Craigslist Prankster Sued, Argues DMCA Abuse 478
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.'"
Troll? No. (Score:1, Informative)
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
ETHICAL????not even close (Score:2, Informative)
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.
Linked here (Score:3, Informative)
Re:EPIC LULZ (Score:2, Informative)
no. that's undeniably lulzy.
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.
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]
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.
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.
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: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.
Re:Punishing one criminal (Score:1, Informative)
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.
Look up the difference between a crime and a tort. A civil suit is precisely the legal tool for getting reparations for non-criminal but damaging actions.