Sanctioned Revenge Porner Craig Brittain Says That Google Is Nothing But Copyright Infringement
from the good-luck-with-that-theory,-craiggers dept
We already discussed how the disgraced revenge porn guy, Craig Brittain (aka Pustule Nickelback McHitler III), is now trying to get Google to disappear most articles about his FTC settlement. As we noted, in making sure that the public is well aware of what kind of person Brittain is, the FTC wrote up not one, not two, but three separate notices about Brittain's actions (revenge porn and then setting up a fake lawyer you could pay to "take down" the images you never wanted on his site in the first place).Back in 2012 Brittain tried to abuse the DMCA to take down earlier criticism (from Popehat). He apparently didn't learn his lesson when that failed, which explains his recent attempt to do the same -- including arguing that the FTC's own writeups about its settlement with Brittain were infringing.
Over on Twitter, Adam Steinbaugh, one of the people who Brittain sought to censor with the DMCA, told Brittain that he could just send a DMCA notice straight to Steinbaugh or his host, rather than going after Google, leading to a fascinating and totally clueless discussion about how Brittain is really doing this because he thinks it's unfair that Google gets to build a search index, which he considers infringing. Uh huh, Craig, sure thing.
Even ignoring the sheer... wrongness... of this "legal analysis," it's doubly hilarious in that it comes from a guy whose entire claim to "fame" is posting photos of people that are submitted to his website, for which he does not pay anyone for those works -- and, rather, tried to get people to pay him to take them down. Irony is a word that apparently Brittain is not acquainted with.
Oh, and I'm especially curious as to how Brittain believes that Google indexing and linking to the FTC's website is infringing and should be paid for, given that, as a work of the federal government, the FTC's statements on Craig Brittain are in the public domain.
At that point, I pointed out that he appeared to be ignoring multiple court rulings that have made it clear that Google's indexing is clearly fair use, at which point it became clear that Brittain had no idea that this issue has been well litigated in the past, and he's just wrong. First he insists that the courts were "acting improperly" and then asks if any of us "jokers" have written about this Perfect 10 v. Google case that apparently was a totally brand new concept to Brittain:
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Filed Under: craig brittain, dmca, fair use, revenge porn
Companies: google, perfect 10
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is he... seriously?
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In related news... Farmers Rejoice
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BRB popping popcorn
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A Fool and His Money
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So...
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If he sent a frivolous DMCA notice to me or my host, I'd sue in a heartbeat.
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Son of a bitch!
What a pathetic buffoon!
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That's more than FIVE HOURS after he started, and the tweets mentioned above.
And as far as perfect10 went, he said, and I quote
yeah, poorly is right. The poor thing being their underlying legal theory.
He's also gone full-Delauter (I kid you not) saying
It's hilarious.
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[holds up a Duracell battery]
Neo: No, I don't believe it. It's not possible.
Morpheus: I didn't say it would be easy, Neo. I just said it would be the truth.
Neo: This... this isn't the Matrix?
Morpheus: No. It is another training program designed to teach you one thing: if you are not one of us, you are one of them.
Morpheus: Throughout human history, we have been dependent on machines to survive. Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony.
Morpheus: I imagine that right now, you're feeling a bit like Alice. Hmm? Tumbling down the rabbit hole?
Neo: You could say that.
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Re: Display Results By Relevance
When we have someone like this, who not only acted in a completely immoral way but depended on fair use to some degree for his own business, it's much harder for the layman to ignore how wrong the hypocritical and idiotic arguments are.
He's obviously an asshole, and one that's obviously not interested in actually resolving his purported problem (as evidenced by his waving off of Mike telling him exactly how to get content removed from the index easily). Hopefully this helps get across the point that these ideas are ridiculous and they will never work, and although these people will probably continue to act like idiots so long as Google is a successful and cash-rich business, this should help prevent others from getting fooled by the rhetoric.
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I was thinking that perhaps it was because this behaviour is far too obviously wrong, even for them. Perhaps he's just too busy defending his own actions elsewhere!
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Making claims against individual sites, and of course the owners/hosters of those sites are going to examine the claims, and given how utterly, blatantly obvious it is that his claims have nothing to do with people 'using his stuff without permission', and everything to do with silencing those reporting on his actions, I don't imagine those claims would hold up under much scrutiny.
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Thus making them even more useless than they already are, as it would be impossible to report on anything that involved someone.
Of course I can totally understand why he would say something like that, as if you had to get permission to report on someone and/or what they've done, then it would be trivially easy to simply say 'No' anytime someone wanted to report on something that you'd done and didn't want known or talked about, like say, running a revenge porn site and extortion racket.
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No, it just means that it would be impossible to report on anything in the public interest that involved stating anything negative, embarrassing or incriminating about the subject. Reprinting press releases and writing flattering articles about them would still be OK.
That's probably his point. If only people weren't able to know about his scams, criminal behaviour and poorly conceived attempts to cover them up, he'd still have a steady income!
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"Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations." -George Orwell
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"Okay, so you jokers written about P10 v. Google, and if so where can I read it?"
Then he can sue about their indexing it.
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Re: is he... seriously?
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You don't want to tell me you don't believe that works?
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https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150212/09200930005/red-bull-disputes-old-ox-brewery-trademar ked-logoname-because-seriously-ox-is-just-castrated-bull.shtml#c172
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Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!
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Craig Brittain, you can tame Google country by country
Case in point, a potentially unflattering Google site. (No, not a site about Craig. It hints at an unnamed Physics teacher someplace in India. In India Google removes things selectively for India viewers)
The site has split personality: full content (Global view, not recommended for Indians - you have been warned!) and view seen from India: India only view suitably censored for Indians (by Order)
Repeat this for a bunch of countries and you have the globe covered. Call it fragmented reality if you will, but that's what it takes.
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