Lawyer: Apple Should Protect Me From My Porn Addiction

from the because-its-unfair-competition-with-my-wife dept

Cross-posted from

Earlier this week, I wrote about a lawyer in Florida suing Apple for millions because he couldn’t be bothered to figure out how iTunes works. Little did I know that this wasn’t the craziest law suit brought by a lawyer against Apple.

A tipster pointed us to a 50-page complaint filed in federal court last month seeking damages and injunctive relief against Apple for making devices that can display porn, or as the rest of us call it, the Internet. The complaint gracefully skips from pop psychology, to comparing porn to handguns, to appeals to the divine rule of the Almighty.

This wasn’t the best week for Apple in the courtroom, but at least the in-house lawyers have this suit to look forward to defending…

The plaintiff, Chris Sevier, is an attorney in Nashville. A news report of his arrest last month on unrelated charges of stalking country music star John Rich (the guy whose obnoxious song mars my weekly viewing of College GameDay) states that Sevier’s 36, though his Model Mayhem bio says he’s 26. For someone mad about porn on the Internet, he’s already adopted its first cardinal rule: models always lie about their age.

Sevier’s complaint makes a simple request: Apple should sell all products with an installed filter blocking all Internet porn. If the buyer, over the age of 18, wishes to unlock the Internet, he or she is free to contact Apple, sign a form acknowledging the ills of pornography, and receive a code to remove the filter. Sevier argues that the burden must be shifted from parents to the manufacturer to sell a locked device. That sounds like a fair enough, even laudable goal. But Sevier also wants these filters installed lest the responsibility be up to *shudder* individuals exercising self-control.

The complaint describes some of the societal harm porn causes, such as “lead[ing] to American girls traveling abroad to be abducted and cast into sex trafficking.” Someone was watching Taken while drafting this complaint. But Sevier has also suffered personal harm:

The Plaintiff is a victim of Apple’s product that was sold to him without any warning of the damage the pornography causes. “But for” the Plaintiff’s use of the Apple product, the quality of the Plaintiff’s life would have been much better and injury would have been avoided. The Plaintiff sustained these unwarranted damages in the course of using Apple’s product as designed. Apple’s product was not adequately equipped with safety features that would have otherwise blocked unwarranted intrusions of pornographic content that systematically poisoned his life.

Sevier got his J.D. at Vanderbilt Law, and perhaps they should revisit the role Palsgraf plays in their 1L Torts lectures. Based on the tale outlined, there are a few intervening acts between Apple building a web-ready computer and Sevier joining Adult Friend Finder. This is not to deny that sex can have addictive qualities, but just as drug and alcohol rehab focus on individuals facing up to their personal role in facilitating their disease, Sevier might want to look in the mirror before blaming Apple.

But Sevier maintains the proximate cause is Apple’s browser and an honest spelling error:

In using safari, the Plaintiff accidentally misspelled “facebook.com” which lead him to “fuckbook.com” and a host of web sites that caused him to see pornographic images that appealed to his biological sensibilities as a male and lead to an unwanted addiction with adverse consequences.

I’m incredulous. But in fairness to Sevier, the complaint is so riddled with spelling and grammatical errors (including a few in that block quote) that maybe typing just isn’t his thing. I, however, posit that he made all these mistakes intentionally to bolster the credibility of this argument. Well played, sir.

Apple basically should have known better:

As human beings themselves, Apple employees know that a man is born full of harmonies and attacked to by women engaging in sexual acts with the intent to cause vicarious arousal.

I’m guessing he meant “hormones.” Unless he was making a very highbrow reference to the Temptations.

The complaint, brilliantly, alleges “Unfair Competition” — between hot, hot porn actresses and Sevier’s wife:

UNFAIR COMPETITION AND INTERFERENCE OF THE MARITAL CONTRACT: The Plaintiff became totally out of synch in his romantic relationship with his wife, which was a consequence of his use of his Apple product. The Plaintiff began desiring, younger more beautiful girls featured in porn videos than his wife, who was no longer 21. His failed marriage caused the Plaintiff to experience emotional distress to the point of hospitalization. The Plaintiff could no longer tell the difference between internet pornography and tangible intercourse due to the content he accessed through the Apple products, which failed to provide him with warnings of the dangers of online pornography whatsoever.

“Who was no longer 21.” No further comment, that was just an awesome sentence.

The best part of his suggested solution to America’s online porn addiction is that it will help out businesses. Porn businesses:

THE PLAINTIFF’S SUGGESTION HELPS THE PORN ECONOMY: For the proponents of the bricks and mortar pornography industry, the Plaintiffs reasonable request here supports their cause. Forcing Apple to install preset porn filtering software could have a positive financial impact on the traditional porn trade. The porn industry has the same regulatory and supply and demand problems that the music business and print media does, as a consequence of the free flow of information online. There is so much free porn on the internet that ultimately its going to be difficult for porn providers to rely on the income generated from their work to continue to make a living….

***

...unregulated internet porn is hurting brick and mortar or “mom and pop” porn shops. This is no different than how illegal downloading of musical content and movie content has caused the collapse of traditional record stores and video rental entities, such as block buster.

First of all, “mom and pop” porn shops is going in the pantheon of greatest phrases in a legal complaint. Second, there’s something admirable about Sevier’s commitment to professional porn. As Jackie Treehorn put it, “standards have fallen in adult entertainment.” Modern porn viewers constantly find themselves asking, “but why was she ordering a pizza?”

In the end, the complaint is not just about protecting kids and even protecting Sevier from his interest in the naked ladies, but a jeremiad against the modern age:

In the 1950s, before there was in the internet and the ACLU, we had prayer in school, males were not flaming out academically, there was no need for viagra commercials to clog up our televisions late at not, homosexuals were substantially fewer in number, sex trafficking was virtually nonexistent, prostitution was way down, and child porn was unheard of. Why are things different – easily accessible pornography accessible through high speed internet and devices like Apple products is one contributing factor in that complex answer.

Except the ACLU was alive and active in the 1950s, school prayer was never as widespread as its advocates suggest, men still got Fs, gay folks were still there (just closeted), America had just completed a war against Germany and Japan (both of whom engaged in large-scale sex trafficking, e.g., the Joy Division without Ian Curtis), prostitution was rampant (as Don Draper’s childhood flashbacks attest), and child pornography and pedophilia persisted as the Catholic Church scandals are bringing to light. There just was no golden age, certainly not in the 1950s that Sevier longs for, yet never personally saw, regardless of which age he admits to being.

There’s nothing really wrong with the suggestion that Apple should default to stronger parental controls. There’s a logic to the idea that it’s easier for parents to disengage a lock than to install one. However, implementing the procedural hurdles Sevier seeks for the sake of protecting him from himself crosses into a disciplinary nanny state.

But, maybe he’s into that.

The full 50-page complaint is reproduced below. If you can suffer through the typos, there are many more gems, including an explanation of Apple’s role in creating the proliferation of male enhancement drug commercials and how Sevier knows what women really want. Enjoy!

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Filed Under: chris sevier, liability, porn, unfair competition
Companies: apple


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  • This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it
    identicon
    out_of_the_blue, 12 Jul 2013 @ 1:52pm

    Lawyer, anomaly. Who cares?

    Got this from a "tipster", eh? I'd say out of a dumpster.

    No importance whatsoever. Next story. -- You aren't doing well of late with dull crap like this at even "connecting with fans", let alone new readers.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 12 Jul 2013 @ 1:57pm

      Re: Lawyer, anomaly. Who cares?

      At least this lawyer's compulsive masturbatory habits have a chance at providing entertainment.

      What's your excuse?

      link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 12 Jul 2013 @ 2:40pm

      Re: Lawyer, anomaly. Who cares?

      Got this from "your ass", eh? I'd say it's the size of a dumpster.

      No importance whatsoever. Next comment. -- You aren't doing well of late with ridiculous flamebait crap like this at even "pissing everyone off", let alone convincing anyone that you have a point.

      [Seriously OOTB you show a lot of symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder and should see someone for it.]

      link to this | view in chronology ]

      • identicon
        Pragmatic, 15 Jul 2013 @ 6:09am

        Re: Re: Lawyer, anomaly. Who cares?

        I'm inclined to agree. Signs of narcissism include infantile behavior, attention-seeking, pettiness, excessive fantasizing in which they are the star of the show, and constantly contradicting themselves.

        There are more, but those are the ones I've seen Cathy display.

        link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      gnudist, 12 Jul 2013 @ 3:05pm

      Re: Lawyer, anomaly. Who cares?

      That's odd, In OOTB speak anomaly usually means "fifty six percent or higher of all cases" but it's actually used correctly here.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 13 Jul 2013 @ 5:30pm

      Re: Lawyer, anomaly. Who cares?

      Shut the fuck up. This website isn't a democracy where people vote on what we get to see, and you aren't the one to decide what I find interesting. You don't like an article? SKIP IT! Because I personally don't give two shits and a duck what the fuck you find interesting.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    Baldaur Regis (profile), 12 Jul 2013 @ 1:57pm

    It's been said so many times

    Crack, computers and law degrees just don't mix.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    Capitalist Lion Tamer (profile), 12 Jul 2013 @ 2:05pm

    Here's a link to the video Sevier made "for Apple's and the Court's convenience," so that no one else feels compelled to transcribe it by hand. (Or run a search, like I did.)

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VbaJKrRgEM

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      Baldaur Regis (profile), 12 Jul 2013 @ 2:54pm

      Re:

      It explains much. Based on the video evidence in the instant example, I would surmise Mr. Sevier's complaints arise from three facts:

      1) The pornography shown in the video never reaches its natural conclusion, i.e the "money shot", or the "happy ending". Studies show watching pornography without these necessary concluding scenes leads to congestion.

      2) The pornography clips shown in the instant video are all from the 1970s, which, as everybody knows, had terrible color saturation issues and poor production values.

      3) Mr. Sevier freely admits to participating in an "electronic group", which, again as everybody knows, leads to a proliferation of comments starting with "Dude, the 80s called..."

      Separately, none of these items are harmful in and of themselves. Together, they create a "Toxic Trio" of symptoms comparable to psychosis.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    Capitalist Lion Tamer (profile), 12 Jul 2013 @ 2:13pm

    Good thing he's representing himself, because it looks like he's not allowed to represent anyone else.

    By order of the Tennessee Supreme Court entered Dec. 19, 2011, the law license of Nashville lawyer Mark Christopher Sevier was transferred to disability inactive status. He may not practice law while on disability inactive status. He may return to the practice of law after proving to the court by clear and convincing evidence that the disability has been removed and he is fit to resume the practice of law.

    "Disability inactive status" is apparently bar slang for incompetent, mentally infirm or sky high on drugs. (Section 21)

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    out_of_the_blue, 12 Jul 2013 @ 2:13pm

    ^_^

    I deal with my porn addiction by jacking off.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 12 Jul 2013 @ 2:29pm

    Sounds like the guy was browsing porn got caught by his wife. Then he said oh porn existing on the internet is bad they tricked me.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    That One Guy (profile), 12 Jul 2013 @ 2:53pm

    So many possible headlines...

    'Man sues Apple because he can't keep his pants shut'

    'Man sues Apple over forbidden fruit'

    'Man chooses porn over wife, loses to both'

    'Man sues Apple over hormones, 'self-control' not in personal dictionary'

    Also, just because I cannot pass up the pure hilarity... one of his arguments is 'I tried to type in facebook, and accidentally typed in fuckbook'?

    Really?

    I'll grant that they both start with 'F', and both end in 'book', but what keyboard is he using that has the 'u' where the 'a' is supposed to be, and the 'k' where the 'e' is supposed to be, given how on a normal keyboard those particular keys are on almost opposite sides of the keyboard.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      apauld (profile), 13 Jul 2013 @ 1:43am

      Re: So many possible headlines...

      I wondered if it was some sort of auto correct. However if you type the letter f and your auto correct instantly goes to "fuck" it is probably still your problems that are at issue.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 14 Jul 2013 @ 7:52pm

      Re: So many possible headlines...

      Considering that "U" is nowhere near "A" on the "keyboard" and that swear words typically will be spell corrected....

      Nice to know we are now blaming apple for issues with the internet and thereby any (apparent) faults in society

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    gnudist, 12 Jul 2013 @ 3:01pm

    Dear FSM, this sounds like something out of a comedy than a real case

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    JCHP, 12 Jul 2013 @ 3:13pm

    Well, well, well...

    If this was April 1st, I'd know exactly what was going on. Since it isn't, I'd hazard a guess that someone is trying to get a precedent in place to help fight piracy. Or something. Maybe it'll make more sense after a shot of whisky. Or fifty.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    Internet Zen Master (profile), 12 Jul 2013 @ 4:00pm

    I miss Jack Thompson

    His bizzaro complaints about video games causing real-world violence are [i]disturbingly reasonable[/i] in compared to what Chris Sevier is whining about.

    You didn't know that there is such a think as porn on the internet? That's like saying you didn't know that water is wet until somebody shoved you into a pool.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 12 Jul 2013 @ 4:03pm

    Of course porn is bad. But if he wants it banned, he should petition them to block it, not sue them.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Guardian, 12 Jul 2013 @ 4:50pm

    someone post the lawyers address and email

    i think we can send him some reference material....
    lol

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    Spaceman Spiff (profile), 12 Jul 2013 @ 7:20pm

    ROFLMAO!

    This id10t has done the world a favor - there is a league of lawyers who just died laughing! Glad I'm not a lawyer, or I'd likely be one of them!... :-)

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    benjaminbilly, 13 Jul 2013 @ 11:00am

    tassen

    Ik heb een online site over Luxe reisartikelen & business tassen. De Tumi specialist van Nederland helt u graag verder voor uw luxe reisbagage en business tassen.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous, 14 Jul 2013 @ 6:32pm

      Re: tassen

      Well, I guess you can toss an English word in there every now and then if you want to. Worked for Falco.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    Sheogorath (profile), 13 Jul 2013 @ 3:03pm

    Really?

    "Including an explanation of Apple’s role in creating the proliferation of male enhancement drug commercials."
    So Google Adwords had nothing to do with it?
    One more thing, since nobody else seems to have bothered:
    "The Internet is for porn
    The Internet is for porn
    So grab your dick and double click
    For porn, porn, porn"
    Big clue from Avenue Q there.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 14 Jul 2013 @ 4:02am

    Steve Jobs is on record saying many times "If you want to watch porn, buy an Android. We protect our users from that material". Jobs was making false claims about his product in order to sell devices. iTunes and Google Play both don't allow adult material in their stores. Although Google allow apps to be installed outside the official store if you untick a box in settings, and Apple don't(without jailbreaking which Apple tells you not to do)

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    Ninja (profile), 15 Jul 2013 @ 5:46am

    who was no longer 21

    He should sue God for not placing safety measures in his wife to prevent her from going above 21 years old.

    Ahem. I suddenly feel the urge to mail mr Sevier links, torrents and pics with porn =/

    link to this | view in chronology ]


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