The Outing of Pranknet 543
An anonymous reader writes "The Smoking Gun recently published a story on their investigation and outing of Pranknet, an online cabal that aims to take pranks to the next level. Their legacy includes thousands of dollars of damage, and many harassed souls. Many of the pranks have clear criminal implications. Reading their report may send chills down your collective spines." From the linked article: "Coalescing in an online chat room, members of the group, known as Pranknet, use the telephone to carry out cruel and outrageous hoaxes, which they broadcast live around-the-clock on the Internet. Masquerading as hotel employees, emergency service workers, and representatives of fire alarm companies, 'Dex' and his cohorts have successfully prodded unwitting victims to destroy hotel rooms and lobbies, set off sprinkler systems, activate fire alarms, and damage assorted fast food restaurants. But while Pranknet's hoaxes have caused millions of dollars in damages, it is the group's efforts to degrade and frighten targets that makes it even more odious ..."
these are not pranks! (Score:5, Insightful)
here we call them FELONIES!
Re:Train wreck phenomenon (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Train wreck phenomenon (Score:2, Insightful)
That whooshing sound over your head is the point you missed.
idle hands (Score:5, Insightful)
Reading TFA it shows that this kid doesn't go to school and doesn't have a job, he just spends his days and nights mooching off his mom and finding ways to entertain himself.
One of those cases I'd file under "parents enabling the problem". Kick him out on the street where he belongs, force him to get a job and spend some of his time doing something constructive, rather than 100% of his time spent on destructive self-entertainment. There are some cases where the parents bear a significant chunk of the responsibility for their kids' behavior, and this is definitely one of them.
Re:Dear Pranknet (Score:5, Insightful)
The economy sucks, the rich have destroyed liquidity to keep their dollars valuable... now more than ever we need community. The one thing rich and unethical people hate.
WTF? Yes, all rich people hate community. Just the other day I saw a rich person going all over town setting soup kitchens and churches on fire. When I asked him why he was doing it he just laughed in my face and muttered something about "community sucks" before throwing the armani jacket back on, hopping in his BMW and driving off like a bat out of hell.
I really thought we had moved beyond this class warfare nonsense a long time ago.
Re:Train wreck phenomenon (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah: Movies are made for entertainment. Pranknet was made for entertainment. They both use the same medium doing so. Pranknet wouldn't exist without an audience to consume it, just like any other entertainment product. It would seem that it doesn't matter how the entertainment was made (legal, illegal, whatever) -- what matters is the audience wants it.
Why?
Re:The rest of the world is making fun of America (Score:3, Insightful)
Are you implying that because the victims displayed great naivety, it somehow excuses the criminals who engaged in these "pranks" ?
Re:idle hands (Score:5, Insightful)
It's only too telling... (Score:5, Insightful)
...to see how these fine folk reacted once they were outed by TSG. Props to the folk who got the job done.
Tariq Malik calling the cops on reporters standing in a public way outside your flat after having posted numerous episodes of taking advantage of gullible people on youtube has to be the epitome of chutzpah. If the allegations against him and his cohorts are true (and the evidence they collected against themselves seems to back those allegations up), I hope they get to pay restitution to all the folk they tricked and spend a considerable time making up their 'pranks' to society.
Documenting your own crimes and posting them to the internet in the hope of glory seems a bit backwards to me, but hey, to each his/her own.
Re:Train wreck phenomenon (Score:5, Insightful)
Pranknet wouldn't exist without an audience to consume it
I don't know if I buy that. I've seen plenty of asshats who are willing to harass people and destroy their property without the benefit of sharing their deeds with a broader audience.
Re:Dear Pranknet (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, I too associate community with inciting people to commit criminal damage.
For fuck's sake.
Re:Train wreck phenomenon (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know if I buy that. I've seen plenty of asshats who are willing to harass people and destroy their property without the benefit of sharing their deeds with a broader audience.
True, but when someone picks up a video camera and starts recording their criminal activities in a willful fashion, they've advanced beyond mere asshattery and touch the realm of the sociopathic. It's quite clear that fame was the motivation behind a lot of these so-called "pranks". They wanted popularity and didn't care who suffered for it. That's quite a bit different than the average criminal, which often conducts their activities in an effort to avoid drawing attention to themselves, and the motivation is usually money.
Re:Dear Pranknet (Score:1, Insightful)
I really thought we had moved beyond this class warfare nonsense a long time ago.
You must be new here.
Jealousy is at least as basic and powerful a human trait as greed. The only way to "move beyond" either trait would be to impose hard societal limits on both wealth and poverty that could not be circumvented by anyone, thus eliminating "class" as it exists now.
Good freaking luck with that.
Re:idle hands (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:idle hands (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Train wreck phenomenon (Score:2, Insightful)
It's quite clear that fame was the motivation behind a lot of these so-called "pranks". They wanted popularity and didn't care who suffered for it.
The thing is, I see little difference between what they're doing and what Cohen does in Borat and Bruno: Exploiting other people because there's a market for it and he can make a buck/Euro off of it. Sure, Cohen is a lot more careful to stay within the law, but the intent and "morality" of it is the same. One just happens to be more extreme.
The following supports what I'm saying:
Malik appears to believe that Pranknet will someday achieve the mainstream success of the Jerky Boys or Comedy Central's "Crank Yankers." He remarked one evening that, "If we get it big enough, it could get more than just fun."
Obviously, a lot of the pranks listed in the article will never get that kind of success, but it shows the mentality is pretty much the same.
Re:What idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
So...I take it you're one of the pranksters on Pranknet?
Malik, of course, expressed no remorse for his stunts. Prank targets, he declared, were "responsible for their own actions." The victims he and his cronies abused and degraded daily were simply "sheep" with "no brains of their own."
I suppose it doesn't bother you either that much of the pranks are also illegal?
Re:Dear Pranknet (Score:5, Insightful)
The people who impose such limits invariably exempt themselves.
Re:What idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
You'd be surprised at how much you yourself rely on trusting other people, even if you do speak like a stone cold trust no-one badass. You'd also be surprised at how much society relies on the ability of its people to trust each other. This is what pranksters and scammers rely on.
I'd like a society where we trust and help each other. What these people do is to make us all trust each other a bit less and to look at our fellow man with the attitude that "they're going to screw me over, so I'm going to screw them first, ha!" a bit more.
Pranknet are scum, quite simply.
Re:these are not pranks! (Score:5, Insightful)
This.
And also, I'm 100% positive that I will turn on the news tomorrow and hear the media refer to this DouchNet as a group of hackers.
Re:these are not pranks! (Score:5, Insightful)
To be fair, social engineering is more of 'hacking' than a lot of what gets passed off as such these days, even if it's just used to be gigantic assholes.
Re:Train wreck phenomenon (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe people shouldn't be so stupid as to listen to anything someone tells them on the phone and demand to see someone in person if it's as serious as they are being told?
Some of the pranks were committed by people in person. How else do you think they got a car inside a building?
And really, if the fire departments calls your business saying that you need to leave ASAP because of a gas leak, you're going to say "Nah. You guys show up first. If the building doesn't explode before you get here, then I'll know it's a hoax."
Not suggesting that they weren't gullible, but you do have to take the element of urgency into account.
Re:Dear Pranknet (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, my insurance company took my money, didn't pay for my health care, and now is trying to convince the dumb Americans (which are unfortunately in the majority) that we should reject health care reform.
Well, the Government is taking 6.2% of my money for social "security", which will be bankrupt by the time I reach retirement age and from which I'll be lucky to recoup the money I've put in, let alone any extra monies above and beyond that. If I had invested the money that's been taken from in FICA taxes over the last ten years into bonds and equities I'd have about 110% of what I started with. You'll forgive my skepticism that they are going to do any better with health care.
To say nothing of those companies, that just can't stand the idea of paying taxes like we all have to...
You just don't understand do you? If you charge a corporation taxes then the corporation is going to pass that cost along to it's customers. In the end it's still the people that wind up paying the tax. All you've done is to put a middle man between them and the government and allowed some jackass leftist to claim that he's fighting for the "little guy" when in fact it's the little guy who is paying for the new tax. He's just paying it on his automobile insurance/gasoline/grocery bill/electric bill/etc instead of paying it on his tax bill.
Corporations will screw you over to make a buck every fucking time.
Yes, they will. Ever heard the expression 'caveat emptor'? The difference between your friendly mega-corp and the government is that nobody is forcing you to do business with the mega-corp. The mega-corp can't come and take your money at gunpoint. You have to decide to do business with them.
Re:Train wreck phenomenon (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe people shouldn't be so stupid as to listen to anything someone tells them on the phone and demand to see someone in person if it's as serious as they are being told? I sure as hell would tell anyone calling me on a phone to go fuck themselves if they even hinted at wanting me to do anything which I could be held liable for.
The whole reason this works is that everyone thinks they're smarter than that. But as someone's already said here, it's the supposed urgency of the call that breaks down the barriers. Add to that the voice of authority, and you've got a clear recipe for people being abused. The idiots at PrankNet have probably never even heard of the Milgram experiment, though. As unethical as I think the experiment was, at least it was done for scientific reasons, and not sadistic pseudosexual gratification.
Re:How About Personal responsibility (Score:5, Insightful)
If somebody burst into your home at night claiming to be police, would you be a "dumb dimwit" and believe them, or maintain your cocksure skepticism and wind up like this woman [wikipedia.org]?
Re:Personal responsibility (Score:2, Insightful)
To what extent is someone else responsible for bringing those actions about? A key difference here is that the Pranknet guys often rely on danger/panic scenarios: those situations when time wasted can be dangerous, and the guys at Pranknet were portraying themselves as helpers, whereas the scammers usually appeal to their victims for "help." I guess it's a difference of degree...
I think that makes all the difference in the world, really. It's difficult, if not impossible, to find any mitigation in the fact that someone's just being a greedy bastard. On the other hand, someone presented with an authority figure, telling them that there is some kind of immediate danger is a much more sympathetic figure. It's hard to look at such a person as a simple asshat, because it's something that the vast majority of people (many of them quite intelligent) are susceptible to. And it's a good thing, too. We need people to listen to authority figures at some basic level, or society in general would fall apart. In order to have a society, there have to be authority figures.
Re:these are not pranks! (Score:1, Insightful)
This is sadly a major blow to free speech and anonymity. I know many people usually think that they should be suppressed this much to prevent these things from happening, however, having services such as anonymous calling eliminated is not the solution. I hate it when people say that "free speech doesn't mean you can yell 'fire' in a crowded theater", because it was actually used in the case of "Schenck v. United States", in which Schenck was ONLY PROTESTING WITH LEAFLETS AGAINST THE WWI DRAFT, not manipulating people to cause any damage (it pisses me off that Schenck lost since it was one of the largest blows to the constitution). The solution to stopping events like these is information. People yelling 'fire' in a crowded theater? Take measures to assure the crowd that only the designated alarms will indicate danger, and when those fail, only the employees wearing distinguished clothes are to be listened to. Yes, I know that we can't stop all tragedies like this, and there are ways to get around them, but playing the despot and banning anonymity will have far worse consequences from people with more selfish ambitions.
Funny as hell! (Score:1, Insightful)
Thats some hilarious ownage by TSG. Good job.
It all goes to show what all the 'internet tough guys' really are. Useless little bitches hiding in their parents homes. Roflmao. These kids gotta be shitting bricks now.
Altho it would be alot funnier if now that someone that pranknet has fucked with. reads all this info. Showed up at this guys house. And shot him.
Now that would be an awesome prank. And would be doing the world a huge favor.
Note. i do not advocate the shooting of douchebags in this or any other instance. it would just be really funny justice and good for the human race.
Re:What idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
And remember, it's not just the people that make idiots of themselves that suffer. The people that owned the motel had to put up with broken windows and smashed TVs. The victims own stupidity doesn't make the Pranknet lot any less culpable.
If I were the motel owner and one of my guests did this, my response would NOT be, "Oh.. let's put our Sherlock Holmes hats on and find out who that mean prankster was!" It would be, "You better find a good lawyer, because my insurance company will be calling."
Re:How About Personal responsibility (Score:1, Insightful)
The victims are not at fault and any insinuation to the contrary is in the same spirit as that presented by the attackers, who like to think of their victims as "sheep" and "dumb bitches". The situations are engineered to disable the normal precautions which keep people from following bad advice. If you think that social engineering is a hoax, you're just lucky enough that it hasn't happened to you and shortsighted enough to think that it couldn't happen to you.
Re:Train wreck phenomenon (Score:3, Insightful)
If you see little difference between the two, then quite frankly you scare the fuck out of me and I'd feel about as comfortable trapped alone in a room with you as the guy in TFA. The morality of it is the same in much the same way as the morality of slapping someone and repeatedly stabbing them are the same; which is to say, not at all.
Yes, because when you know the stance of one person and you don't know the stance of the other it is perfectly valid to conclude they're the same. All it shows is that he's a delusional jerk and you have a shaky grasp on logic.
Re:What idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
I also disagree that our society is based on mutual trust. Volumes and volumes of laws backed up by lawyers, police, and jails show otherwise.
That's called selection/observation bias. You're looking at only one side of the coin.
I've lived in countries where there's a lot less trust than here. The notion of returning an opened product to a store and getting a full refund is based on trust (yes, there's a profit incentive, and some people do screw the retailers, but the system works overall). In some countries I've been to, this would be unfeasible: Almost everyone will try to exploit such a retailer.
When a storm knocks out the electricity and the traffic lights stop working, I've always seen everyone obeying the rules. I doubt it's because they're worried about cops. It's about trust that the other drivers will do likewise. Simply unworkable in other places I've lived in.
I've had neighbors whom I don't know receive UPS/FedEx packages for me. Again, trust. I don't think they're afraid of me beating them up.
There are loads of examples. Society, at least in the US, is fairly nice and a lot of that has to do with a common trust.
Which is why someone exploiting that trust is a despised person.
Re:What idiots (Score:4, Insightful)
I forgot to add this: "If we love our country, we should also love our countrymen."
Re:idle hands (Score:3, Insightful)
More than likely they are in a similar situation. People tend to group based on their similar social situation, as well as their interests.
If they are hanging out all day in a chat room dreaming up pranks, they need to have someone to chat with.
While having a job would not eliminate their ability to pull these pranks, it would severely hamper their ability to do so. Plus there is much, much less incentive to pull retarded pranks if you are occupied - and being compensated for your occupation - for most of the day.
In other words, the reason these guys are probably doing this is because they still live at their parent's and have no job and are bored shitless. Even if they do have a job, it's not likely it is anything more than a crappy fast food gig, maybe even part time only. Instead of being productive, they have chosen to be disruptive.
What they really need is a good hard ass kicking and to be kicked to the curb. Not much else will likely wake their asses up.
Re:Train wreck phenomenon (Score:4, Insightful)
If you see little difference between the two, then quite frankly you scare the fuck out of me and I'd feel about as comfortable trapped alone in a room with you as the guy in TFA.
The only operational difference is that one stayed mostly within the bounds of the law, and the other didn't.
The goal of both was to profit (financially or otherwise) by fooling others, and poking fun at them. Both strive for bigger audiences.
The morality of it is the same in much the same way as the morality of slapping someone and repeatedly stabbing them are the same; which is to say, not at all.
Actually, if both were done maliciously for similar reasons, then the morality aspect is the same. One may incur a greater punishment because the damage done was greater.
By saying the morality is the same, I'm not suggesting the crimes are of equal magnitudes. Just that they are on the same "scale", with one being much further along that scale.
Re:idle hands (Score:5, Insightful)
What they really need is a good hard ass kicking and to be kicked to the curb. Not much else will likely wake their asses up.
Lots of homeless people and psychologists can testify otherwise.
Sure, it works for some folks. It's also a strategy that fails for a comparable amount.
Of course, kicking them on to the street would solve the Pranknet problem. I'll concede that.
Re:very disturbing (Score:5, Insightful)
It's particularly disturbing that people who my own security and well-being depends on--hotel and restaurant staff--are stupid enough to fall for these kinds of pranks.
Are you genuinely surprised that there are stupid people in the world? Or that stupid people would work menial jobs? If so, there's a word for people like you.
I rather think that stupid people, by definition, will always be with us. And I also believe that one part of being a good citizen is not taking undue advantage of other people's weakness. This kind of rule is helpful on the inevitable day that one meets someone smarter or stronger than oneself.
If pranknet causes these people to be more careful in the future (or to just gather a couple of Darwin awards), I'd feel safer.
If your feeling of security requires normal people losing what little trust in others they still have, or stupid people being tricked into killing themselves, then I hope to god you never feel safe.
How much in control are we? (Score:5, Insightful)
There are a lot of comments here suggesting that the victims should take most of the blame.
As food for thought, I'd recommend those commenters watch this fascinating TED talk [ted.com].
He gives a number of examples where we feel that we're in control of our decisions, but the designer of the systems/situations have measurably a greater influence in what you'll do than you yourself may. His point at the end is (paraphrased):
When it comes to the physical world, we're acutely aware of our limitations, and we build systems to overcome them (e.g. stairs to climb vertically, wheels for easy transport, etc). When it comes to the mental world, we have this unreasonable view of ourselves as supermen. We think we are always in control, and that we are always responsible. We need to understand our mental limitations so that we can design systems (e.g. public/company policy, transportation systems, etc) to overcome them (and make the world a better place).
Re:these are not pranks! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow, I think I'd find your neighborhood kind of eerily idyllic. We lock and bolt our doors at night, and if your package gets delivered to your neighbor's house by accident... let it go, man because it's gone. And the few remaining stores that actually have return policies get taken advantage of mercilessly.
And because of it, your neighborhood sucks, and mine doesn't.
I didn't mean to suggest the whole US was the way I described, but much of where I've lived in it is. Suggesting people become mistrustful will likely turn my neighborhood into one like yours.
Re:very disturbing (Score:4, Insightful)
When a stranger calls you up and tells you to do something on their authority, and you do it, you're not doing it because you trust him. After all, you don't even know him. You're doing it because you've been taught to take orders from anyone who speaks in complete sentences and has a manager he can put on the phone. These pranks don't erode my trust in other people any more than the thousands of Nigerian scam emails I get each day. They might, however, give me a little more courage to speak up when something doesn't make sense.
Re:What idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
There used to be ways and means of dealing with humans who exhibited this sort of destructive uncivilised behaviour.
If they were lucky they'd just be Shanghai'd, if they were unlucky they would be lynched and if they really pissed a community off they'd be tarred and feathered.
It's fortunate for the likes of these individuals that western society has bound itself so tight with law and regulation that it's now unable to deter the parasitic members with any sort of finality.
Re:Good job this guys an asshole (Score:5, Insightful)
I dont think so. I think once the phone calls start involving transfers of money and other stuff that sets off the alarm bells in people's minds then there's going to an escalation or at least some kind of authorization. Sure, not all the time, but weird stuff like "put your pee in a cup and bring it downstairs" most people just say screw it and do it, but once you start involving credit cards, IDs, and cash they start to get suspicious.
I suspect pranknet's success was largly based on the bizarreness of the requests. The ones that werent bizarre were presented as emergencies (gas leak), so people took the voice on the phone as an authority out of fear. I doubt they are able to do much more than that. While social engineering is always going to be an effective attack, especially against low level service personnel, I doubt that SE alone can do that much damage as the employees themselves have very limited powers.
What I find interesting about all of this is that its like the Milgram experiment from the 60s with a modern spin. We see the corporate guy on the phone or the emergency guy on the phone as a real authority and pretty much do what he wants, even if it sounds 100% crazy. Perhaps this is a side-effect of what happens when an economy moves towards a service job model. Regardless, Im sure many companies are reviewing their policies.
Frankly, its always bugged me that we have such a double standard with telephones. If I want to set off a command in a computer system I can expect at least one level of security, say username/password. On the phone we can use our social skills and say things like "Its Joe from corporate and I need you to do this ASAP" or "The boss wants this done now or someone is getting fired." I think phone calls should have some level of authentication, be it callerID or passwords. The way we do it now is straight from the 20s and 30s and is pretty ridiculous.
Re:these are not pranks! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Train wreck phenomenon (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Dear Pranknet (Score:2, Insightful)
I've got news for you, pal.
Two things:
1) They will have to increase taxes. There's only a few ways the government can collect money. Taxes. Charging for services. Selling off state property. Borrowing. Printing money. The government is on the knife edge of bankruptcy (every one else, including China is sitting back and collectively saying WTF? We don't want no part of this, we're not lending), which means they're printing virtual money. FACT: The money pixies are running out of magical money fairy dust, and we're in an unsustainable position.
2) Printing virtual money is a direct cause of inflation. Inflation *IS* a sales tax *ON YOU.* It means you have to trade *more time* to your employer to buy the money which with you purchase the things you want to buy.
Unless you see Washington auctioning Area 51, and Alaska off--or (preferably) changing the direction we're going in, we're patently fucked.
Re:these are not pranks! (Score:3, Insightful)
Because when the most famous use of a principle is blatant abuse thereof, it may be worth rethinking the desirability of the principle.
Re:these are not pranks! (Score:4, Insightful)
Except that you understood it, and thus it is perfectly acceptable language. That's the beauty of a living language -- it evolves.
Now if I had wanted to complain about your abuse of the language, I would have told you to put quotes around your first use of This, excuse me, I mean "This".
Re:Dear Pranknet (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, the Government is taking 6.2% of my money for social "security", which will be bankrupt by the time I reach retirement age and from which I'll be lucky to recoup the money I've put in, let alone any extra monies above and beyond that. If I had invested the money that's been taken from in FICA taxes over the last ten years into bonds and equities I'd have about 110% of what I started with. You'll forgive my skepticism that they are going to do any better with health care.
A better comparison for healthcare would be Medicare, which is indeed a government-run medical insurance program. Medicare boasts around 2-3% administrative overhead, whereas private insurers span 20-25% administrative overhead.
As much as people like to bemoan the concept of "a bureaucrat between the patient and their doctor", the numbers seem to indicate that a shareholder between a patient and a doctor is even worse.
It is no mystery why: the corporate shareholder's best interests run in direct contrast to that of the patient. It is more profitable to deny treatment whenever possible.
Yes, they will. Ever heard the expression 'caveat emptor'? The difference between your friendly mega-corp and the government is that nobody is forcing you to do business with the mega-corp. The mega-corp can't come and take your money at gunpoint. You have to decide to do business with them.
Let's at least pretend to have an honest discussion.
You simply cannot get by without insurance, and in many cases, your only choice is to take whatever plan your employer has, because you are subject to far more strict acceptance requirements if you try to get an individual plan. Most people do not have the choice to take their business elsewhere.
Re:Dear Pranknet (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, they will. Ever heard the expression 'caveat emptor'? The difference between your friendly mega-corp and the government is that nobody is forcing you to do business with the mega-corp. The mega-corp can't come and take your money at gunpoint. You have to decide to do business with them.
Technically this is true, however, since the alternative to not doing business with health care companies is a likely early death. You are in a way forced to do business with them, if you want to stay alive.
Re:Birds of a feather (Score:4, Insightful)
I sure hope that the reason he only served two years for raping a five-year-old is that he is dead. That is WAY too short a sentence.
Welcome to america
Where the sad truth is downloading a CD will have a worse and exponential effect on your future than raping a 5 year old girl does :/
Re:Dear Pranknet (Score:2, Insightful)
What is this "economic distribution" that "they" are "supporting"? Those who say stuff like that presuppose that there are people somewhere who arbitrarily assign and dole out wealth to others, and how, if we just had the "right people" (such as yourself) in charge of it all, we would have a utopia.
Re:Train wreck phenomenon (Score:5, Insightful)
No, the main difference is that one guy got people to break windows and throw TVs out of them and drive cars into building and and strip naked and redirects the phone numbers of businesses to his number and caused actual significant harm. The other, not so much.
My friend has misplaced the keys to his car. I lie and tell him I don't know where they are. He has to take a taxi home.
Another friend has misplaced $10,000 in cash. I lie and tell him I don't know where they are. He gets evicted from his house.
Morally, they're pretty much equivalent. Both times I'm lying to cause problems for someone else. One just happens to be more extreme than the other, and were it illegal, would secure a greater punishment.
The fact that Borat did not produce much physical harm is fairly insignificant with regards to morality.
And if you're suggesting that Borat did not produce harm, you have a fairly poor understanding of psychology. A number of his victims in the movie were harmed psychologically. And I'm sure a number of them would be willing to pay quite a bit of money to undo that harm.
Nice try there. You said "morality" in your original post, not "morality aspect" or any such thing. Subtly changing your wording to significantly change your stance and hoping nobody will notice is not a valid argument tactic.
You're arguing about a non-difference. If it makes you feel better, replace "morality aspect" with morality. What I meant is still the same.
This wasn't just done for the attention (and it certainly wasn't done for money), (and it certainly wasn't done for money), things like his claim that he thinks he's doing a "public service" by his actions
I beg to differ. This was probably almost entirely about getting attention. The "public service" comments were just his being defensive. If he was sincere about doing a public service, he could do it in a much more effective manner, with little criminal elements. And that money had little to do with it is relevant, how?
demonstrate a maliciousness to this case that significantly sets it apart from a fucking comedy movie that lied to some people to make fun of them.
I guess the difference between you and me is that I feel putting people in positions that they do not want to be seen by the world, filming it, and then embarrassing the guy by showing it to the world just to make money, is malicious. I do believe Cohen was being malicious in his goals.
Re:these are not pranks! (Score:3, Insightful)
Isn't the newspeak word for this "terrorism"?
Hmm... I guess even the oldspeak word is "terrorism", because they are creating the terror that gave that word its name, don't they?
(Yes, our government creates terror too.)
Re:Dear Pranknet (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Dear Pranknet (Score:3, Insightful)
Technically this is true, however, since the alternative to not doing business with health care companies is a likely early death. You are in a way forced to do business with them, if you want to stay alive.
It's technically also true that you need to do business with the food companies to stay alive. Maybe the Government should take over the agriculture industry as well?
Oh wait, through corporate welfare and lobbying interests (tax breaks, money into boondoggles like ethanol, a need to appease Iowa to win Presidential primaries, etc, etc) it already has. Hmm, I wonder what the result is? Surely a balanced and well managed system that's working for the greater good, right? I bet if you had left it up to the free market we could have wound up with something that runs on fast food and high fructose corn syrup and which has resulted in 30% of Americans being obese.
You'll forgive my skepticism that the Government is going to improve the health care system.
Re:Train wreck phenomenon (Score:1, Insightful)
The other thing you fail to see behind movies like Borat/ Bruno/ Jackass/ Tom Green Show - is the production team. One of the things they do is get release forms signed by the subjects videotaped. If they don't agree with the release, the segment is either cut or their faces are blurred in the videos.
Even if it's an ill-conceived joke, those production team makes sure they won't get sued so they compensate their victims appropriately in order to have the prank broadcasted. Remember, they aforementioned shows are doing these pranks commercially for profit with a legal dept. It may look whimsical on tv, but a lot of production time and energy goes into taping a single segment.
What these asshats at Prankster are doing is wanton destruction with disregard for others' safety or financial loss.
Re:So, why couldn't the feds figure this one out? (Score:4, Insightful)
And you know the government has not... how exactly?
Seriously, the government/law enforcement agencies aren't going to move until they have a fairly reasonable case, and even then they aren't going spread the details all over the press - they save that for the courtroom.
Re:these are not pranks! (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a problem with such metaphors in the law: First, the mapping of 'yelling fire' is a particularly poor analogy to the case in Schenck. Second, there are some other poor analogies and metaphors in law and every one of them that comes to mind offhand seems to be part of just those very areas where reasonable people are still struggling and the law seems to lack continuity. I think those analogies contribute to the ambiguity that makes these sore spots in law. As you point out, controversy attracts more court cases, and this sort of analogy seems to keep the controversy going.
Did you know there has never been a court case where a man hacked up his wife with a cleaver, but claimed to be not guilty because he was so delusional at the time he thought he was cutting up a head of cabbage? It's an analogy that has been raised many times since it was coined, notably in the John Hinkley trial, but it isn't a very good analogy for that case, or any other I can find where it was introduced in court. Most people know that the legal definition of insanity isn't the same as the clinical one, but there's the roots of that distinction, a really stretched analogy that's been used in jury instruction or closing arguments many times since, without, I submit, being questioned nearly enough.
I'd even argue that the whole behavioral model that comes from treating schools as gaining 'in loco parentis' rights causes the problems it does because it's a poor fitting analogy at heart. One reason for proclaiming it a poorly fitting or badly stretched analogy is that it doesn't cut off at age 18, when the student nominally becomes a legal adult.
Speaking can arguably be part of causing harm, but can the words themselves? The 'Fire in a crowded theater' example presumes the person is guilty, not because of the actual word, but by method (presumably the person shouts 'Fire!' in the same manner he or she might for a real fire - I won't swear that you can't panic a bunch of people by behaving calmly and saying 'fire' in a low, comfortable tone of voice, but it would seem difficult). Possibly, running franticly down the aisle, screaming incoherently, could have the exact same effect, with no semantic content, as could faking a fire with smoke bombs and colored lighting tricks.
I'd submit that speech is just one possible tool to commit certain crimes. (i.e. Reckless endangerment, in the case of the theater crowd). Note for a similar example, you could commit a fraud by speech, but non-speech actions, such as salting land with fake mineral samples, could theoretically be sufficient to prove fraud as well (AFAIK). There are some crimes where the content is as important as the delivery, but libel or slander are punishable based on separate legal principles, and there's even a sort of non-speech equivalent to them (planting false evidence of a crime).
If you can think of some others where the communication aspect matters separately from the method, maybe you could make a better case. The only other one I can think of seems to be pornography, and the courts tend to claim that isn't speech at all, so I don't see how they can rationally apply the 'crowded theater' analogy to porn.
Re:Dear Pranknet (Score:2, Insightful)
I really don't like this argument that if you financially penalize a corporation they'll just pass the cost to their consumers. If a corp is selling service, for example, at $45 per month, and they get a $900-billion slap from the EU, and they increase costs to $60 per month, why weren't they selling service for $60/month earlier?.
There could be a lot of reasons why they weren't doing it earlier. The most obvious one is competition. The free market isn't just based on charging whatever you can. It's based on charging what the market will bear. In practice, that means that if your competitor is charging $45/mo., you do whatever you can to stay at or below that threshold, so that you don't lose customers. If you get smacked with a $900 billion fine, and have to raise your rate to account for it, that will lead to a loss of business. (Of course, the impact on customers is rarely that obvious. Corporations usually try to hide such increases in fees that they don't have to include in the monthly rate, so that they can advertise "only $45 per month!", even though the new fees make the price considerably higher.
Re:Dear Pranknet (Score:5, Insightful)
The agriculture companies can't forbid you from purchasing or using their products. An insurance company can.
I, like many, lost my job. Thankfully, I have a very marketable service and have been able to strike out on my own very successfully after having a very difficult time trying to find a "regular job". When I had insurance, I went to the doctor like I'm encouraged to do, and I was diagnosed with heart disease.
Now, I'm on my own. My insurance is gone, and I no longer qualify for insurance under the 'pre-existing condition' clauses. So, even though I'm a productive, contributing, and tax-paying member of society, I am not entitled to stay alive.
If you're so jaded as to not see how that is wrong, then I hope with all my being that you end up in my position someday.
Re:Birds of a feather (Score:3, Insightful)
James Tyler Markle, 18, pleaded guilty to aggravated sexual assault of a child and was sentenced in 2005 to a minimum two years in custody.
2 years for a rape of a five-year-old? I'm not one of the "think of the children" guys normally, but this sort of thing should land you behind the bars for the rest of your life, with parole eligibility in maybe 10 years or so, minor or not. Besides, at 17, "minor" is a misnomer in the circumstances.
I think that a sentence like that for what he did is a really good way to tell the guy, "go ahead, do whatever the hell you want, at worst you'll get a slap on the wrist".
Re:Train wreck phenomenon (Score:3, Insightful)
My point in this whole thread is that both are wrong for the same reasons. If I steal $10 vs $10,000, we can both agree that they're both wrong because stealing is wrong (and I'm not referring to the legality here).
Which is fine if we're dealing with one single moral rule. But what we're looking at here is a combination of moral issues. The "beyond the pale" part isn't that this group is lying any more than Cohen is. It's that they're invoking harm and damage in the process of their "prank" which is something (I think) Cohen avoids. And that is something entirely different than acting like the fool to unsuspecting people.
I should note that I'm not a Cohen fan. I've seen a good portion of Borat but lost interest in it somewhere and never finished watching the whole thing. I'm not familiar with anything else he's done. So I'm certainly no expert on his particular style.
I have often enjoyed Candid Camera, Trigger Happy TV, and some series of European crew that also put unsuspecting victims in odd situations (sometimes involving nudity - definitely not for US TV). I'd have a real hard time accepting that any of these guys are on the same moral scale as Pranknet.
Re:Oh Grow Up (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:these are not pranks! (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd submit that speech is just one possible tool to commit certain crimes. (i.e. Reckless endangerment, in the case of the theater crowd).
Bingo. It isn't the speech that should be illegal. It is the crime itself, that in some cases may be aided by speech, that should be prosecuted. Freedom of speech needs to be absolute, but that does not mean committing a crime through the use of speech gets any exemption.
Re:Dear Pranknet (Score:4, Insightful)
That's basically the US from the outside.
Bush jr. was maybe the worst thing that ever happened to the US international image. He was loud, he was crude, he was as charismatic as a 60s staircase. This wasn't the Uncle Sam we learned to like so much. Sure, Unkie Sam was often a fairly tough guy, but you always had the feeling that he likes you. More the big protector than the belt-wielding "do what I say or bend over" uncle you had to spend your vacation at. And then Bush comes along and is just that: Someone kicked my nuts so now I'll lash out, take cover if you don't want to be hit. It was like rednecks taking over the rule of the country, and we were honestly a little scared. It wasn't easy to like that Uncle. People were really considering the alternatives, but they were even worse, the other Uncle you could run to had that long beard, spoke gibberish and smelled funny. Because the other Uncle, ya know, the funny drunk with that poofy hat, he kinda slept. Or died. Or something.
So the world looked at the US and Bush and what to come after. And we collectively groaned when we saw the Dem primaries. Two candidates without a chance. One not man enough, the other one not white enough, that's what we thought. Not in America. They're gonna elect that half-dead wreck and his churchy sidekick who is first of all even stupider and less educated than Bush was (yeah, we kinda like our politicians intelligent and informed) and second, she'll take over in a year or two after the old man croaked.
And then the miracle happened. The US elected that black man. That guy who was witty (ok, telepromtwitty, but still), who knew how to speak what we like to hear, who promised a lot of good things and who was a lot more charismatic than anything we were used to before. He was the Uncle we liked! Ok, he looked funny, but hey, who cares? I mean, compared to Bush... anyway. He's jovial, he sounds believable when he tries to talk about the burden of the 'common man', he comes across as someone who knows his stuff (again, being able to read those teleprompters surely helps there a lot), and he has a bit of that Kennedy air that we love so much, and that we didn't see since Clinton went away. Oh, we sure liked Clinton. We prefer prezzes that get blowjobs to ones that need one direly.
Re:Birds of a feather (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, the bit with the one who took pictures of his nude relative somewhat pissed me off. Not because he might be a paedophile, but because of how it's written:
It's written in such a way that we're supposed to think "and after that he raped her and jerked off to the pictures afterwards", but nothing indicates that this is the case. For all we know he may have been taking pictures of the kids playing with the water hose in the yard at a summer family reunion, and some neighbour saw him take pictures and got offended.
Just like "$person's a registered sex offender" and no mention that it's because they were caught pissing on a police car (not the case here). Go look through your family photo album and see how many pictures you'll find of nude children. Obviously your family is made entirely from paedophiles.
It really pissed me off in this article, because it was a great and well thought out article up to that point, and after hitting that bit I couldn't help but thinking "great, another scaremongering article. They even follow up the paedophile angle with an overblown drug user angle:
Oh, the horror. Pot possesion?!? He's clearly the right hand man of a Columbian drug baron!
Doing pot places him in a group of people that include such notorious delinquents as Michael Phelps [bbc.co.uk], Barack Obama [youtube.com], Peter Fonda [friendsofcannabis.com] and a shitload of other degenerates who should've been a stain on the bedsheets instead ...
I haven't bothered to look at Shawn Powell's indecency trial. Considering how the US has prosecutors who see fit to permanently ruin the lives of 14-year-old kids [msn.com] who take nude pictures of themselves, I can't really get my panties in a twist over the stuff The Smoking Gun lists for Powell.
For all I know Powell may be the lowest of low, but nothing that The Smoking Gun lists convinces me that he is. I love this tidbit as well:
Now, what did this guy do that so much, much worse than being a trainee kiddie fiddler? He tricked someone into drinking urine. Now, either The Smoking Gun considers drinking a sterile although disgusting liquid much much much more despicable than child molestation, or they themselves don't really believe that Powell's pictures were more than someone completely overreacting.
They did some great work on that article, and I wouldn't mind seeing all of those guys get their just deserts, but why the perceived need to fluff up the piece like that?
Re:idle hands (Score:3, Insightful)
Offer him a "positive motivation gradient" ?
The guy's a dweeb, a dork, a gomp, a trofflehamet, a waster, a spaz and you suggest I go out of my way to fashion him a "positive motivation gradient". I don't think so buddy the only thing I'll be fashioning for him is a chuggle rod to beat his head with.
He is a sad, vicious, manipulative, delusional, lazy, big head and before anyone else goes out of their way to help him he needs to make some attempt to see himself as he is and do something to fix it. If throwing him out on the street helps that then fantastic, the street it is although personally I think a good long stretch in prison for him and his trolling subordinates is the best possible medicine.
Re:these are not pranks! (Score:4, Insightful)
If people can argue whether or not they're living in the world similar to Orwell's 1984, they aren't.
Re:idle hands (Score:3, Insightful)
Moochers aren't a 20th century invention. We just don't bother recording the legacy of "Timmy of Shropshire who doth live in his Mother's cottage for naught."
Re:these are not pranks! (Score:5, Insightful)
So you would be fine with me orchestrating a campaign to convince people you are a child molester? It's free speech. I'm also going to find out all your private information and post it online for scammers to use. Then I'm going to call your job and report you for stealing company property. Then I'll call your wife/S.O. and tell them you are cheating. And that's just the beginning, buddy. But I'm not going to do anything illegal myself, oh no. Nothing but exercising my free speech. And there's nothing you can do.
Ah, anonymity and free speech, the vindictive asshole's wet dream.
Re:these are not pranks! (Score:5, Insightful)
Except that you understood it, and thus it is perfectly acceptable language. That's the beauty of a living language -- it evolves.
Now if I had wanted to complain about your abuse of the language, I would have told you to put quotes around your first use of This, excuse me, I mean "This".
So your criteria for "Perfectly Acceptable" is that it can be understood? Seriously?
That's not the beauty of a living language, that's the "beauty" of the human cognition system. It has nothing to do with the language, living or dead. Your entire premise is false either way, though. Just because something can be understood does not make it acceptable. l33t sp34k is understandable as well, but that does not make it perfectly acceptable. It's annoying to read and juvenile.
I am not making any comments on the use of "This." as a statement, please keep that in mind. I'm just calling you on your bullshit statement that "anything understandable is perfectly acceptable language."
Re:Played into his hands (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:these are not pranks! (Score:3, Insightful)
what, no funny mods? mods must all be children or something.
Re:these are not pranks! (Score:3, Insightful)
I wish you people would read the damn book. The world of 1984 did not result from a slippery slope erosion of civil liberties - there was a revolution and a civil war. The Party took over and presumably members of all other parties were imprisoned and killed.
In fact the world of 1984 can't result from a slippery slope - the Party needed to be in power for a long time to destroy first its opponents, then civil society, and finally history and language. Next on the agenda is the family, the orgasm and the sex instinct - anything that distracts people from their love of Big Brother and Ingsoc. The point of 1984 is that things have already gone far enough that the system is permanent, they will go much farther and result in a society which is no longer recognisably human with no art, science or literature. In the world of 1984 there are no free societies left it is implied that this will happen to all humans.
In our world there were certainly attempts to build a society like that in 1984. Stalin, Hitler, Mao etc. Hitler's regime was destroyed militarily. Stalin and Mao killed millions and did enormous and lasting damage to society but because they were competing militarily with other free societies it prevented them going this far - Orwell set up his world purposely so that this wouldn't happen. Note that the mere existance of free societies as competition is enough to prevent a 1984 style world where scientifc progress comes to a halt because 1984 style societies are awful at science and hence technology.
You can see this with North Korea now, perhaps the closest thing to 1984 that ever existed. The NK regime has been obsessed with weapons for since its foundation - oddly enough the NK regime dates back to 1948, the year Orwell published 1984. However process has been very slow. The US and USSR had ICBMs in the and nukes in 1950s. NK has apparently spent a huge percentage of its budget on research and a quick visit to South Korea tells you that Koreans are excellent engineers. Still NK has managed only recently demonstrate nukes and still no viable ICBM. Basically they are stuck in 50's.
Re:these are not pranks! (Score:3, Insightful)
Congratulations, you have grasped my point: slander isn't protected speech. Neither is yelling 'fire' in a crowded, non-burning theater, or inciting a riot. I guess I should always quote the person to whom I am responding. They seemed to be arguing that all speech should be protected, and I gave one of the obvious counter-examples.