It's Probably Not A Good Idea To Ask People To Spam The Judge Hearing Your Case With Support Emails
from the pro-tips dept
Generally speaking, if you're on trial for something, it's probably not a good idea to piss off the judge. Informercial king Kevin Trudeau has been battling the FTC concerning his pitches for a diet book, which the FTC felt were deceiving. The court case itself has had a series of twists and turns, but as the latest case moved forward, Trudeau posted the judge's email address to his website, and announced it on his radio show, and asked people to email the judge in his support. Apparently, quite a few people did so -- and the judge was not amused, sentencing him to 30 days in jail. As Consumerist notes, the types of people who buy the sorts of things Trudeau is selling might not be the most rationally-minded people, and apparently a few took it upon themselves to not just email the judge their support of Trudeau, but to send vaguely threatening messages as well.Still, there is an open question as to whether or not this is actually illegal. Eric Robinson points out that it's common enough for those on trial to have friends contact a judge, sometimes even via email. Of course, those sorts of setups are usually more limited to a specific group of selected friends, rather than broadcast to the public at large. Either way -- whether legal or not -- it does seem like a generally smart tip to remember: don't piss off a judge in charge of dealing with your case, and urging a hoard of followers to email that judge is pretty certain to piss him off.
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Filed Under: contempt of court, kevin trudeau, spam
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Possibly, Rush Limbaugh expect to be charged with the murder of George Tiller sometime soon...
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First, receiving e-mail isn't harmful. In fact, with about two minutes work, he can filter all Trudeau e-mail to the spam box and never see it.
Second, many countries, including England, where the law originates from, have abolished incitement laws in favor of more specific laws, none of which were broken by Trudeau. Incitement just wasn't a very good legal standard.
Third, incitement usually deals with someone 'inciting' people to do something illegal. Trudeau didn't ask anyone to do anything illegal.
The judge can certainly choose to cite him for contempt, but I think that it's unfair, and reflects badly on the judge.
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RE: contempt
Judges generally don't give two shits about what constitutes "fair" or reflects badly upon them. Just sayin'.
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Re: Re: Re: #1
First, receiving e-mail isn't harmful. In fact, with about two minutes work, he can filter all Trudeau e-mail to the spam box and never see it.
-- One email is not. Dozens of emails can get annoying. Thousands of emails are even moreso. He CANNOT filter "all Trudeau" emails unless ALL of them CAME from one single address or had a consistent unique phrasing that can be pattern-matched. It can also have caused problems for a poorly configured mail server that actually created issues for users OTHER than this judge, which were probably also government officials. I'd suggest studying the actual protocol involved before making such claims.
--
Second, many countries, including England, where the law originates from, have abolished incitement laws in favor of more specific laws, none of which were broken by Trudeau. Incitement just wasn't a very good legal standard.
--
Not even relevant, laws are interpreted differently everywhere and each country has 'stupid laws' on the books. Amsterdam doesn't have laws regarding certain drugs that are considered narcotics here, so I guess narcotic laws aren't a very good legal standard, right?
--
Third, incitement usually deals with someone 'inciting' people to do something illegal. Trudeau didn't ask anyone to do anything illegal.
-- Harassment is illegal, last I checked.
The judge can certainly choose to cite him for contempt, but I think that it's unfair, and reflects badly on the judge.
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Re: Re: Re: #1
How about if someone REALLY popular decided to post your email address and ask people to get in touch with you for whatever reason? Shouldn't the harassment damage done be weighed against the volume of emails in question? If this was just some loser who had 25 friends I seriously doubt the judge would have done anything like this.
Wait til someone you know posts some info about you on 4chan, you'll understand on a much larger scale what this judge went through. Idiot.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: #1
How about the word 'Trudeau'? That should catch most, if not all, of it.
Not even relevant, laws are interpreted differently everywhere and each country has 'stupid laws' on the books.
Incitement itself isn't relevant. The judge has the legal right to do what he did without a bogus incitement defense. I was questioning the moral issue, not the legal. A judge can pretty much cite contempt for anything.
Harassment is illegal, last I checked.
First, Trudeau didn't send him thousands of e-mails. Second, show me proof that all of those people e-mailed because Trudeau asked them to. (Seriously, he's really popular. People were likely e-mailing in the first place.) Third, show me the precedent for thousands of e-mails being considered harassment, especially for a public figure. It may morally be harassment, but I doubt it is legally. Nice try, though.
Are you seriously trying to imply that you would be ok with someone posting a personal contact method of yours to the PUBLIC AT LARGE -- and asking them to get in touch with you regarding anything?
My personal contact information, including my e-mail address, telephone number, and mailing address, are available online. I'd prefer not to be spammed by chan (Especially because they wouldn't stop at e-mail. A flashmo/b/ would show up at my door.) but that's hardly the case here.
Remember, Trudeau isn't being punished because he gave out the judge's information (which is public, by the way). That might be understandable, especially if it were the Judge's personal information, and not his work contact (which it was). Trudeau's being punished because of the number of responses, which he doesn't have any control over.
The judge is a public figure, and these people are contacting him in regards to his work as a public servant. Trudeau asked for support, which is his legal right, and people contacted the judge, which is their legal right. And he ends up in jail for a month for it. This is okay?
I wonder at the implications of this. Speak up in favor of a defendant, and he might end up in jail for 30 days. Not a fine, or a night in jail, but an entire month in jail. It seems kind of chilling to me.
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Gee, I hope no one else would need to send the judge any emails about 'Trudeau'. Like maybe ... I dunno ... maybe some of the attorneys involved.
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By *your* definition of decent, I suppose, regardless of configuration.
adding the sender's address to your contacts list or address book means that their e-mails don't get spammed, even if the e-mail contains a spam-like message or keyword.
So now the judge is basically using a white list. Gee, if you're going to do that then why even bother with a keyword? Just filter out all messages from anyone not on your contact list.
Things aren't quite as easy as you made them out to be, are they?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: #1
Perhaps you should stop using a telnet server for your mail? In reality any decent email client can do the suggested filtering, let alone the mail server.
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Also, most mail servers actually don't interfere with your mail by default. Even with sendmail, the majority of interference is run by a third party daemon such as dspam, or spamassassin. The interactions that Rose is describing TYPICALLY happens with the client, unless the email server is outlook. And this has nothing to do with 'poorly configured' email servers -- none of the original email servers (as well as the entire protocol in general) were not written with having to deal with spam in mind. That's why things such as dspam and spamassassin even exist.
So basically, what I'm trying to get at here, is unless someone from the IT dept that runs the judge's mail server comes on here and says something, then using 'the mail server could have been configured differently' as an excuse to justify asshole's behavior is not only wrong, but cannot be proven.
Also, just because his mailserver CAN be configured in some certain way doesn't mean the government was actually employing someone competent enough to make it happen, and it's certainly not a judge's responsibility to have figured out how to configure the email server. Seriously, would YOU want your local county court official handling the IT Servers for your city? Wouldn't that concern you a little bit?
If you want to justify being an asshat and spamming a judge, needta find better ammunition than that.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: #1
That depends on the end you're arguing towards. While I agree that filtering isn't a panacea, to say it's not feasible is ignorant.
"Also, most mail servers actually don't interfere with your mail by default. Even with sendmail, the majority of interference is run by a third party daemon"
Sendmail is a MTA; I'd recommend an MDA like procmail for filtering. The mail server is the system that contains the MTA and MDA, not the MTA itself.
"it's certainly not a judge's responsibility to have figured out how to configure the email server"
It's someone's responsibility to know how to configure the mail server. You suggest yourself that they have an IT department.
"If you want to justify being an asshat and spamming a judge, needta find better ammunition than that."
It is fortunate for me that I am suggesting something completely different. If the guy only posted the Judge's email and requested people write in with letters of support then he should not be held liable for the unintended consequences of doing so. If the judge gets too much email on his public address because people don't like him then he needs to have a system in place for dealing with that.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: #1
So now the judge not only has to create a filter, he also has to go through the process of contacting and working with the mail server administrator to make sure it is configured in a certain way. And then there's the question of how the judge would then receive email from people about 'Trudeau' who weren't in his contact list yet weren't responding to Trudeau's request.
All in all, not "two minutes work".
If the judge gets too much email on his public address because people don't like him then he needs to have a system in place for dealing with that.
Here's an idea for you: Why don't you post your main email address here and challenge people to spam it? I'm sure you have a system in place to deal with that, right?
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The judge is a public figure, and people are using his public e-mail address, which was available publicly, to contact him about a matter of public interest. It doesn't matter if he likes it. It really doesn't even matter if he has the tech to deal with it. It's all part and parcel with his job as a public servant.
If he really doesn't want to receive e-mails or calls, or death threats, and is as disturbed by it as you seem to be, then he should resign and go back to practicing law as an attorney, or whatever he did prior to accepting a public position.
Do you see Senators or Governors or the President whining about the volume of hate mail they receive? Nope. Just this judge here, who just sentenced a man to a month in jail for it.
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Umm, do you really believe that those people personally go through all their email? Well, they don't. They have assistants (government provided) to do that for them. Yeah, I guess if I had personal assistants go through all my mail I wouldn't "whine" about it either. This judge probably didn't have one doing that for him.
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Perhaps the judge should sentence his IT personnel or court clerk to thirty days in jail, instead.
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Wow. Just wow.
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Kind of like the judge should have. Unfortunately, nobody got the joke and Trudeau was carted off to jail anyway.
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2: I'm sure that a large percentage of people who read my comment understood me. It's possible that you didn't, but that really says more about you than it does me.
3: You really should read this (http://pubcit.typepad.com/clpblog/2010/02/judge-jails-litigant-for-provoking-supportive-emails-to-t he-judge.html) opinion of a real, live attorney, before arguing with me any more. It's obvious that you dislike Trudeau's actions, but that doesn't mean that his actions were illegal.
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"Here's an idea for you: Why don't you post your main email address here and challenge people to spam it? I'm sure you have a system in place to deal with that, right?"
Yeah, it's called keeping my email address private. It still clocks up many hundreds of spam messages a day which are filtered by the provider by default. If I had cause to publicise it and needed to use the same address for anything remotely important then I would have to do no more than add any trusted addresses to my address book.
Hell, I browse the internet with a script filter (Noscript), a cookie filter (CookieMonster) and a cross-site request filter (RequestPolicy); all set to whitelist. Filtering email seems pedestrian compared to browsing websites. Next you'll be telling me people shouldn't have to learn how to use a word processor if they write lots of letters.
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Gmail, for one, doesn't work that way so I'd say you don't know what you're talking about.
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http://pubcit.typepad.com/clpblog/2010/02/judge-jails-litigant-for-provoking-supportive -emails-to-the-judge.html
Face.
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Here Come Da Judge
"Contempt of Court" is generally whatever the judge says it is.
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Re: Here Come Da Judge
"one more outburst like that and I'm holding you in contempt of court"
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Re: Re: Here Come Da Judge
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Hoard vs Horde
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Huh
If not then there was no contempt either... But then as mikee says, it's rarely a good idea to piss off the judge hearing your case.
Actually sounds more like a publicity stunt than anything.
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There's a law saying you can't spam a judge or did 'his highness' just make it up?
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Re:
And yes, publicly broadcasting someone's email address can cause quite a bit of harm.
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Re: Re:
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The two books I've read paint an interesting picture of how to stay healthy.
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Typical Kevin?
A well documented and up to date synopsis of his career is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Trudeau
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Re: Typical Kevin?
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Kevin Trudeau DOES have at least one good point
Someone selling St. John's Wort cannot talk about the fact that might be able to replace Prozac, without all the side effects. But St. John's Wort cannot be regulated by the FDA as a "drug", because it doesn't have bad enough side effects.
But because the large food and drug companies (such as Monsanto) take turns hiring the puppet FDA chief to massive contracts after they get the rules they desire, companies are, in essence, banned from talking about the positives of any herb that does not also have negatives enough to "be" a drug, such as glucosamine, St. John's Wort, echinacea, etc., etc., etc.
The FDA conducts raids wherein they confiscate product and destroy computer equipment, putting small to medium companies out of business and fining the larger companies large amounts of money. This has been going on for years and is a major free speech issue that he champions.
He mixes some true facts about things with outright ridiculous claims about curing AIDS, herpes and cancer, but all companies attempting to sell any natural remedy eventually suffer the wrath of the FDA.
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Re: Kevin Trudeau DOES have at least one good point
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Re: Kevin Trudeau DOES have at least one good point
The problem with most of the "Natural Cure" products is that they often contain none or far too much of the active ingredient and can have dangerous substances like heavy metals mixed in as fillers. These are what the FDA bans - dangerous, unregulated garbage from shady companies.
You touch upon some truths here but offer no facts or proofs. But, listen, if you think the secret government alien-human hybrid Monsanto created clones in the black helicopters are hovering overhead and listening in on your thought waves just beef up your aluminum foil helmet with another bag of genetically altered Monsanto corn based Fritos and you'll be OK.
I for one welcome our new Monsanto alien hybrid overlords.
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Re: Kevin Trudeau DOES have at least one good point
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Kevin Trudeau is a bad guy, but that does not justify what the judge did here
http://pubcit.typepad.com/clpblog/2010/02/judge-jails-litigant-for-provoking-supportive-ema ils-to-the-judge.html
My blog post does not address the due process implications, but they are also significant. The judge used a contempt procedure that is reserved for in-court misconduct, for which special sanctions are allowed without the usual trappings of notice and an opportunity to confront witnesses and present evidence. Such protections were not allowed here.
Some commenters have taken issue with Trudeau's publication of the judge's email address. Apparently, the Judge is an adjunct faculty member at Northwestern University Law School, and his email address was listed there for all to see (until Trudeau pointed this fact out to Judge Gettleman).
Did Trudeau show bad judgment here? Yes. Was it predictably counterproductive? Yes (one reason why a lawyer would tell his client to do any such fool thing). Was it criminal? No. The Court of Appeals should reverse
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Re: Kevin Trudeau is a bad guy, but that does not justify what the judge did here
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Re: Re: Kevin Trudeau is a bad guy, but that does not justify what the judge did here
If he really doesn't want to receive e-mails or calls, or death threats, and is as disturbed by it as you seem to be, then he should resign and go back to practicing law as an attorney, or whatever he did prior to accepting a public position.
Do you see Senators or Governors or the President whining about the volume of hate mail they receive? Nope. Just this judge here, who just sentenced a man to a month in jail for it.
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A few points
Further, given the potentially unsettled nature of Trudeau's clients, he really should have predicted less-than-pleasant results in pointing them to the judge. It seems almost laughably ironic that Trudeau is asking the public he has misled to act as character references, at the very least.
I'm sorry, but if one of his "character references" (which is really all a friend contacting a judge can act as) threatens the judge to such a point he has to ask the US Marshals to check and make sure it's not a real threat... Well, in that case it's obvious he overstepped badly, at the least.
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Re: A few points
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again?
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http://www.legal-database.com/email-harassment.htm
Turns out while most places don't have specific laws, it can be lumped in under preexisting laws in many many areas. I think that qualifies as your legal precedent there. I could do more than 2 minutes of research if I wanted but I don't really feel like it's necessary. This is harassment plain and simple -- and to address the fact that "he didn't ask them to harass" -- THAT MAY be the case, but a lot of people have gone to jail for inciting riots when they didn't get up and scream "HEY LETS RIOT" either.
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Re:
The judge is a public figure, and people are using his public e-mail address, which was available publicly, to contact him about a matter of public interest. It doesn't matter if he likes it. It really doesn't even matter if he has the tech to deal with it. It's all part and parcel with his job as a public servant.
If he really doesn't want to receive e-mails or calls, or death threats, and is as disturbed by it as you seem to be, then he should resign and go back to practicing law as an attorney, or whatever he did prior to accepting a public position.
Do you see Senators or Governors or the President whining about the volume of hate mail they receive? Nope. Just this judge here, who just sentenced a man to a month in jail for it.
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dumb
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