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Football Player Threatens To Sue Impostor On Twitter

from the at-least-he's-going-after-the-right-target dept

Wed, Jul 1st 2009 3:54am — Mike Masnick

When Tony La Russa sued Twitter because there was a user impersonating him on the site (though, clearly labeled as being fake), we pointed out that La Russa was targeting the wrong party. At first we were afraid the same thing was happening when Digg was running a headline that Miami Dolphins' player Davone Bess was going to sue Twitter over an impostor. Fortunately, it looks like whoever wrote the Digg headline got it wrong. The original story suggests that Bess isn't going to sue Twitter, but whoever set up the fake Twitter account. Of course, even that is probably pretty pointless. Why not just alert Twitter, have the account disabled and be done with it?

Filed Under: davone bess, impostor
Companies: twitter

9 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 1 Jul 2009 @ 4:23am

I've heard from other celebrities that Twitter is completely non-responsive with regards to shutting down impostors. Peyton Manning had a thing against them recently. Not saying a lawsuit is necessarily the answer, but "letting Twitter handle it" is also not effective.
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Guess What, 1 Jul 2009 @ 5:24am

Twitter Handled It
The fake profile was removed.
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Anonymous Coward, 1 Jul 2009 @ 5:30am

"Football Player Threatens To Sue Impostor On Twitter"

A on-line suit against an on-line crime seems about right. Now could some one explain where he is going to get an on-line judge and an on-line jury and what he is going to do with on-line Gold Farmer currency.
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- Anonymous Coward, 1 Jul 2009 @ 5:35am
  
  Re:
  The internet comes with a built in jury. They're called Anonymous Cowards.
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Anonymous Coward, 1 Jul 2009 @ 5:56am

Actually, this is one of those times where the lawsuit is aimed correctly - he wants to sue the person running the fake account more than the service. The service should be only too happy to help.
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TriZz (profile), 1 Jul 2009 @ 7:08am

Good luck!
The Internet is built on anonymity. He'd need a court order to get the IP address of the current account holder, and as we've seen, IP addresses are not the end all/be all of identifying people online.

PLUS! Creating false users accounts might be against the Twitter TOS but is not necessarily against the law. The court order would have to be issued once harm or law breaking has been established.

Who knows though? Perhaps Devone Bess has a trademark filed for his name...but it's doubtful.

But I'm not a lawyer. So, I could be entirely wrong here (it wouldn't be the first time).
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- josh (profile), 1 Jul 2009 @ 9:02am
  
  Re: Good luck!
  Actually it IS against the law to creat false user accounts that break a sites TOS. Just ask Lori Drew.
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Joe, 1 Jul 2009 @ 7:15am

Why don't we put all these whiny famous people on a blacklist and make them pay and prove identity to use any any social networking account. I think some use a verified stamp of approval but why not make them all do this?
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Petréa Mitchell, 1 Jul 2009 @ 11:34am

Why to sue?
Um, fraud? Reputational damage? What was the argument for not suing the imposter, again?
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