MagicJack Tries To Silence Boing Boing; Loses And Has To Pay $50,000
from the slapp-that dept
MagicJack, a VoIP-dongle solution that I've used in the past, has a reputation as a product that actually works pretty well, but the company behind it has some serious problems. It's marketed aggressively on cable TV, has put misleading claims on its website, hides important things in the fine print and is not particularly good with customer service. Also, the software, once installed, is quite difficult to ever remove. In 2008, BoingBoing wrote a post detailing the shadier practices of MagicJack. Rather than doing the smart thing and improving those practices, MagicJack decided to sue BoingBoing. That was a mistake. It was a clear SLAPP case, and after MagicJack effectively had to admit that nothing in BoingBoing's post was actually wrong, the judge dismissed the case and ordered MagicJack to pay BoingBoing $50,000 in legal fees.Thankfully, BoingBoing was helped by the fact that California has a strong Anti-SLAPP law -- something that the rest of the country could use. What's more telling (and interesting) than the dismissal, however, is that MagicJack had originally agreed to settle the lawsuit, and pay BoingBoing's legal costs (after the company's CEO realized that the case was a lost cause and -- he claimed -- his own lawyers had failed to properly notify him of California law), but backed out when BoingBoing wouldn't agree to keep the lawsuit and settlement confidential.
Again, that suggests a company that knows what it's doing is shady, at best, but rather than having any interest in improving the way it goes about its business, wants to keep things hidden.
I have to admit, I really don't understand why MagicJack feels the need to work this way. It's a decent product that should be able to sell on its own merits, explaining openly what it does, rather than hiding stuff in the fine print and falsely claiming how many people are signing up to use the device. Imagine if, instead of suing and losing and getting all of this negative publicity, the company had just cleaned up its act, been open about things, apologized for its earlier mistakes and focused on building a better business?
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Filed Under: defamation, eulas, magicjack, slapp
Companies: boingboing, magicjack
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This is basically an admission from the CEO that the purpose of the lawsuit was to silence Boing Boing.
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We all know what happens next
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Just Curious
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Re: Just Curious
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Re: Just Curious
For whatever reason, your IP address got picked up as being a spammer's IP address, so the system held your comments. We tend to go through the held comments once or twice a day -- as they rarely catch any legitimate comments (maybe once per week), while catching approximately 10,000 to 20,000 actual spam messages per day.
I just released your comments.
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G-R-E-E-D
Shy settle for an honest, fair profit if you can make even more being shady?
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Re:
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Yikes, you sound like one of the **AA's there.
IP address don't correspond to individuals. If you treat them like they do, you're going to wind up wrongly accusing innocent individuals.
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Re:
2) Would you rather have a shit ton of spam or the miniscule chance that someone is briefly inconvenienced?
IP Addresses that are constantly spitting out spam get logged, I assume, and thus have to be checked. This isn't an **AA tactic, it's an "every site with comments" tactic.
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Re: Re:
Didn't said they were. What part of what I *actually* said isn't true?
2) Would you rather have a shit ton of spam or the miniscule chance that someone is briefly inconvenienced?
2) Would you rather have a shit ton of "piracy" or the miniscule chance that someone is wrongly accused? Lemme guess.
This isn't an **AA tactic...
To the contrary, it's standard practice for them.
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Re: Re: Re:
Additionally, no accusation was made in this instance. The comments were temporarily withheld from appearing to others on the site until they could be verified(you might compare this to a judicial process that actually required proof of infringement before kicking individuals off the internet).
But you knew this discrepancy, obviously. You're just being an ass.
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Hey, nice name calling there! Real classy!
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You presume wrong.
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Re:
Let me clarify my comment there. I certainly didn't mean to imply that Mike is just like the **AA's. That would be beyond ridiculous.
But there is a subtle but important difference between saying "your IP address got picked up as being a spammer's" or saying "your IP address got picked up as being as a source of spam". The former implies that you can identify something about a person based on their IP address, while the latter doesn't. I think Mike actually meant the latter, but just got a little sloppy with his phrasing, which was the cause for my "Yikes" comment.
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I don't taoareyou was sent a presettlement letter.
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Other than the EULA does it mention anywhere that your calls are not private? Seems like an issue that can't simply be buried in just the EULA without incurring some kind of criminal invasion of privacy statute.
then again, I'm not an attorney.....
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Imagine...all the people....ohhoooohooo...rock on..
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Let's all get along in peace...ohooohoooo...LOL.
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Quality Costs Less
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Re: Quality Costs Less
Which doesn't mean much if your main American-style concern is short-term profits.
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It would seem
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Re: It would seem
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MagicJack is okay but needs polish
It works a lot better with MagicFeatures - http://www.pcphonesoft.com - annoying it needs an add-on to make these work.
Somewhere between Skype and this would make a perfect solution
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nettalk tk6000
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Nettalk? Really
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