We've covered how Lord Finesse and his lawyers appear to be using copyright to stifle criticism of Finesse's lawsuit against Mac Miller, and how Dan Bull was speaking out against that kind of censorship. It's been quite clear that Finesse's main reason for issuing the takedown was to stifle the criticism, since tons of videos using the same beat remain online -- including Mac Miller's.
But, of course, as we've learned over the years, when you try to stifle free speech online, a funny thing happens. It seems that plenty of people aren't at all happy about Lord Finesse's attempt to silence Dan Bull, and they're re-uploading copies of the video by the dozen. At the time I'm writing this, there are well over 100 other copies of the video uploaded. Here's just a sampling of what the search results look like:
Might have been wiser to have just kept quiet about the damn thing. By taking it down, Finesse has now called a hell of a lot more attention to Dan Bull's rather important criticism of his actions.
Another day, another story about Charles Carreon digging himself a deeper and deeper hole. This time, it starts with him threatening to sue both the person who set up the parody site charles-carreon.comand Register.com, where the domain was registered. Register.com failed to live up to its own "privacy" promises regarding registration info, and exposed the name and personal info of the person who registered the site after receiving a letter from Carreon, despite direct promises to the person's lawyer. After another phone call in which the lawyer, Paul Levy, warned Register.com that it faced breach of contract charges, it made the info private again.
However, Carreon continued to threaten the blogger, leading to a rather bizarre exchange between Carreon and Levy, which relates to some history that Carreon has had with Levy's organization, Public Citizen, and a case we wrote about last year, involving a website run by Carreon and his wife. In the end, the owner of charles-carreon.com felt sufficiently threatened by Carreon's claims that s/he has decided to file for declaratory judgment to stop Carreon from suing. Part of the reason for seeking declaratory judgment was Carreon's direct threat to go after the blogger at a later date in various jurisdictions. He also threatened to use the DMCA takedown process to try to censor the site, because it uses a photo he claims copyright over. There's significant irony in the fact that Carreon is now threatening to abuse the DMCA process to stifle speech -- when what kicked this whole thing off was his DMCA-based defense of Funnyjunk and its failure to remove copyright-covered images.
Carreon's threat-letter response to Levy is something to behold, and can be viewed towards the bottom of the filing (pdf and embedded below). Here's a key part:
As far as when and where I will sue your client, be certain that it will occur if your client does not cede the domain, and advise her of ten things:
There there is essentially no statute of limitations on this claim, and the prima facie laches defense would not kick in for at least three years.
That venue in this action can be validly laid in at least three places, maybe four, if she doesn't live in Arizona, Florida, or California.
That I am capable of employing counsel to handle my claim against her, who will incur attorneys fees and seek recovery of the same. I filed pro se against Inman simply for sake of convenience and the need for speed, and not from a lack of resources.
That the law in this area cannot be predicted with certainty, will evolve substantially over the next three years, during which I will be using digital forensics to establish actual trademark damages in addition to seeking the maximum cybersquatting penalty of $100,000.
That a judgment that recites that the domain was obtained by fraud upon the registrar, in the form of a misrepresentation that she did not know of my trademark on the name, might well be non-dischargeable in bankruptcy.
That a judgment can be renewed indefinitely until collected, and that California judgments accrue 10% interest, which can compound once ever ten years by capitalizing the accumulated interest.
That you cannot guarantee that Public Citizen will provide her with free legal services on June 1, 2015, when I may very well send the process server 'round to her door.
That I have the known capacity to litigate appeals for years (check my Westlaw profile, and of course, the drawn out history of Penguin v. American Buddha, now in its third year, having passed through the Second Circuit and the NYCA, and still hung up in personal jurisdiction in the SDNY).
That the litigation, being of first impression in virtually every Circuit, grounded in a federal question, involving a registered trademark, and dispositive of many open issues in the field of Internet commerce and speech, might very well continue for a decade.
That Public Citizen might well be unable and/or unwilling to provide her with representation until the resolution of such an extended course of litigation.
He goes on to chide Levy and Public Citizen for "leaping to the defense of someone who is in league with a person who has harnessed the lowest impulses of puerile, vituperative Internet youth to generate a Charitable Fund that has been used to bribe two major charities into tacitly endorsing a campaign that is utterly devoid of charitable purpose, and is a mere cover for a hate campaign."
Uh, yeah. At best, this demonstrates that Carreon still has no clue about what's happening. He still thinks that there's some big campaign against him, and he's still lashing out without realizing that every time he does so he just draws more negative attention to himself. Most people tend to learn that when doing something makes the situation worse, they shouldn't keep doing it. Carreon seems unable to make that basic connection. The rather blatant threats against the blog owner -- to go after her in multiples jurisdictions and at a later date when Public Citizen might not be able to take her case -- are examples of the exact wrong way to handle something like this. It's an old-fashioned lawyer attitude: take an extreme position that you can back down from later. But in this case, it just seems to display -- quite vividly for the judge -- Carreon's true intentions: to be such a nuisance that people stop mocking him. One of these days, he may discover that each time he does that, he's only encouraging more and more ridicule.
Oh, and in the meantime, as for his attempt at getting a temporary restraining order to stop the money raised from being distributed, the judge has asked for proof that the charities have received the money -- as has been stated by IndieGoGo and Matthew Inman. If that is shown to be true, it seems likely that the judge will find no reason to consider the TRO request any more, since it's meaningless.
What is it with super rich sports owners and SLAPP suits? Remember Redskins owner Dan Snyder? Well here's a situation that seems even more ridiculous. Ranaan Katz is a minority owner of the Miami Heat, who just won the NBA championship. You might think he'd be pretty happy right now. Instead, he's suing a blogger and Google, claiming a copyright violation over of an "unflattering photo." Seeing as the photo in question is now quite newsworthy, here it is (and we're happy to explain fair use theories to Katz's lawyers, if they'd like):
The full story is even more ridiculous as you dig into the details. It turns out this is the second time that Katz has gone after this blogger. The first time was for defamation. For what? For running a blog that talked about Katz and his company... and, from the sound of things, posted legal documents that apparently Katz didn't want posted.
Where it gets really bizarre is the massive overreach on the defamation side of things. Because the bar for defamation on a public figure it quite high, Katz's lawyers claim that he's not a public figure -- despite being an owner of the Miami Heat, despite being a well-known successful real estate developer, and despite the fact that there's a street named after him and an "official day" in his honor. Instead, his lawyers have argued that getting the press to report on Katz's legal overreach is an attempt "to make Katz a public figure" even though he clearly is one and has been one. Either way, the blogger, represented by Marc Randazza, responded strongly to the ridiculousness of Katz' original lawsuit. You can see that response below, calling out the fact that a demand for an injunction against any future publication on the blog (as Katz requests) is clear prior restraint and based on no accepted legal theory in a defamation case.
Separate from that lawsuit, it looks like Katz and his lawyers have now tried a second approach, which appears to be an attempt to use the DMCA to censor. He claimed that the "unflattering image" above violates his copyright. A DMCA takedown was apparently issued to Google, who refused to comply. So now both the blogger and Google have been sued. Of course, it's unclear to me how he even holds the copyright in the photo, since he didn't take it. Either way, given the previous actions in the case, it certainly feels like this is a SLAPP-style suit, filed just to be a nuisance to the blogger who didn't fold under the defamation claims (and yes, to Katz's lawyer, that's an opinion). Update: I've added the filing in the copyright lawsuit below, which adds one other detail: the photograph is not registered for copyright in the US. Katz's lawyers point out that since the photo was originally from Israel it doesn't need to be registered, which is true, but could limit the effectiveness of any lawsuit. Separately, according to Randazza, Katz claims to have had the copyright in the photo assigned to him from the original photographer. None of that changes any of the analysis here about the lawsuits in question.
Of course, all this has really done is activate the Streisand Effect, and get a lot more attention to Katz, to the lawsuits, to the blog and, of course, to the photo itself. You would think that someone with so much money and business success would have thick enough skin to know how to ignore such things. In the meantime, Randazza has pointed out how bizarre it is to go from suing an individual blogger to adding one of the largest companies in the world to the fight on the other side, for no good reason:
My guess is that their strategy is this: If you keep whiffing against a small time blogger, you might as well then just pick a fight with one of the biggest companies in the world. Sit back and get your popcorn and watch how this one works out. I want to thank Mr. Katz for bringing in an 800 lb gorilla to help me in his unsupportable SLAPP suit.
We have yet to speak to Google's lawyers about this case, but we expect that they will be receptive to standing up for the First Amendment along with us.
Sometimes I think there should be mandatory training on the Streisand Effect before one is allowed to become a lawyer.
Another day, and still, Charles Carreon keeps digging. In case you just woke up from a coma, here are all the earlier posts on Carreon. The latest is both a bizarre semi-backtrack, as well as another case of him feverishly continuing to dig that Carreon Effect hole deeper and deeper.
The "backtrack" comes to us via Popehat, pointing us to an interview with Carreon in which he admits that the letter he sent to kick off this whole mess... was a mistake. Yes. You read that right:
Ironically, the threat of the first lawsuit [Funnyjunk suing Inman] never materialized. Carreon admits he was misinformed: Before demanding the $20,000, which was based on FunnyJunk's "estimate of advertising losses sustained due to the taint of being accused of engaging in willful copyright infringement," Carreon was told that all Oatmeal comics had been taken off the FunnyJunk site, even though they hadn't. "If I had known... no demand would have gone out," he says.
You would think that, upon realizing this -- that the entire premise of his letter which kicked off this entire thing was wrong -- he would think better off pursuing a separate strategy in response to the backlash for what he now admits was in error. But, no. Also, as Ken at Popehat points out, saying these things could be construed as "revealing a confidential attorney-client communication between himself and FunnyJunk in order to make himself look less ridiculous."
And then he continues to dig, dig, dig, dig dig.
You see, in another interview (dude gets around), this time with Ars Technica, Carreon
trots out his latest bizarre theory of liability for Matthew Inman. In the lawsuit, he claimed that he thought Inman might keep everything raised above the target goal of $20,000, even though Inman never made any suggestion that was true, and in fact, Inman had said quite clearly (way before Carreon's rampage and lawsuit) that he was going to donate 100% of everything raised to charity. But Carreon says it doesn't matter:
“It sounds like he stands to make $180,000,” Carreon said. “He’s the authorized agent of IndieGoGo. I know this shit is hard to put together. That’s why we hire lawyers, because we read the statute and we take the risk.” (“Inman's commitment after the fact is not evidence of his original intention," Carreon clarified later by e-mail).
It should be noted, of course, that it does not appear that Carreon has "hired a lawyer" since he filed the case pro se (representing himself). The whole "authorized agent of IndieGogo" thing seems to be an astoundingly weak attempt to twist what IndieGoGo does and what Inman did to fit it under the California law on commercial fundraisers.
But, here's where Carreon goes really far out on a limb. On the very same post where Inman tells everyone that 100% of the money is going to charity, he also points out that he is going to add some other charities to the list. Nearly everyone thinks this is a really good thing. More money going to more charities. Awesome. But, no, not to Carreon. Apparently this is evidence of a nasty "bait & switch"
“Inman's idea to add two more charities is another act that shows the risk of money being raised for one purpose to be diverted to another. For example, I raise money for an Israeli charity to pay for trips to the Holy Land, but then decide that half the money should go to Palestinian orphans, or more disturbingly, to Hezbollah, which also has a charity wing. It's one more reason why IndieGoGo should not contract with agents like Inman who do not know that ‘adding charities’ to a campaign is obviously ‘bait and switch’ false advertising.”
Yeah, because everyone is just so sure that Inman's now going to add two charities that involve speeding up cancer causing agents and killing off bears to counter his original two charities.
Every time you think that there have been enough examples of the Streisand Effect that it should stop people from trying to censor perfectly legitimate content, you're just setting yourself up to be surprised by the next such attempt -- often more bizarre than the previous one. The latest one comes to us via the Consumerist, and it involves the story of a new gym in Cleveland, called BarreCleveland, that has apparently threatened to call the police on a blogger because she though the price was a bit steep. But the really odd thing? The original post was generally positive. We're used to seeing people flip out about people saying negative things about them, but a mostly positive review? Now that's something special.
Alana Munro's original blog post did discuss the fact that she thought the price was too high, and that she normally likes a workout that generates more of a sweat, but on the whole it doesn't seem that negative at all. She noted that if it was a little closer to where she lived (and the prices were lower) she'd likely go back. However, somewhere along the way that got interpreted as being a dig by someone who ran the place, and they first got into a bit of a Facebook and Twitter argument with Alana and some others.
Just stop the posting about Barre Cleveland and take down all the existing posts. We know that you stole the class and we can pursue legal action against you for that and that is why it is ridiculous that you complain about a price when you never paid for the class. You were never given a discount code by Barre Cleveland and somehow you used that to enter the studio. I am sending you this message to politely ask that you remove all the content about Barre Cleveland from your blog and twitter and we will not get the Beachwood Police involved on this theft of services.
Alana says she did use a discount code -- it was one that was being passed around widely to help promote the gym in the first place. Now the gym may argue that it only meant the code to be used by people it gave it too, but then it should have implemented one-time codes. Instead, the code worked, and Alana has a nice receipt posted to her blog "thanking" her for signing up. Her complaint wasn't that she paid too much for that one class, but that the general price might be too much for her to keep going back.
Either way, the whole thing has blown up and received lots of attention. BarreCleveland has scrubbed the back-and-forth tweets from its Twitter feed. But it certainly looks like it already went way too far. Engaging with people who criticize you online is one thing -- and can be quite useful. Threatening to call the police on them and demanding they erase what they've written about you is going way too far, and the internet (hello Streisand Effect) doesn't take kindly to such things.
It would appear that lawyer Charles Carreon is not taking the advice of Matthew Inman to take some time off and calm down. He's still going at it. His latest move is a claimed plan to subpoena both Twitter and Ars Technica to find out who created a fake Charles Carreon Twitter account which parodied Carreon's... um... over the top approach to dealing with people making fun of him online. Twitter will get the subpoena, of course, because that's where the account was. Ars' subpoena is because someone signed up for an account on the site claiming to be the guy who ran the fake twitter account. Ars' Nate Anderson contacted that guy by email who said (1) he lives in Sweden, so good luck, Charles and (2) that he stopped parodying Carreon because Carreon's actual statements were so outrageous they didn't need any parody:
"It became clear to me at one point that I could not keep up with Charles," Modelista wrote. "His comments to the press were more damaging to his reputation than any Twitter parody account could ever be. You cannot mock someone who has such a low regard for his own reputation. Before the @Charles_Carreon account was suspended, I was simply linking to his interviews. Satire was not necessary at that point as Charles was providing it."
One wonders what Carreon must think of the parody blog that has been set up to mock him even more mercilessly at Charles-Carreon.com. That one clearly notes that it's a satire account. In the meantime, plenty of people have pointed out that Charles himself seems to have done many of the kinds of things he's now accusing others of doing. Take, for example, his call to waterboard Ben Bernanke. It's clearly satire (though, not particularly good satire in my opinion), but seems just as over the top as anything that Inman or the anonymous Twitter user did to Carreon. Actually, Carreon's piece seems like much more direct incitement. And, seriously, if Carreon should be worried about anyone doing damage to his reputation, he might want to look at the person commenting up a storm on our site (and elsewhere) claiming to be Charles' wife Tara Carreon. She's been much more nasty and angry than anything that was directed at Charles.
On the legal front, the EFF has signed up to help with Inman's defense. I'm wondering if Carreon is even going to be able to find any lawyers to help him out on his case. Once again, we'd suggest that Carreon take a step back, cool off, and think through the massive mistake he's making. If he continues, the term the Carreon Effect might just catch on for real.
Now that the details have come out about Charles Carreon's lawsuit against Matthew Inman, IndieGoGo and the two charities Inman is raising money for (and the details are as nonsensical as we expected), Matthew Inman has written an open letter to Carreon, suggesting that he might want to calm down a bit. He points out that, contrary to Carreon's claims, he did not "incite security attacks" on Carreon. In fact, Inman not only focused his anger at Funnyjunk, but also went further than necessary to keep Carreon mostly out of it:
So when did this transform from Oatmeal VS FunnyJunk to Carreon VS the internet?
I'm going to take a wild shot in the dark here and guess that it's when you announced to a journalist at MSNBC that you were trying to shut down a charity fundraiser which would benefit cancer victims and endangered wildlife.
THAT was the moment when the tide of public opinion focused on you instead of FunnyJunk. I never encouraged anyone to attack, harass, or otherwise contact you.
In fact in my original letter I blurred out your contact information and I linked to your Wikipedia page instead of your website.
If I've directed energy anywhere it's been to the fundraiser page.
He also tells people not to harass Carreon. He goes on to point out, accurately, that this whole thing has probably been humiliating and points out that the lawsuit is quite likely going to get dismissed, but also offers Carreon a possible path to backing out of this mess:
Your lawsuit is meritless and it'll probably just get dismissed, but
I'm guessing you're just going to keep trying
until you find an angle that sticks with a judge.
My advice: take a few weeks off, stop saying crazy shit to journalists, and come back when you've calmed down.
Write an apology to whomever you feel is appropriate, or just don't write anything ever again.
Maybe start your own charity fundraiser as way of apology.
I'd donate.
Also known as "the stop digging" solution. The same one half the internet has been suggesting for the past week. The same suggestion that Carreon keeps ignoring -- leading at least some people to start calling the impulse to keep digging the Carreon Effect. That moniker will likely disappear if he does, in fact, stop digging. But what are the odds of that happening?
Earlier this morning we wrote about Charles Carreon suing Matthew Inman, IndieGoGo, the National Wildlife Federation and the American Cancer Society. At that time, all anyone had was the summary of the lawsuit as written by Courthouse News Service. Now, Carreon has posted the filing to his own website (with portions redacted) and the full version is now available via PACER. I've attached the officially filed version below. Rather than reveal new theories that we had missed in our original analysis, it would appear that our initial thoughts were dead on. This case is just begging to be anti-SLAPPed out of existence, in which case Carreon may find himself on the hook for significant legal fees.
When I was writing about the original case, I went looking through California's regulations on charities, and couldn't find anything that would impact Inman or IndieGoGo and all I came across was this law from this page on the California Attorney's General website. But I couldn't see how that specifically applied to Inman or IndieGoGo, since it seemed to be focused (a) on charities themselves or (b) on professional fundraisers (i.e., people hired to fundraise on a charity's behalf). It did not seem to apply to people who just tried to raise money which they promised to donate to a charity. However, that is the law that Carreon is relying on. Carreon seems to try to twist the definition of a "commercial fundraiser" to make it apply to Inman and IndieGoGo, but it's a pretty massive stretch. Inman isn't doing this "for compensation," so the law doesn't seem to apply to him. IndieGoGo is just the platform, but isn't doing the soliciting or directly touching the funds. The law is designed for an entirely different purpose.
And even if, somehow, a court actually believes that this law applies here, you might wonder how it's possible that Carreon has any standing to sue whatsoever. The fundraiser has nothing to do with him (it was about Funnyjunk, but remember that Carreon is suing on his own behalf, not Funnyjunk's.). Carreon appears to just be suing because he's pissed off. Except, that Carreon thinks he found a loophole. He donated to the campaign himself in order to create standing:
Plaintiff is a contributor to the Bear Love campaign, and made his contribution with the intent to benefit the purposes of the NWF and the ACS. Plaintiff is acting on his own behalf and to protect the rights of all other contributors to the Bear Love campaign to have their reasonable expectation that 100% of the money they contributed would go to a charitable purpose. Plaintiff opposes the payment of any funds collected from the Bear Love campaign to Indiegogo, on the grounds that the contract between Indiegogo and Inman is an illegal contract that violates the Act, and its enforcement may be enjoined. Plaintiff opposes the payment of any funds to Inman because he is not a registered commercial fundraiser, because he failed to enter into a written contract with the Charitable Organization defendants, because the Bear Love campaign utilized false and deceptive statements and insinuations of bestiality on the part of Plaintiff and his client’s “mother,” all of which tends to bring the Charitable Defendants and the institution of public giving into disrepute.
Yeah. Once again, Carreon contributed to Inman's campaign for what appears to be the sole reason of using that as a way to get standing to sue. I'm somewhat stunned.
Also, how can he possibly blame the charities? Well, Carreon's lawsuit fails in that it never actually states a claim against the charities. Seriously. At one point in the explanation of the lawsuit, he does state the following, but never actually includes the charities in any of the actual claims:
Although the Charitable Organization defendants have notified by Plaintiff in writing about the fact that the “Bear Love” campaign alleged infra is being conducted by Inman and Indiegogo in violation of the Act, and that the campaign is being conducted in a manner that could cause public disparagement of the Charitable Organization defendants’s good name and good will, neither the ACS or the NWF have acted to disavow their association with the Bear Love campaign, thus lending their tacit approval to the use of their names to the Bear Love campaign.
Again, just for emphasis, I'll point out that even with this paragraph, Carreon fails to name either charity with any of the actual claims in the lawsuit. He does include them in part of the claim, by stating that they "have failed to perform their statutory duty to exercise authority over the Bear Love campaign," but still fails to directly assert the claim against them. Even if he somehow figured out a way to work them into one of the claims, this particular legal theory of not disavowing "their association" with Inman's campaign leading to "tacit approval" is pretty ridiculous as well, and not something I could see standing up in court.
Meanwhile, Carreon's theory that Inman "disparages the image of charitable fundraising" again seems to stretch all kinds of definitions and understanding of the internet. Basically, he relies on the fact that Inman likes to mock people he doesn't like. But that's entirely unrelated to the issues at hand. Furthermore, despite Inman and Inman's lawyer explaining (in great detail) to Carreon, earlier, that Inman has an ASCII pterodactyl on all pages of The Oatmeal's source code, Carreon spends an inordinate amount of space talking about how awful this is.
Inman has announced his vindictive response to his real and imagined enemies by posting, within the source code of all of the webpages on his main website, www.theoatmeal.com, the following image and text, depicting himself as a pterodactyl that will “ptero-you a new asshole.” A screencapture of the core of the source-code appears as follows:
Following the link to http://pterodactyl.me leads the Internet user to a page on TheOatmeal.com where a video created by Inman and Sarah Donner depicts Inman, in his character as a carnivorous, prehistoric flying reptile that first rips the intestines out of a man's anus, then flogs him with his entrails, then steals a pineapple from a boy, tears his head off, flings it a girl and knocks here head off, then grinds up the girl’s head up in a wood-chipper, blends it with the pineapple, and drinks the grisly cocktail
The filing then shows screenshots from the video in question, which we'll just embed here for your viewing pleasure:
Carreon tries to claim that these images actually incite Inman's followers into action:
Inman’s followers are by and large with technologically savvy young people eager to follow the
latest trend, who embrace Inman’s brutal ideology of “tearing you a new asshole.”
Seriously? Carreon is literally arguing that fans of a silly comic with cartoonishly ridiculous violence leads them to "embrace" this "brutal ideology?" Carreon really ought to spend more time online. Carreon repeatedly makes incredibly weak connections between Inman's cartoons, his online persona and the later hatred directed his way, but without any actual evidence.
Later in the lawsuit, Carreon again claims that Inman's statement that Funnyjunk "stole" images is "false and misleading." Whether or not that's true, it's irrelevant here. Funnyjunk is not a plaintiff in the lawsuit. He also goes off on Inman for "fighting
words, and incitements to commit cybervandalism, none of which are entitled to constitutional
protection." Neither of those make sense. It's nearly impossible to see how Inman's cartoons, as sophomoric as they might be, qualify under the standard legal definition of "fighting words" or any kind of incitement to violence. In fact, Inman has made no references inciting his audience to do anything other than give money to charities (which most people would consider a good thing).
Moving on... we've got the trademark and publicity rights claim. As expected, Carreon is asserting that various actions violate the trademark on his name and his publicity rights. The key is that someone set up a fake Twitter account in his name and tweeted various statements that might make Carreon look silly. Of course, reading some of the tweets, it seems rather obvious that the account is fake. For example, one of them talks about "backtracing" Inman's IP -- a rather obvious reference to the famous ya dun goofed internet meme. Also, as he had suggested in an interview on Friday, Carreon makes interesting leaps of logic in suggesting that Inman himself may have set up the fake account.
Then, finally, we have the "inciting and committing cybervandalism in the nature of trespass to chattels, false personation and identity theft." Here, he claims that the fact that his email address was made public was part of that incitement, claiming that he never made it public:
As noted above, Doe1 or Inman proliferated Plaintiff’s email address via a fake tweet made by “@Charles_Carreon.com.” Plaintiff had not posted the chas@charlescarreon.com email address anywhere on the Internet except where required by law and Internet regulations. (The email address appears on legal papers in PACER filings in cases where required by the rules of this and other U.S. District Courts; however, these filings are viewable only by PACER users. The email address was also used in the Whois registration database for various websites Plaintiff has registered for his benefit, and as by the authorized registrant/agent of various legal clients.) Inman or persons incited by Inman also proliferated the email address and Plaintiff’s home address on social networking websites, again for the malicious purpose of enabling cybervandalism.
Except... court filings are not only viewable to those with a PACER account. Filings with the court, if not under seal, are considered public documents and are often available from a variety of sources, including the Internet Archive and other places as well. Separately, if he didn't use an anonymizer, the whois info that includes his email address is public info. Furthermore, his address is available elsewhere online as well, including (um...) both the websites for the State Bar of California and the State Bar of Oregon. Oh, and the email address is also clearly stated in the version of the legal filing that Carreon posted to his own website. While he redacted his email address in the header, he did not within the text of the complaint. In other words, that address was widely available to the public already.
His second claim of cybervandalism was that someone tried to reset the password on his webhosting account:
On June 13, 2012, at 9:28 p.m., either Inman or one of the persons named as Does 1 – 100 engaged in the act of trespass to chattels, cracking the password on Plaintiff’s website at http://www.charlescarreon.com and requesting to reset the password. Fortunately, the intrusion discovered instantly by Plaintiff who was sitting looking at his computer screen when he received an email from the website software system, and was able to retain control of the website by immediately changing the password using the hyperlink in the email.
First of all, merely requesting a reset password is not "cracking the password." It's requesting a new password, which the user would not be able to act upon unless they had access to Carreon's email (and there is no indication that that happened). In fact, it appears that the password reset system worked as designed, in that Carreon was warned that someone wanted to reset the password. And, actually, the fact that Carreon admits to "using the hyperlink in the email" suggests that that could have been the real hack attempt. You should never change your password using a hyperlink sent to you in an email. You should always go directly to the site yourself and login and make the change. Normally, if you receive one of those reset emails and haven't tried to reset your password, you're supposed to ignore it so that the password doesn't get reset. Clicking on the link and changing a password that way makes one susceptible to phishing attacks.
Finally, Carreon notes that some idiots online have signed his email account up for various spam emails/newsletters. If true, that's pretty stupid on whoever signed him up for those kinds of things, and people really shouldn't do that. But claiming that's "cybervandalism" or anything that can or should be pinned on Inman (again, whose target was Funnyjunk, not Carreon) seems ridiculous in the extreme.
NeverSeconds is a blog by a 9-year old primary school student, Martha Payne, photographing and blogging about the school lunches she's served daily. The blog, which only started on April 30th, apparently got a small bit of news coverage... leading the local regional council to issue a ban on the blog, because "media coverage of the blog had led catering staff to fear for their jobs." Except... then the internet exploded in protest, and the council (after one weak attempt to defend its position) changed its mind and issued a statement which "supersedes all other council statements on this matter already issued." In the statement, from the head of the council, it is said that the ban should be lifted (not that it has been) and that "there is no place for censorship in this Council."
That said, the statement still seems upset about the news reporting on the school lunches:
But we all must also accept that there is absolutely no place for the type of inaccurate and abusive attack on our catering and dining hall staff, such as we saw in one newspaper yesterday which considerably inflamed the situation. That, of course, was not the fault of the blog, but of the paper.
We need to find a united way forward so I am going to bring together our catering staff, the pupils, councillors and council officials - to ensure that the council continues to provide healthy, nutrious and attractive school meals. That "School Meals Summit" will take place later this summer.
Either way, the end result is a hell of a lot more people are aware of Martha's blog (and the kind of meals her school serves). The BBC says that in the past couple days, she's received over 3 million visits to the site. The BBC even put up a separate article explaining how the case is a perfect example of the Streisand Effect, and how attempts to censor content backfire. And... just as in the case with The Oatmeal v. Funnyjunk, this Streisand Effect is being used to turn an attempt at censorship into a way to raise money for charity. Martha put up a crowdfunding page to try to raise £7,000 for a charity and it's already made over £48,000.
What is it with lawyers who default to being over-aggressive, without (apparently) stopping to think about how such aggression will almost certainly backfire? Today's such story focuses on one Neil Meyer, a prominent Beverly Hills lawyer, who represents the Hollywood actor Chris Evans. On June 12th, a blog called the "Celebrity Smack Blog" posted a story with the title "Exclusive! Chris Evans Might Have An STD", which has now been taken down, though Google still has a cache at the time of this writing. It's the sort of typical crap you'd expect from a site called "Celebrity Smack Blog" -- a totally unsourced rumor from an anonymous person (described as "one of my best sources in Los Angeles" which means absolutely nothing). Given that it's on a silly blog and not particularly believable, chances are this is the kind of story that would get a brief bit of buzz and then disappear. Indeed a few other celebrity gossip sites appear to have picked up on the story, but most people don't seem to care, and it certainly doesn't appear on any major site.
Either way, a user on the forum Lipstick Alley posted the story to that forum, with a link to the original, some quotes from the story and the comments, and a random picture of Evans. Meyer quickly sent a threat letter that really tries to include everything but the kitchen sink. It argues that even though Lipstick Alley is a forum, it is responsible for what its users post (which is clearly wrong under Section 230 of the CDA). It argues that the site "fraudulently" and "intentionally" published the post, again despite it being a forum where a user posted the information. Meyer also seems to claim that reporting on Evans -- regardless of whether or not the information is factual -- is a misuse of his publicity rights (which is clearly wrong under the First Amendment). He also claims that merely linking to content that may be defamatory is, itself, against the law. He demands that the site "permanently remove any mention of Mr. Evans" even beyond this particular story -- which, again, has no legal basis.
Oh, and lest we forget, he pretends that he can unilaterally declare that the letter itself is secret and that the site cannot even "report on its substance" let alone publish it:
This letter is confidential legal communication and you are specifically prohibited from publishing any portion of it or reporting publicly on its substance in any way.
Some of the sites (including the original) that had the story appear to have taken them down, suggesting that perhaps they received similar letters. However, the folks who run Lipstick Alley, thankfully, work with lawyer Paul Levy, and have an understanding of the basics of the law and their own liability. Levy has responded to the letter (embedded below) and posted Meyer's letter and his own response publicly. I highly recommend reading both letters. Levy calls Meyer's attention to the legal failings of his threat letter -- and suggests that Meyer's strategy is bound to backfire, due to the Streisand Effect:
Lipstick Alley is not gong to comply with any of your demands. And, indeed, I cannot think of a strategy better suited to drawing both yourself and Evans into disrepute than by sending a letter such as yours. Given that you are billed as an "entertainment lawyer," it is amazing that you may have never taken the "Streisand effect" into account in deciding whether to send your letter.
I actually think there are a few places where Levy even underplays the ridiculousness of the original letter. Beyond the fact it's a user forum, Meyer's arguments, taken to their logical conclusion, would mean that no site could report on or show an image of Chris Evans without his permission. That makes little sense and the First Amendment clearly makes a mockery of such a claim.
And we won't even bother to discuss the ridiculousness of telling Lipstick Alley that it can't even report on the substance of the letter, let alone its specific contents.
Of course, there are a few clues that perhaps the reason that Meyer is unfamiliar with things like the Streisand Effect has to do with the fact that he's not particularly tech savvy. The letter notes that it was "dictated" (old school!), for one thing. But, I also noticed that Meyer's law firm, Stone, Meyer, Genow, Smelkinson & Binder, LLP, doesn't even appear to have a website. The domain which is listed as a part of Meyer's email address in the letter... takes you to a GoDaddy holding page. Yes, GoDaddy.
Hint to Hollywood stars: if you're going to hire an entertainment lawyer to try (badly) to police rumors about you online with questionable legal threats, perhaps first check to see if they have a website themselves.
