City Sues To Prevent Linking To Its Website

Mike writes "In what appears to be a first-of-its-kind case, the Sheboygan city attorney ordered Jennifer Reisinger to remove a link to the city's police department from her Web site. The city went further, she claims, launching a criminal investigation of her for linking to the department on one of her sites, and in response she's suing the mayor and the city. 'The mayor decided to use his office to get back at Jennifer for her efforts in the recall and picked this to do it,' said her attorney, Paul Bucher. It appears this will go to court, and the question will be can a city (or any business or Web property) stop people from posting a link to its site?"

Did the editor read the last paragraph?

[tjstork]

In November, the city withdrew its demand that Reisinger not link to city government sites.

SO um, what's the issue?

Pretty cut and dry if you ask me

[multisync]

If you don't want people to find your website, don't register a domain. Once you do, it's public knowledge. Printing the URL of the city's website is no worse than printing the premiere's mugshot [wikimedia.org] when he gets busted for DUI. (Sorry, OT political commentary, but it seemed a good example).

Scientology

[longhairedgnome]

Isn't this what the CoS tried a number of years ago? How did that turn out? The Church of Scientology has lost a courtroom battle to compel a Dutch writer and her Internet service provider to remove postings from a Web site, in a ruling that keeps hyperlinks to copyrighted material legal. [cnet.com] this is from 2003...

Re:don't do what?

[flyingfsck]

This one is better: http://www.sheboyganpolice.com/main.html [sheboyganpolice.com]

Happened in Finland in 2001, too

[Anonymous Coward]

Similar case. Someone linked to police website in 2001, and police claimed that their domain name represents the police on the internet and thus linking to their site without permission was illegal. The police lost, ofcourse, but it's still ridiculous that there was even a fight about it. Finally the parlamentiary ombudsman had to take the case and rule that links are like literary references, and completely legal.

sheboyganpolice.com

[Entropy98]

http://www.sheboyganpolice.com/ [sheboyganpolice.com]

Sheboygan Police General Information:
Phone: [phone] / Email: [e-mail]

Chief of Police / David E. Kirk
Phone: [phone] / Email: [e-mail]

Deputy Chief of Police, Operations Division / Allen J. Sherven
Phone: [phone] / Email: [e-mail]

Captain of Criminal Investigation Unit / James A. Veeser
Phone: [phone] / Email: [e-mail]

Shift Commanders / Phone: [phone]
First Shift ( 7:00 AM - 3:00 PM ) Captain David A. Derus
Email: [e-mail]
Second Shift ( 3:00 PM - 11:00 PM ) Captain Stephen B. Cobb
Email: [e-mail]
Third Shift ( 11:00 PM - 7:00 AM ) Captain Bob V. Wallace
Email: [e-mail]

Training / Resource Division / Lieutenant Michael Williams
Phone: [phone] / Email: [e-mail]

Administrative Services / Lieutenant Janet Reinfeldt
Phone: [phone] / Email: [e-mail]

Drug Unit / Lieutenant Kurt Brasser
Phone: [phone] / Email: [e-mail]

Traffic Section / Sergeant Thomas Tuszynski
Phone: [phone] / Email: [e-mail]

Court Services Section / Lieutenant Janet Reinfeldt
Phone: [phone] / [e-mail]

Community Policing Unit
Lieutenant Jeffrey Johnston / Phone: [phone] / Email: [e-mail]
Officer John Winter / Phone: [phone] / Email: [e-mail]
Officer Todd Priebe / Phone: [phone] / Email: [e-mail]

Street Crime Unit
Officer Kurt Zempel / Phone: [phone] / Email: [e-mail]
Officer Brian Retzer / Phone: [phone] / Email: [e-mail]
Officer Paul Olsen / Phone: [phone] / Email: [e-mail]

Criminal Investigation Division / Phone: [phone]
Detective Mark Kolosovsky / Email: [e-mail]

K-9 Unit / Officer Trisha Miller
Phone: [phone] / Email: [e-mail]

School Resource Officers
South High School / Officer Terry Meyer / Phone: [phone]
Email: [e-mail]
North High School / Officer Doug Hall / Phone: [phone]
Email: [e-mail]
Urban Middle School / Officer Patrick Leichtnam / Phone: [phone]
Email: [e-mail]
Farnsworth Middle School / Officer Eric Edson / Phone: [phone]
Horace Mann Middle School / Officer Eric Edson / Phone: [phone]
Email: [e-mail]

Police Property Office / Julie Lamb
Phone: [phone] / Email: [e-mail]

Administrative Assistant & Office Supervisor / Paula Haelfrisch
Phone: [phone] / Email: [e-mail]

Communications & Electronics Technician / Russell Schreiner
Phone: [phone] / Email: [e-mail]

Fleet Operations Mechanic / David Daniels
Phone: [phone] / Email: [e-mail]

Web Site Administrator / Officer John Winter
Phone: [phone] / Email: [e-mail]

"nolo mi tangere"?

[RedOctober]

Nothing yells out fail as much as someone trying to quote latin but getting it wrong. It's "noli me tangere".

Re:don't do what?

[Werkhaus]

And look at the Table Organization.
http://www.sheboyganpolice.com/table_organization.htm [sheboyganpolice.com]

A massive 1.2Mb bitmap to show the command structure.
http://www.sheboyganpolice.com/Table%20of%20Organization%20072005.bmp [sheboyganpolice.com]

Re: whole point of free speech

[Anonymous Coward]

> Isn't the whole point of free speech that people should be free to say what they'd like especially when others find it distastful or inappropriate?

As long as they aren't trolling...

No Legal Precedent?

[aero2600-5]

Regardless of who's suing who in this mess, there won't be any new precedent set about linking to a website. 2600 Magazine [2600.com] won a court case in 2001 when Ford Motor Company tried to stop [slashdot.org] 2600 from linking to their website. Not only that, but one of the original sites [fordreallysucks.com] from the tussle is still up. Here is the original news announcement [2600.com] from 2600.

Aero

Re:Did the editor read the last paragraph?

[stephanruby]

a woman posts a link to a municipal government website, so the mayor sends her a cease-and-desist letter and then launches a police investigation on her to intimidate the woman and coerce her into removing the link. and you see nothing wrong here?

I think I found her site, and her site is actually worse than the police department's web site (if you can believe it). It kept on making my firefox crash, the only way I could see it was with Internet Explorer. Otherwise, her site is pretty interesting content-wise, it's no wonder the city hates her guts.

[Warning: use IE to open, not firefox] http://sheboyganshenanigans.com/?cat=6 [sheboyganshenanigans.com]

And also, I found another site that dared linking to the Sheboygan PD.

http://www.ratemycop.com/index.php?st=WI&dept=8376 [ratemycop.com] (ah, the wonders of the internet)

Re:Did the editor read the last paragraph?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm voting for McCain you insensitive clod

Re:Did the editor read the last paragraph?

[pbhj]

The article appears to show that rare thing - journalistic integrity. Why do I say that?

Well, peppered throughout are statements about the source of any particular bit of information. The only source is the lawsuit which has been filed.

"The cityâ(TM)s actions torpedoed Reisingerâ(TM)s Web site marketing business and led to death threats against her, according to the lawsuit."

I can't see how getting a C&D letter and acting on it lead to death threats? Then there's this curious part:

Reisinger said she felt intimidated by McLeanâ(TM)s letter and removed the link. Then a police lieutenant told Reisinger he was investigating her use of links to city government sites, the suit says.

What, did a police lieutenant just ring her up to tell her? The claim that her business suffered loss of earnings because she had to remove this link is laughable.

It appears that Reisinger was performing a smear campaign against Mayor Perez (note the bit about photoshopped images). Perez probably complained and the police would naturally of investigated the complaint to see if anything illegal was happening.

My /prima facie/ view is that Reisinger sounds like a bit of a nut-case trying to grind a huge axe and use it to cut up some immigrants. But the reports don't give us enough to establish verity of any of the lawsuits claims.

I don't quite understand the [apparent] forcefulness of your [lysergic.acid's] response; what other information are you privy to? If people trying to conduct a nationalistically motivated slur campaign back down I think that's probably a good thing. Again, what am I missing?

---
Note that: http://www.sheboyganpress.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080826/SHE0101/808260434/1973 [sheboyganpress.com] gives a link to download the C&D letter, http://www.sheboyganpress.com/assets/pdf/U0116421825.PDF [sheboyganpress.com], which seems both fair and reasonable to me. Without seeing exactly how the link was used it's hard to say if she should have acted on the letter or not.

See also http://www.citmedialaw.org/threats/city-sheboygan-v-reisinger [citmedialaw.org]

Re:Did the editor read the last paragraph?

[Fozzyuw]

In November, the city withdrew its demand that Reisinger not link to city government sites.

SO um, what's the issue?

Being from the area (born and raised in the county), this story is pretty old. It also had everything to do with the fact that the women in question was an out-spoken critic of the Sheboygan mayor, Perez. The whole thing is the fact that the mayor abusing his power to make a critics life difficult. Unfortunately for the major, and fortunately for the public, the mayor was pretty clueless about the ridiculous request he made (among many of his other ridiculous things he's done).

The whole thing hit local media pretty fast and the backlash was pretty big and the city withdrew it's request some time ago.

Re:Regarding Racial Slurs

[D'Sphitz]

Minorities aren't stupid, yet we treat them like they are.

Minorities in general are just as stupid as the average white person. Thanks to the "black leaders" (who aren't interested in racial equality, if there were racial equality they'd all be out of jobs and the national spotlight) way too many blacks have a victim mentality and will often seek out and find racism where there is none [negative99.com].

I see nothing wrong with choosing words carefully, or just avoiding racial slurs altogether.

Re: whole point of free speech

[Anonymous Coward]

Few under the age of 20 seem to understand the definition of words like "flamebait" and "troll". Many here seem to falsely presume "flamebait" means I disagree and "troll" means I really, really disagree.

But what the words 'troll' and 'flaimbait' actually mean is worse. Both assume you know the motivation of the poster. Troll is to "post false or controversial messages to gain attention for the sake of attention". Flaimbait is to post "with the intent of provoking an angry response (a "flame") or argument over a topic the troll often has no real interest in". Who cares if you know what they mean if you can't infer the intent of the poster?

On the other hand, off-topic tends to be more clear cut. Posting a raunchy story when it is not suitable. As is 'overrated' - it implies 'in my opinion and with my mod point I thusly smite you a point'. The mod options of troll and flamebait are there specifically to promote arguments over motivation. This is not necessary. It is just like calling people 'cowards' that don't aid the economic well being of Slashdot by registering. To sum, "I disagree" is the most accurate interpretation of the negative mods. It may be wrong, but it is accurate.

Re:Did the editor read the last paragraph?

[griffeymac]

I think this is actually her site:

http://www.sheboyganspirit.com/ [sheboyganspirit.com]

(According to here, anyway: http://www.citmedialaw.org/threats/city-sheboygan-v-reisinger [citmedialaw.org])

G.--