Amazon Cuts Off Affiliates In Hawaii And Rhode Island... Who Else Wants To Try?

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?

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: davone bess, impostor
Companies: twitter

9 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

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.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Guess What, 1 Jul 2009 @ 5:24am

Twitter Handled It
The fake profile was removed.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
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.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 1 Jul 2009 @ 5:35am

Re:
The internet comes with a built in jury. They're called Anonymous Cowards.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
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.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
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).
[ link to this | view in thread ]
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?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
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.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Petréa Mitchell, 1 Jul 2009 @ 11:34am

Why to sue?
Um, fraud? Reputational damage? What was the argument for not suing the imposter, again?
[ link to this | view in thread ]