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.'"
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.
*Sigh* (Score:5, Insightful)
What a twit... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Troll? No. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Troll? No. (Score:5, 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.
Re:Troll? No. (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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:*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.
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.
Re:Troll? No. (Score:2, Insightful)
The marriage was broken up because the guy wanted to cheat on his wife but got caught instead. The prank actually did a wife a favor.
I have no sympathy whatsoever for this guy. If you want to sleep around then suck it up and get a divorce. Promising to be faithful and then sneaking off behind her back is beyond contempt.
Re:Troll? No. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:EPIC LULZ (Score:0, Insightful)
Only if the dude suing is actually hurt/offended/upset.
If he's being sued for the LULZ, it's EPIC FAIL.
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
yes, the married cheater deserved a comeuppance (Score:2, Insightful)
but if you understand the number of reasons why vigilante justice is wrong, then you understand how the manner in which he got his commeuppance is wrong
condemning fortuny is not standing up for the cheater. its standing against vigiliante justice
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.
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.
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: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.
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.
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.
Re:Troll? No. (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
huh? (Score:3, Insightful)
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
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.
when do you get involved (Score:3, Insightful)
in other people's business?
say you see child abuse. well yes, get involved. many other examples: yes, get involved. too often people say "its none of my business" and let a crime they witness lisde. no, this is unethical
however, issues of sex and marriage are complicated. maybe they have an open marriage. maybe the married couple are separated pending divorce. maybe the wife refuses the husband any sex, etc.
as for my last example: lets talk ethics, shall we? if a wife refuses to have sex with her husband, is her husband duty bound by marriage to remain celibate himself? can he rightfully seek sex outside the marriage if his wife refuses sex?
90% of the time, the guy is probably just a cheating asshole. but sometimes you are not doing any good by butting in to other people's business (although, of course, in many many cases where you see something ilegal or unethical going on, you have every right, no duty, to get involved)
Re:Troll? No. (Score:3, Insightful)
Not true actually; fair use [copyright.gov] also takes into account what distribution will do to the market value of the distributed work.
In a nutshell, if it's worthless, you're going to have a very hard time proving copyright infringement.
The only way they'll get him is in a civil suit for harrassment or libel.
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.
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.
Re:Troll? No. (Score:3, Insightful)
matchstick men: "Make sure that whoever you're conning isn't conning you".
Re:Troll? No. (Score:1, Insightful)
Right, because the respondent didn't already have problems with his marriage.
Thanks for a perfect example of the sort of bullsh!t logic the trolls use to justify the harm they cause for lulz.
Re:yes, the married cheater deserved a comeuppance (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Troll? No. (Score:3, Insightful)
If I were that guy's kid, I'd ask Fortuny if he'd like to tell me anything about the Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy, or Santa Claus. I'd then thank him for shattering all my childhood illusions and ensuring my exposure to a long drawn out custody battle that will leave me an emo kid who feels rejected and unloved by my parents.
And he'd be right if he pointed you back to your father and said, "Nope. Thank that guy over there for shattering your childhood."
Re:Troll? No. (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
I'm not sure if you can expect to much privacy when responding to a stranger on an anonymous forum to engage in acts of borderline legality.
Re:Punishment (Score:5, Insightful)
Was it a sociological case study which had been approved by an ethics committee first? I doubt it.
Re:Troll? No. (Score:3, Insightful)
If I were to lose my SO in such a way, I might be upset about the cheating, but I'd be even more upset about losing my SO, whom I care for very deeply..
Then don't leave your SO when he/she cheats. That's your choice.
Re:Troll? No. (Score:3, Insightful)
Without a doubt the evils of the pending (?) divorces are far worse than the potential side effects of being married to a cheating spouse. After all, no one ever catches...I don't know...AIDS, perhaps?...from someone they are married to, right? </sarcasm>
Your post was waaaay heavy on the melodrama. Do you really think that every kid whose parents divorce wind up "an emo kid who feels rejected and unloved...run away from home...become child prostitutes in order to survive, and subsequently become addicted to crack"? Don't be stupid. Divorce sucks, and yeah, Fortuny certainly appears to have some anti-social tendencies, but the blame for the failed marriages lies with the husbands, not with Fortuny. If they had had the self-control to keep their pants zipped, their marriages would have stayed together.
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?
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.
Re:Hope this sad loser gets what's coming to him. (Score:2, Insightful)
But is it illegal?
No.
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.
Re:Troll? No. (Score:2, Insightful)
No, he didn't, he conveyed no intent, I was going to say he conveyed a desire, but he didn't even do that. He expressed an opinion that he believed he would feel no remorse.
Imperfection in use of language, especially that with legal meaning, not a wise thing.
Re:Rule #1 of troll club (Score:3, Insightful)
In other words, he doesn't mind releasing his name because he thinks he's got the game to back up his mouth.
Re:Troll? No. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Wait a second... (Score:4, Insightful)
One is an attempt to appeal to a sense of "mob justice" through humiliation, and the other is just some jerk on Craigslist.
To be fair though, I don't have too many issues with "to catch a predator" except for that fact that's it's been made into a public spectacle. Catching internet pervs trying to have sex with kids (and a number of them in a position to easil do so, such as teachers etc) isn't a bad thing in my book, however making it into a public event brings back memories of gladiators VS lions in old roman coliseums, sick entertainment for the masses.
Re:*Sigh* (Score:3, Insightful)
"A normal person who does insane things on the internet." says the caption to the troll's pic in the NYT.
No, he isn't. Normal people don't do insane things on the internet any more than they do insane things in meatspace. Trolls like the asshat in the articles would harm people in meatspace if they thought they could get away with it.
Sociopathic behavior is sociopathic whether in the internet or meatspace. It's just easier to get away with on the internet. Normal people do NOT act like that.
But with six billion people on earth, there will always be online sociopaths. Personally, I prefer the word "sociopath" to "troll". It's more honest and descriptive of what trolls are and do.
Victims? Please. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:*Sigh* (Score:3, Insightful)
This looks like passive general language used to absolve himself of any responsibility. "Life" didn't make it happen. It was not an act of God. It was not the "horrible stuff" he went through that made it happen. He is not a unthinking billiard ball. He did these things deliberately and consciously.
Re:Troll? No. (Score:4, Insightful)
The prank actually did a wife a favor.
It caused her the sort of pain that you probably can't even imagine. I know, because I was the victim of a cheating wife, and it took paxil for me to let her go. I would have been far better off never having met her, but barring that I would have been better off (as well as my children) if I'd never known of her adultery.
Tami is the same way; she's married to a serial adulterer. But love is blind, deaf and dumb. It does, however, smell.
If you've never been the victim of a cheating spouse you can't possiby have a clue, especially if you have never been in love with a cheater.
Re:Troll? No. (Score:1, Insightful)
While I don't condone the actions of this "troll" (although I think the more correct term in this case is asshole), if you share your dirty laundry to someone you should be aware of the fact that whatever you divulge to someone might be divulged to others by that person.
If you're too trusting of people, you'll be stabbed in the back sooner or later (more often sooner than later). Some people could say that my attitude shows trust issues, but I'd like to think it's really more of whom you trust.
I would assume that most people by the time they marry have learned this valuable lesson, especially considering the amount of assholes there are, but it would seem I am wrong.
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.
Re:*Sigh* (Score:3, Insightful)
And any married man who would respond to such an ad is a contemptible idiot by definition.
It's not just a married man who would have his life ruined by having his reply posted. people lose their jobs over myspace pages, why not something like this? What about divorced guys and their kids see it? What about guys whose wives don't give a shit as long as nobody finds out?
The guy is POTENTIALLY fucking with "bad" people, but probably in most cases no
Re:Punishment (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm afraid I have to disagree. "obvious prank"? You don't know the full spectrum of human behavior. What seems outlandish to you is the norm to someone else.
"life's a bitch if your IQ is 80." Nice. So if I figure out how to con you, you should do naught but hang your head in shame for having been duped? This guy exploited people's desires in a manner little different than those who use bogus charities.
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.
Comment removed (Score:1, Insightful)
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?
Re:Victims? Please. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Punishment (Score:3, Insightful)
You, friend, have been watched too many Star Trek episodes involving Klingons.
Heghlu'meH QaQ jajvam!!
And now let me quote a little Gandhi at you, bucko. An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.
Re:Troll? No. (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't approve of either of those, but at least they are trying to target behavior that is actually illegal.
Prior History..... (Score:4, Insightful)
Jason Fortuny is a Greifer. Plain and simple. All anybody would need to do to show that the whole scheme he concoted was out of pure maliciousness, and not the "benevolent social experiment on privacy" that he claims it was, is to let the court research Fortuny's prior antics. The defense really doesn't need to do much with creating a case, since Fortuny's prior history of sociopathic antics has dug his own grave for him.
Anybody with half a brain would immediately notice that he not only has been disowned by his own mother for his 'greifing', but he has a pathologicas and sociopathic lust for harassing people for the sheer joy (yes, I say joy) of causing others emotional distress and harm.
These shitwits are the modern manifestation of "Sensationalistic Journalism", but they are anything but journalists.....
Maybe Fortuny's prior history will finally catch up with him and knock enough sense into him so he finally realizes that just because he has a small penis doesn't mean he has to act like it and make everybody else's life miserable in the process.
Re:Punishment (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Troll? No. (Score:3, Insightful)
No, we don't. I've not seen someone in IT put out a honeypot in order to catch non-criminal actions and then humiliate the people they find. A honeypot is for catching those attempting illegal access of systems. What these people were going for was not illegal. A honeypot is for preventing actual loss and damage to a system. He was in no danger of loss, but saught out the people actively (not a passive honeypot that sends nothing other than in response to others).
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.
I bet they aren't. Most spouses know something is up. They do. They decide (consciously or unconsciously) that they don't want to know what. He did them a disservice for humiliating the spouses as well as the respondants, and in a public manner. They probably knew something was up, but played along for the kids or whatever. When it is made public, they have no choice but to confront it, and I would guess that if it was discovered privately, more than one of the broken marraiges would have stayed together.
The married men who responded obviously weren't thinking too much of their vows.
So I guess that makes immoral actions ok. As long as someone somewhere might possibly find some good (even if no one actually did and he didn't do it with good intentions), then it should be done.
Fortuny could have got his point across just fine by smudging the photos before posting them.
No, he couldn't. His point wasn't to show that there are bad people out there. His point was to find some people and humiliate them. With a smear, you wouldn't have known who they were. He didn't want to do a public service. He didn't want to prove a point. He wanted to be cruel, and it isn't as cruel to smear, so he couldn't have and still accomplished what he wanted. He's evil. How do you know? Because he wronged someone, then blamed then for being mad that he caused them harm. I can't recall anyone ever uttering "It's his fault for being mad" who didn't do something mean and unnecessary first.
Re:"Cool guy", eh? (Score:3, Insightful)
You haven't read the whole original 'experiment' I see. Some of them were clearly looking for people to abuse. Quite coincidentally you mentioned 'To Catch a Predator' where potential abusers are caught and unmasked.
Our society is a little manic where it comes to 'consent' and 'abuse' when taken together, which is why when abuse complaints are lodged in some cases they can't be withdrawn. This is due to the nature of abused partners sometimes being so involved with the relationship that they want to gloss over that they are getting abused. Is exposing some of those potential abusers less important than exposing child molesters? Are consenting abusive relationships just not worth the same attention?
I'm not saying Jason is an altruist vigilante out to stop abuse. I'm saying that if 'To Catch a Predator' is within social norms, so is the craigslist experiment.
Perhaps Jason does deserve some comeuppance as you say, and he was banned from the Seattle LJ group among other things (ironically the NYT article is likely to be catalytic in the process of getting him unbanned that is going on right now), but does he deserve to be financially liable for exposing some jerk for who he really is? I still say no.
People should be proud of who they are as people in a way that the can display to the world. Funny enough, Jason strikes me as such a person. If all these people are embarrassed by who they really are, they shouldn't be suing, they should be changing themselves until they have something to be proud of.
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:*Sigh* (Score:3, Insightful)
If the guy's sexual activity was something he felt he needed to hide, why in the world did he provide his photo and contact information to a person he'd never even met? Why didn't he take the most basic steps to anonymize himself until he knew just who he was dealing with? What possible common-sense expectation of privacy did he expect when he sent that stuff to a complete stranger who (judging by "her" posting) was playing with something less than a full deck?
I have no issue with anyone's sexual tastes, or anything that happens between consenting adults. I'm simply commenting on the ridiculous idea that someone would be astonished that the information that he or she freely supplies to an anonymous person might be abused.
I was referring to Fortuny and the guys who answered him. Sure, the woman is humiliated, but she wouldn't be any less humiliated if she learned about it 6 months or 6 years from now in completely different circumstances. There is no "good" outcome where adultery is concerned. That wife might be at risk for HIV or half a dozen other STDs because of her husband's "hobby", and frankly she's better off knowing sooner than later.
See my first paragraph. If a married couple get their kicks from sleeping with complete strangers, precisely what do they think those complete strangers owe them in terms of privacy? And why should they be offended because random strangers know about their behavior, when they were sleeping with other random strangers to begin with?
Seriously, people need to get a clue and exercise an ounce of common sense, rather than whine because they were too foolish to take the most basic precautions when dealing with a complete stranger on Craigslist.
Re:Victims? Please. (Score:3, Insightful)
No, I'm afraid jcr is pretty much spot-on. It's not guilt by association, it's the approval of pretty anti-social troll tactics.