant to that possibility.
So, again, it seems to me that the whole thing was just one last jab at the victims.
Parent
Punishing one criminal (Score:5, Interesting)
But if you punish enough criminals, you DO change and impact the culture.
This man is damaged piece of crap. I feel sorry for him, having been abused as a child, but that does not excuse him taking out his crap on the rest of us.
He is a semi-professional 'troll', going around pissing people off and laughing at them.
He routinely engages in low-level criminal actions, knowing that he is unlikely to get caught and arrested for doing things that are the equivelent of spray painting a car.
I hope he finally gets what he so richly deserves, legal punishment.
Re:Punishing one criminal (Score:5, Insightful)
He routinely engages in low-level criminal actions, knowing that he is unlikely to get caught and arrested for doing things that are the equivelent of spray painting a car.
Can you elaborate? I've heard the story vaguely before, but I'm not aware of him damaging other people's property. As far as I've ever heard, all he does is post the responses he receives to his Craigslist ads. What else is he doing?
I don't feel too bad for Fortuny for getting sued, because he doesn't seem like that nice a guy, but I also don't really see where what he's doing is a crime. IANAL, but how is this different from all the other situations? If I had a website documenting letters I had received from my grandfather, without my grandfather's permission, would that be illegal? Seriously, I'm interested in these sorts of legal things.
Mostly, I don't even think this guy is doing anything all that immoral. I don't particularly recommend e-mailing pictures of your penis to anyone if you're going to be ashamed if friends/family find out. E-mail isn't all that private/secure to begin with. But I especially wouldn't send it to random people you don't know.
Seems like people were trolling for sex on Craigslist and they got caught. Later, they wish they hadn't gotten caught. When people get caught doing something they don't think they're supposed to be doing, they generally wish that they hadn't gotten caught. There's even a part of me that's glad that this guy is out there. The Internet is this place where people think they can do whatever they want and never get caught because it's so big and anonymous. They do some awful things sometimes and they're even careless about it. I think the whole system could use a little accountability.
Admittedly, on the other hand, I wouldn't particularly want my entire online history sent to my parents or my boss. And this is one place where I think this little experiment highlights another problem with the internet: it might never forget. I mean, send one embarrassing e-mail when you're a teenager, and it might get posted somewhere, cached, stored in archived, etc. 50 years later you're running for president, and it could pop up in the news. That's the reality we might be faced with in the future. Our whole lives documented, stored, indexed, searchable, and public. It's probably better that we realize this early on.
Parent
Re:Punishing one criminal (Score:5, Insightful)
All you have to do for me to sue you and collect is cause damage to me or my property, on purpose or by accident.
It takes more than that (assuming the judge/jury isn't on crack). You'd need to demonstrate that I damaged you or your property in a way that I am somehow legally at fault, having done something that I didn't have a right to do.
If the people of the US had known that George Bush and Dick Cheney had been convicted of drunk driving before ELECTION NIGHT the nightmare that has been the Bush legacy might never have happened.
First, that was known, and people didn't really care. But ok, let's instead assume that the candidate you would most like to be president (Obama? Clinton? Paul?) was going to win the election, and then it came out that, when he/she was a teenager, he/she had written a post online which seemed to advocate the holocaust (but perhaps was taken out of context). And that suddenly caused them to lose the election to someone like Bush. Would you feel so happy about that?
Or might you feel that, even had they actually had written something stupid or done something stupid, there was some point at which that act should fade from public memory?
Parent
What a twit... (Score:4, Insightful)
No lawyer == supreme stupidity (Score:5, Insightful)
The article does not explicitly say anything about his lawyer, and it sounds like he is doing this on his own. Whether he is right or wrong it will probably not matter unless he can find himself a decent lawyer. Going into legal proceedings without a lawyer is a train wreck in progress.
The only thing worse than trying to find sex on the internet is to get legal advice on the internet. Either way you are going to receive it the same way.
put more succinctly: (Score:5, Insightful)
if you look for sex on the internet you are getting into legal trouble, and if you look for legal advice on the internet you are going to get fucked
Parent
Worthless without pics? (Score:5, Informative)
Anyone thinking of complaining that the summary is worthless without pics, near the bottom of TFA there is a link to the full list of responses and photos [encycloped...matica.com] at Encyclopedia Dramatica.
Be warned, it's NSFW ... in fact IMO it's not even safe if you're simply trying to maintain an appetite in anticipation of lunchtime
if you read the sunday nyt article (Score:5, Insightful)
you will note that fortuny has a history of sexual abuse as a child, that his family turned a blind eye towards. which goes far, pop psychology wise, to explaining what would motivate him to do his craigs list "expose": an attempt to find empowerment over an issue which means helplessness to him psychologically
so, in a way, his trolling is just therapy, catharsis. which is my whole theory of trolling: far from pointless negative and twisted, online trolling is merely a way to jettison asocial impulses harmlessly (relatively harmlessly) on the internet
having said that, and fully appreciative of the fact that free speech fundamentalists will come out in support of fortuny, i say to you free speech fundamentalists: no law or government can protect you from the consequences of what you say. in other words, there are elements of speech which have every expectation of protection. then there are elements of free speech, that, while a good argument can be made for their official, societal level acceptance, doesn't mean some asshole somewhere isn't going to get upset and try to do something about what you say
insulting pictures of mohammed, for example. yes, a sound understanding of free speech means that insulting pictures of mohammed should be tolerated. however, a legal, societal understanding of tolerance on this issue does not protect you from the anger of religious fundamentalists who could care less about tolerance
you don't have protection from the consequences of what you say, regardless of the legal environment. making enemies of random guys looking for easy sex is not a situation where a idealistic expectation of free speech without consequences gets you very far
remember that about free speech: it has consequences. if you get upset about that idea, or expect government to somehow protect you from the consequences of what you say, you really don't understand the whole notion that with freedom comes responsibility, which is the only notion that will keep speech truly free
like any right in this world, it carries with it responsibility. shoot your mouth of without any regard for conesequences, and you will discover that consequences happen, that not everyone in society is a tolerant ethical individual
Re:if you read the sunday nyt article (Score:4, Insightful)
Like the NYT reporter, you're assuming everything he said was true. Given his history, why would you do that?
Parent
Two important lessons... (Score:4, Insightful)
1) Don't send your personal contact information to strangers on the internet, especially not in answer to a sex ad on Craigslist, especially not attached to a picture of your erect penis, because doing so is very likely to cause you all manner of trouble. If you do such a thing you are a twit.
2) If you are in a situation in which your life would be ruined if you were known to be into BDSM, *don't make it known that you're into BDSM*! If you do, you're a twit!
2) If you demonstrate that someone is a twit, they are more likely to get cross and sue you than to stop being a twit.
Sure, the guy was kind of a jerk and the whole thing is desperately unfunny like most trolls. But that doesn't mean he should be punished because there are so many twits about.
One More Lesson: (Score:4, Funny)
3) If you're going to violate the DMCA, you should join the Air Force first. [slashdot.org]
Parent
Re:Two important lessons... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, personally, I've tried to live my life by a basic rule: If I would be too ashamed to handle everyone in the world knowing what I'm doing, then don't do it. It kinda mostly works most of the time, and has kept me out of a lot of possible trouble. The main problem is that people sometimes don't think I'm too much fun.
Now, that's not to say that I don't do anything that would shame myself. It's just that it's a level of shame that I can handle. Like let's say I were interested in BDSM, I would look at it as having two choices on what to do about that. Either I don't engage in it because I wouldn't want to carry around that level of shame, -or- I would have to learn to embrace that it was part of who I was sufficiently that, if for some reason I had to explain it to my mother, I could handle it. That's not to say I would try to get so comfortable about it that I would seek out a conversation with my mother, but I would try to figure out what those impulses were in me, and exercise them in ways that I wouldn't have to feel overly ashamed of.
The basic way that I see it is that shame is instructive. Shame is your psyche's way of telling you that you think there's something wrong with your behavior. So if you're ashamed, you should engage your psyche in a sort of discussion, and try to discover whether there really is something wrong with your behavior. If there is something wrong, then strongly consider *not doing it*. If there isn't something wrong, then try not to be so ashamed. It's not really quite that simple, but it's a lot simpler than most people seem to think.
So yeah, overall, I agree with you (I think). If your life will be ruined by trolling for BDSM sex with strangers on Craigslist, then maybe you should consider not doing that.
Parent
Wait a second... (Score:4, Insightful)
How is this ANY different than Chris Hansen on Dateline NBC in "To Catch a Predator." Other than the "bait" not pretending to be 17, what's the difference?
Re:Wait a second... (Score:5, Insightful)
The other, less important difference is in the attitude. Most people would argue that "To Catch A Predator" accomplishes something at least partially useful, and for better or worse, what "most people" think is usually what's important in law. But this guy pulls his stunts for the sole purpose of being a jackass and humiliating people so he can have "lulz" with his fellow blogtards. It's only after he gets in trouble that he begins his furtive explanations and backpeddling about how it was all really for the common good, an argument I don't think anyone takes seriously.
Parent
Wow! (Score:4, Funny)
I didn't know so many men sent naked pictures while replying to a personal ad.
Oh boo hoo (Score:4, Insightful)
People like this are completely useless, and all his high-and-mighty rhetoric about "messages" and "trust" reads like the inane drivel a ninth-grader would scrawl in his Mead notebook after getting shoved by the bullies in gym class. Dressing your bullshit up in high-school "philosophy" doesn't make you any less of an asshole, but it sure does make you look more stupid.
In the end, nothing he does, including his Craigslist stunt, is about "messages" or "public service". If that's all his goal was -- to show that there's a lot of people out there into this sort of thing and willing to cheat on their spouses -- he could've erased or blurred the names and other personal information of the people who responded. But he left it all intact, showing that his goal was really to "lulz" and humiliate people to whom he feels superior.
It's all about how he feels superior to the target and wants to get attention. Well, he got attention. Good work.
Also, did anyone read his hand-wringing, whiny letter to the judge in this case? His tearful sobbing about how he doesn't have the money is quite hilarious, but there's also this gem:
Great argument there, champ. Even if you buy it, which I don't, at best it shows that he's an unhinged idiot willing to do anything he wants and is incapable of considering the consequences, which is hardly an argument in his favor.
Or this:
Yeah, Jason, you're a real hero to the "community".
What a pissant.
How not to respond to a lawsuit (Score:5, Informative)
If you look through the court documents, the plaintiffs had quite some difficulty serving Jason Fortuny. They finally had to resort to emailing him, which isn't normally proper service. However, Fortuny took the emailed complaint and posted a story about being sued. That showed that he knew about the complaint, which gave the plaintiff ammunition in requesting that the court accept the emails as adequate service of process.
Fortuny's subsequent letter was not well received by the court:
Jason Fortuny is well on his way to losing this case through a default judgment. At they very least, he could have gotten a half-hour of legal advice for only $35 if he had tried looking for a lawyer [kcba.org]. A half-hour of advice would have been enough to help him avoid making some serious mistakes from the get-go.
Re:Troll? No. (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Troll? No. (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Troll? No. (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Troll? No. (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously, people. This guy put out a honeypot [wikipedia.org] . And those of low moral character took the bait. And he alleges that he learned from this (expecting no responses, getting nearly 200). IT Security folks do this all the time. He just took the technical security solution, and made it a social security solution. (Nevermind that the term "honeypot" actually originates closer to Fortuny's actions than the IT solution.)
And, I bet that those wives who filed for divorce over this are thanking Fortuny for exposing their (now or soon-to-be) ex-husbands for the cheaters that they are. The married men who responded obviously weren't thinking too much of their vows.
That said, I do think they had a reasonable expectation of privacy, which was broken. Fortuny could have got his point across just fine by smudging the photos before posting them.
Parent
Re:Troll? No. (Score:5, Informative)
It's not entrapment when someone else does it because the definition of entrapment includes "government officials" in it. As Fortuny isn't a government official, we fail the first test.
Further, committing adultery, while legal grounds for divorce (in many jurisdictions that still require any reasons whatsoever), is not a crime, thus we fail the second test.
Even if Fortuny were a government agent pursuing people for committing an actual crime of adultery (yeah, right, politicians banning adultery? They'd lose their favourite pasttime, right after spending our money!), would this be an illegal entrapment? From "The 'Lectric Law Library's Lexicon" [lectlaw.com], I see a definition that requires three things:
So, no, this is not entrapment. There isn't a single similarity with entrapment here. This is merely allowing people to make fools of themselves and then following up by actually showing the fools for what they are. Going up to an undercover cop and buying a dime of heroin isn't entrapment. Nor is an undercover cop buying from a street dealer. This isn't even close.
Parent
Re:Troll? No. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not vouching for infidelity and don't tell me this prankster was out to do any good. He was doing it to humiliate these people.
Can't we do both at the same time?
Honestly, I don't buy that his actions were guided merely by a desire to "do good". On the other hand, it doesn't seem impossible that he imagined this project might have some beneficial effects. It's informative about the lack of privacy/anonymity of online communications. It's discouraging people from engaging in this sort of behavior. It's exposing some creepy individuals for what they are. It's showing some interesting facets of human behavior.
Yes, it's also humiliating some people. I'm not sure that this in and of itself is an awful thing. Sometimes people should be humiliated when they do something bad or stupid. It sets an example of why you don't do bad and stupid things. The main problem that I see is that it has the potential to be such a far-reaching and long-term humiliation. When something is put on the internet, anyone in the world can see it, and it can stick around forever. Essentially, these guys can never walk into a room for the rest of their lives and be able to trust that the people in that room haven't seen these emails and pictures. That's pretty rough.
Parent
Re:Troll? No. (Score:5, Interesting)
Really? I've bought and sold legit stuff on Craigslist. A lot easier than dealing with ebay.
Parent
Re:Troll? No. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, because trying to find a renter for your spare room or sublet apartment is illegal and immoral. The scam works because they pretend to be a student enrolled in university and ask you to forward the balance of the rubber cheque their "parents" wrote to some third party to pay for books or furniture or some other sort of fee.
That aside, the guy in question here is a victim of fraud. He responded to someone who put forth that they were a woman looking for a man, except the whole thing was fraudulent, like a sting operation being conducted by someone who has no authority to do so.
It doesn't matter that he was revealed to be looking for sex. What matters is that he was suckered into having his dirty laundry aired in public while those who would pass judgment on him have their skeletons comfortably locked away in the closet.
As for the malicious asshole who likes to pretend he's a woman and shame people for recreation, well, he belongs in a shallow grave. He's malicious, and a coward, and a liar, and he screws peoples lives up for sport. I'd quite happily shoot him in the head with my own hand and go back to eating my lunch.
Parent
Re:Troll? No. (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow. "I swear it's not my fault honey, blame the hooker". The husband (I assume) responded to a SEX ad on Craigslist and it's the fault of the prankster.
If I were that guys wife I'd send a thank you to Fortuny for helping me cut my losses.
Sounds like the Comedian who went to a telemarketers conference and started calling all the hotel rooms at 3 am and published the results.
Parent
Re:Troll? No. (Score:5, Informative)
The comedian was Tom Mabe [tommabe.com], the album was A Wake Up Call for Telemarketers [tommabe.com]
Only place with samples I've found were on Rhapsody. [rhapsody.com] Scroll down to the "Hotel Calls". They're not as funny as some of his other stuff where he just outright leads a telemarketer on, but they're funny in the sense of, you can tell the guys are tired as hell and they're getting a taste of their own medicine.
Here's a press release from before the album was made: http://www.reversespins.com/telemarketing.html [reversespins.com]
Parent
Re:Troll? No. (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps she'd have preferred if the rest of the world didn't find out at the same time.
Perhaps he'd never have gone through with the meeting?
Perhaps someone else thought it'd be fun to reply to an ad on craigslist in their friend's name and enclose a photo of their friend? That sounds like a pretty likely scenario amongst friends who play jokes on one another. Imagine if one of your friends did that and before you even found it, your 'reply' to a sex ad was posted on an internet site and gathering thousands of hits.
Parent
Re:yes, the married cheater deserved a comeuppance (Score:5, Insightful)
Your argument is not valid. This is not vigilante justice because cheating on your wife is not against the law, and her finding out about this and leaving you is also not against the law. So, you have a consequence that is legal that follows a behavior that is legal. That is not part of the definition of vigilante justice, no more than your boss is a "vigilante" if you get fired for telling him to fuck off.
Parent
Re:yes, the married cheater deserved a comeuppance (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:huh? (Score:4, Informative)
if someone thinks something is wrong and seeks justice on an issue, they are being a vigilante. doesn't matter what is actually legal or illegal, what matters is what they think is right and wrong
if you start shooting people who do a poor job at parallel parking, you are a "vigilante" in search of "justice" in your mind, regardless of the fact that poor parallel parking skills are not illegal
which is one of the reasons why vigilante justice is wrong: it is determined by the vigiliante, which, as you note, often delineates sharply from society-wide definitions and laws about right and wrong
so i don't know why you think it is valid to point out that someone is not a vigilante because they aren't dutifully following actual laws on the books. as if such a consideration ever had anything to do with what motivates any vigilante, ever, or has anything to do with the criteria for labelling someone a vigilante
You keep using this word "vigilante." I do not think it means what you think it means.
From Dictionary.com:
-noun
1. a member of a vigilance committee.
2. any person who takes the law into his or her own hands, as by avenging a crime.
-adjective
3. done violently and summarily, without recourse to lawful procedures: vigilante justice.
He does not appear to be a member of a vigilance committee. He is not taking law enforcement into his own hands. He did not conduct himself in a violent manner.
Parent
Re:huh? (Score:4, Informative)
That just isn't the case when you're talking about something like a wife leaving her husband. No one is forced to be in a relationship that they don't want to stay in. You always have the right to leave at any time. You are merely exercising a right that you had all along when you decide that you don't want to stay with someone who will cheat on you. That just means that choices have consequences; every instance of this fact is not "vigilante justice".
Yes, but shooting people who do not pose a physical threat to you is most certainly illegal. That's why it's vigilante justice. The legal, non-vigilante method would be to call the police and ask them to enforce the law in the case of any parking violations that have occurred.
Like I said, choices have consequences. If you cheat on your wife, you do so knowing that she will almost certainly leave you if she finds out. There is nothing vigilante about that. You seem like you either want to complicate a very simple issue or like you're just too proud to admit that you didn't understand this term. As others have pointed out, it doesn't mean what you seem to think it means.
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Mod parent down (Score:5, Insightful)
By the way, do you know what the state of his marriage was? Do you know anything about him at all? But you will happily say that the victim's pain is justified. Come out of your religious conservative rat hole, open your eyes, mind and heart and breathe some fresh air.
Wish I had mod points today. Posting anonymously not because of fear of -1 moderation but because of privacy concerns.
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Re:Troll? No. (Score:4, Informative)
It COULD be comedy gold if you stripped the real identities from the responses before you make fun of them (even then it's a little prickish, considering you BAITED them). If you reveal the real identities of these duped people, it's not comedy. It's just being a mean-spirited, malicious asshole.
A kid who busts his ass stupidly trying to jump off a roof in a stunt--funny. Throwing a kid off a roof for fun--felony.
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Re:Troll? No. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Troll? No. (Score:4, Informative)
You have to specifically state that you're transferring rights, when you're transferring, so really it doesn't.
The real question is how much does correspondence fall into traditional copyright protection for literary works?
The ownership of a two party conversation can be disputed; the post was a response to a request posted on the board...That could qualify it as a solicited work, which could make the copyright fall into a work for hire category, like the answer to a test question which, though written by the student, belongs to the professor.
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Re:Troll? No. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah its "hilarious." Its a severe breach of privacy. If you like that joke, then I'm going to start a fake suicide hotline and replay the tapes on the web. I'll even insert my own amusing commentary. I'm not a troll, I'm "helping." Hey, if those people didnt want to be made fun of then they should not have been suicidal to begin with!
I hope this guy gets taken to the cleaners for what he did.
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Re:ETHICAL????not even close (Score:4, Interesting)
So right or wrong should be determined by who is laughing? That line of thought scares me.
And why?
What's wrong with assuming that if the "victim" laughs when s/he knows it was a prank, then it's ok otherwise not? Not that I pull any pranks on people, but I would like to hear your reason.
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