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.'"
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:Troll? No. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Troll? No. (Score:5, Interesting)
Really? I've bought and sold legit stuff on Craigslist. A lot easier than dealing with ebay.
Re:Troll? No. (Score:1, Interesting)
So was the marriage "broken up" because the husband responded to online sex solicitation -- or because he got caught?
Re:when do you get involved (Score:3, Interesting)
Abandonment [wikipedia.org] in ny for a year (this includes refusal of sex)
Re:if you read the sunday nyt article (Score:1, Interesting)
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
You could say the same about the twit who gave out such personal information as his picture so easily, even with the risk of his wife finding out.
He expects government to fix his screw-up. Should that be the case? Fortuny isn't saying "Government should protect me" he's saying "No, government should not punish me like this guy is claiming, he's wrong". He has every right to say this guy is wrong - a right to a fair defense.
Re:Punishment (Score:3, Interesting)
I guess the punishment is what his victims want.
Interesting. This is more a comment on the case rather than a reply but as reprehensible and unethical as his actions were, I don't think he broke any laws with his disclosure. Did any of his victims include a privacy notice along with their email replies to his CL ad? If this person was transmitting a copyrighted picture, do they have expressed consent? I'm pretty sure JF's actions fall under fair use as he was publicly displaying the victim's pictures under the guise of a "sociological case study". That said I'm surprised that with as many people he hurt that no one's taken matters into their own hands.
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.
Re:Troll? No. (Score:3, Interesting)
Isn't this similar to "To Catch A Predator" or "Perverted Justice"? Only those are praised instead of reviled like this guy. How is what he did different from anyone else? I'm not complaining about what you said mind you, I just find the similarity interesting.
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.
Re:Troll? No. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:"Cool guy", eh? (Score:2, Interesting)
The few times I've hung out with him I've found him funny and insightful. He just doesn't care to pander to people's feelings or their frequently false sense of security. When you know him and expect it, it's amusing. When you're some wanker caught off guard by a bait and switch on the intertrons, it's more shocking. But I know a whole ton of people on the internet who rightly think this sort of thing is funny. You would do well to look at the 'craigslist experiment' itself. These guys are at best pervs (not much of an epithet mind you, I consider myself a perv), at worst some of them are dirtbags. There is justification, not from anything that happened to Jason in his past, but intrinsically. His 'victims' got what they deserved. Anybody who argues otherwise probably didn't look at the experiment itself or probably is afraid they're the type of person who would have been caught in something similar.
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.
Re:Punishing one criminal (Score:3, Interesting)
First, that was known, and people didn't really care
It was revealed the night before the 2000 election.
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?
It depends on what they wrote or did. Robbed a bank, or cheated two decades earlier on a former wife but now has been married 15 years? What you do today can haunt you tomorrow. This has always been the case. There's an old quote I can't remember properly (or its author) that states that once something is written, it can't be unwritten.
If I found that a candidate had cheated on college exams. I would vote against him.
Re:"Cool guy", eh? (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, not caring about other people's feelings is what some folks refer to as sociopathy. Most people don't really regard that as a funny or worthwhile trait.
And not to be all pop psych or anything, but it seems a little transparent that the kid who was sexually molested as a child now feel the need to act out hurtfully against other people. Nobody protected him when he was at risk, and now he feels justified in hurting other people who fail to protect themselves. Really healthy behavior, that.