Vision Media's Attempt To Silence Critic May Be Exposing More Questionable Activities

from the welcome-to-modern-media dept

Earlier this year, we wrote about a company called Vision Media TV that was suing the operator of 800Notes.com, a site where users had complained about Vision Media. Vision Media, of course, has been criticized in the NY Times and other media publications for cold calling organizations, promising to put them on "public television," but not making it clear that all it seemed to do was send the program it would put together (after the organization paid somewhere around $20,000) to various public television stations, with no promise that it would get on TV. Vision Media has been aggressive in trying to quiet any criticism, but with this latest lawsuit, not only is it getting some pushback, but others may be digging up some additional dirt on the company.

Paul Alan Levy, who is representing 800Notes, alerts us to the news that all of this attention has helped dig up other reports about the company, including the fact that similarly questionable pitches have come from other companies with different names (WJMK, United Media, Vision Media and Great America HD)... but the very same address as Vision Media. Rather than Hugh Downs, those other pitches involved media personalities like Walter Cronkite and Mike Douglas -- both of whom ended up suing the company over being misled. This reminds me that we received a similar pitch ourselves a year or so ago, but I have no idea if it was from the same company (and tragically, I can't find that voicemail any more).

Of course, none of this would be getting as much attention if the company wasn't trying to silence 800Notes and its users from saying why they felt the pitches were questionable.

Filed Under: cold calling, criticism, hugh downs, streisand effect
Companies: 800notes, great america hd, united media, vision media tv, wjmk

How UK Chiropractors' Attempt To Silence One Critic Created The Backlash That May Change Chiropractics In The UK

from the can-a-chiropractor-fix-that? dept

Last year, we wrote about a really troubling incident in the UK, where the British Chiropractic Association had sued Dr. Simon Singh for noting that there was little scientific evidence to back up some of the marketing claims used by the BCA concerning what chiropractors could treat. Rather than responding with evidence, the BCA responded with a lawsuit. As we noted at the time, the backlash against the BCA was pretty impressive, with it calling a lot more attention to the questionable medical claims, as well as tremendous anger towards the BCA and chiropractors for the actions against Singh. It was a classic Streisand Effect in action. What was also interesting was how a group of bloggers then teamed up to do the investigative work that no full-time journalist was doing (and who says bloggers can't do investigative journalism?) to debunk the BCA's claims.

While the lawsuit continues, the loosely organized group of folks who had been fighting back against the BCA have continued to work their magic. Brandon writes in to let us know that they've been going one-by-one through every chiropractor who's a member of the BCA and examining their web sites for false marketing claims -- leading to a situation where a stunning one out of every four chiropractors in the UK is under investigation for misleading marketing or advertising. This isn't just the Streisand Effect, this is the Streisand Effect on steroids. In trying to hush up one critic, the BCA has unleashed a large group of concerned folks who are organized (perhaps loosely, but quite effectively) to bring about massive change concerning the BCA and chiropractor marketing practices in general.

The article linked above also goes through more details of how this group has helped dismantle the BCA's weak attempt at showing scientific evidence for some of those marketing claims:

The statement, supported by just 29 citations, was ripped apart by bloggers within 24 hours of publication, before being subjected to a further shredding in the British Medical Journal. It emerged that 10 of the papers cited had nothing to do with chiropractic treatment, and several weren't even studies. The remainder consisted of a small collection of poor-quality trials.

More seriously, the BCA misled the public with a misrepresentation of one paper, a Cochrane review looking at the effectiveness of various treatments for bed-wetting, claiming that the authors had simply concluded that, "there was weak evidence to support the use of [chiropractic].

One day someone will write a big case study (or perhaps a book) about what happened here. An attempt to silence a critic may end up resulting in massive changes to not just the British Chiropractic Association (the article notes that many chiropractors are horrified and want to leave the organization), but also how people view chiropractors and how chiropractic services are marketed.

Filed Under: backlash, chiropractors, streisand effect, truth in advertising, uk

Merriam Webster Dictionary Pulled From Elementary School For Defining Oral Sex; Guess What All The Students Just Found Out About?

from the yeah-good-work,-parents dept

Pickle Monger points us to yet another story of overreaction that will clearly backfire in a misguided attempt to "protect the children!" Apparently a parent of a student at Oak Meadows Elementary school in Riverside, California got very upset when she discovered that the schools had copies of the collegiate level Merriam-Websters Dictionary which (gasp!) contained a definition of the phrase "oral sex." Because of that the dictionary was removed from classrooms and a committee was formed to "investigate." Thankfully, the committee concluded that the original dictionary was fine and should be returned to the classroom, but that an alternative dictionary will be provided as well.

Of course, many other parents at the school pointed out how ridiculous it was that the dictionaries were removed in the first place. It's not as if kids will never hear a phrase like that and seek out an answer somewhere. Would parents really prefer that the kids go to Google and do a search on "oral sex," or go to a dictionary instead? Furthermore, this is a definite "Streisand Effect" situation. Now that this story has made the press, you have to imagine that a significantly higher number of elementary school students at Oak Meadows have now heard the term "oral sex" and figured out what it meant.

Filed Under: dictionaries, oral sex, streisand effect

Four More Inducted Into The Streisand Effect Hall Of Shame

from the i'm-so-proud dept

It seems that my legacy is going to be the fact that I coined the term "The Streisand Effect" five years ago, and it's now become part of the culture. It's great to see the concept take off, though, and it's pretty exciting to see the EFF update the takedown hall of shame it announced last year, with four new entries, exclaiming: "Hello Streisand Effect!" For the record, here are the EFF's four latest inductees:

• Peabody Energy, for issuing outstandingly spurious trademark claims against a spoof site criticizing their "clean coal" group;
• Yahoo, for an impressive attempt to return a cat to the bag after a leak of its guide to snooping services for law enforcement was posted to a whistleblower site;
• Perez Hilton and the Miss Universe Organization for endeavoring to stop a non-profit from airing an ad commenting on a public same-sex marriage controversy initiated by their videos; and
• Universal Music Group, for attempting to muzzle online criticism of the rapper Akon.

Filed Under: hall of shame, streisand effect, takedowns
Companies: eff

How Not To Respond To An Online Political Critic: Ask The Attorney General To Jail Her For Five Years

from the that-congressman-is-nuts dept

When will they learn? Slashdot points us to the story of Congressional Rep. Alan Grayson from Florida. Like most any elected official, there are people who oppose him and are trying to convince people to support his opponents. That's part of the ballgame that you play as a politician. In Grayson's case, one of his critics is a woman named Angie Langley, who set up a website called MyCongressmanIsNuts.com, which is a parody of Grayson's own CongressmanWithGuts.com (not linking to either, as I don't wish to link to any political sites). Again, this shouldn't be a surprise. Now, it turns out that Langley is not actually a constituent in Grayson's district, but lives nearby. That is a bit misleading, but hardly a major issue.

Until, that is, Grayson turned it into one by sending a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder (pdf) asking for an investigation of Langley and the eventual jailing of her for five years over falsely representing herself as a constituent:

These matters were brought to Ms. Langley's personal attention through complaint to the FEC weeks ago, but she and the Committee continue to solicit contributions fraudulently, and have stubbornly refused to return the contributions that they already have, received. Therefore, Ms. Langley and the Committee should be fined, and Ms. Langley imprisoned for five years.

Again, there is an issue with falsely soliciting political contributions, but the thing is, she wasn't getting much attention for her campaign, and the issue of where she lives is really quite minor. There are always people who oppose elected officials. But sending this letter and requesting five years in jail for Langley suddenly made this a national story -- and guess who that's helping? It's certainly not Grayson. But I understand that Langley has suddenly found a lot more willing donors to her campaign. Wouldn't Grayson have been better off just focusing on his "guts" and not why someone outside his district thinks he's "nuts"?

Filed Under: alan grayson, angie langley, streisand effect

Point Out A Potential Photoshopping Of A Demi Moore Picture, And She Has Her Lawyers Send Out The Nastygrams

from the yeah,-that'll-help dept

Sometimes you just shake your head and wonder. It's truly amazing that people don't realize what will happen when they send out ridiculous legal nastygrams. Take, for example, the situation from a few months back where the company Ralph Lauren got itself into a lot more hot water by sending a bogus DMCA takedown, rather than just 'fessing up to the fact that it photoshopped a model's image (badly). But in sending the DMCA takedown, Ralph Lauren called a hell of a lot more attention to a situation that most people would have forgotten otherwise.

Apparently Demi Moore and her lawyers missed that whole story. Back in November some folks noticed what appeared to be a photoshopping of Demi Moore's left hip on the cover of W magazine. There was some debate over it, but either way, people moved on and it was forgotten. Not so fast! While there was some discussion about it -- and Moore herself chimed in on Twitter to claim that the photo was not altered -- she's now had her lawyers threaten at least two publications over the original story. Their claim is that the posts are defamatory. Even if there was no retouching of the photo, it's hard to see what is possibly "defamatory" in the story. Digital retouching happens all the time, and claiming that a photo was retouched, if anything, would implicate the photographers or graphic artists at W, not Moore. There's simply nothing even close to defamatory in regards to Moore herself.

Either way, the really bizarre part is why sic the legal dogs on this? Any lawyer should know that this has zero chance of actually working and a very high likelihood of simply calling a lot more attention to the question of whether or not the image was altered. And, in fact, the guy who apparently first noticed the supposed retouching -- and a recipient of the legal nastygram -- has responded by presenting some pretty compelling evidence that the image was, in fact, retouched. At the same time, he also reiterates that even if this is true, there's nothing wrong with that and certainly nothing defamatory about it. So what was the purpose of the legal nastygram?

And, in the end, what makes Demi Moore look worse? The fact that some cover shoot photo of her may have been slightly altered... or the fact that lawyers on her behalf sent out ridiculous legal nastygrams against those discussing this story?

Filed Under: demi moore, photoshopping, streisand effect

Tiger Woods Gags UK Media; Alerts World To Nude Photos

from the yikes dept

It really was just a couple months ago that a ton of press coverage came from the ridiculous attempt by British oil company Trafigura to gag the UK press. All that did was turn what had been a minor story not many people were paying attention to into a huge story that everyone knew about. But what if the story is already huge? Tiger Woods (and we'd gotten this far without having to talk about him...) has apparently taken the same path as Trafigura and has gagged the UK press from writing about certain details of his personal life. Woods apparently had lawyers in London take action to get a court injunction against the press reporting certain things about his personal life -- though, they're still free to write about this ridiculous injunction, and they're certainly wasting little time in doing that.

So what, exactly, is the UK press barred from discussing? Well, none of the UK articles say -- obviously. But, since we live in the US, it's not hard to find reports that say the specific injunction bars the the publication of any nude photos or images of Woods having sex. And, even though the court order states "this Order is not to be taken as an admission that any such photographs exist," it certainly sounds like a very loud clanging bell announcing exactly that. And, of course, this means the race must now be on for various tabloids/celebrity gossip sites and the like to find exactly those photos and videos.

Given the Trafigura situation, though, would you think that someone in Tiger's camp -- or among his UK lawyers -- would recognize how incredibly badly this would backfire? Not only does it continue to make the UK look like a laughingstock when it comes to freedom of the press and free speech, it only calls that much more attention to what, apparently, Woods would like to remain hidden.

Filed Under: media gag, streisand effect, tiger woods, uk

Careful What You Redact: It May Say More Than What You Left In

from the the-redactor's-dilemma dept

Julian Sanchez has a fantastic post noting what a difficult job it must be to be in charge of figuring out what to "redact" in government documents that are being released to the public -- because redacting certain information may actually reveal a lot more than if that same info had been left readable. As an example of this, Sanchez goes through some of the redactions found in the recently released documents from various service providers in how they comply with law enforcement requests for info. He walks through some of the documents, and actually has his attention called to one redacted passage in a template for requesting info. What caught his eye is that the redacted section was the statutory definition of basic subscriber info that could be requested by law. In other words, there's nothing secretive at all -- and, in fact, he notes that other similar documents include identical information that has not been redacted at all.

If the information had not been redacted, he would have skimmed over it without thinking. But the fact that a government official thought that the statutory definition needed to be redacted, actually called a lot more attention to questioning why that passage had been blacked out. From there, Sanchez does some educated and reasonable speculation, to suggest that government officials may be collecting cell tower info, rather than GPS info, requiring a lower standard to request -- because they can easily get enough info from that to determine where a person is, even without the specificity of the GPS info. It's no secret, of course, that you can triangulate location via tower info, if you have info on multiple towers -- but, Sanchez points out that there are likely ways to get pretty close even with single tower info, and that can be requested at a much lower standard by pretending that you're not trying to pinpoint exact location, and not even asking for the triangulated location info.

It is all speculation, of course, but it's fascinating that what sent him down this path in the first place was the simple decision by a redactor to redact basic information that is obviously already public. Sanchez surmised that the really salient piece of info is the fact that information can be requested while a call is in progress, rather than after it's done, which is what is used to determine a more precise location, if the subject is moving (and switching towers):

Now, did this possibility first cross my mind when I looked at these documents? No, not really--but thinking about this stuff breeds paranoia, and so a lot of possibilities cross my mind. The pattern of redactions above make me a good deal more confident that this is probably a popular method of getting moderately detailed location info on the "cheap" in terms of legal process. In the criminal context, anyway--for intel, who knows. They make it explicit in some of these documents that the Justice Department's legal position is that they can get realtime full-GPS with a mere "relevance" court order, but they go ahead and apply for that kind of tracking under stricter rules because they don't want to risk suppression. Probably they're less worried about that when they're operating under FISA pen/trap orders. But if this is right, they may be pulling a bit of a fast one on judges here. Because a lot of these applications to judges--and certainly the Justice Department's legal briefs in the cases where courts have been reluctant to approve tracking on such a loose standard--imply that this cell site/sector data, why, it's so rough and approximate that it vaguely counts as tracking at all. Certainly, at any rate, it's not so precise as to invade any sort of privacy interest. Except that for a target in steady motion, it begins to seem as though they can probably get a substantially more precise fix.

Filed Under: government spying, redacting, streisand effect

Freedom Of The Press? UK's The Guardian Barred From Reporting On Parliament

from the how-do-you-report-on-being-banned-from-reporting? dept

Over in the UK, the Guardian has apparently been barred from reporting on a certain action in Parliament (Update: read below). But how do you even report on being barred from reporting on a particular subject without reporting on it. Watch the linguistic gymnastics The Guardian goes through:

The Guardian has been prevented from reporting parliamentary proceedings on legal grounds which appear to call into question privileges guaranteeing free speech established under the 1688 Bill of Rights.

Today's published Commons order papers contain a question to be answered by a minister later this week. The Guardian is prevented from identifying the MP who has asked the question, what the question is, which minister might answer it, or where the question is to be found.

The Guardian is also forbidden from telling its readers why the paper is prevented -- for the first time in memory -- from reporting parliament. Legal obstacles, which cannot be identified, involve proceedings, which cannot be mentioned, on behalf of a client who must remain secret.

The only fact the Guardian can report is that the case involves the London solicitors Carter-Ruck, who specialise in suing the media for clients, who include individuals or global corporations.

Yet another case of chilling effects in the form of lawyers suing over coverage they don't like. Of course, we're not barred from reporting on anything, and checking through some Parliament webpages turns up the following list of questions, including the following:

Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme): To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of legislation to protect (a) whistleblowers and (b) press freedom following the injunctions obtained in the High Court by (i) Barclays and Freshfields solicitors on 19 March 2009 on the publication of internal Barclays reports documenting alleged tax avoidance schemes and (ii) Trafigura and Carter-Ruck solicitors on 11 September 2009 on the publication of the Minton report on the alleged dumping of toxic waste in the Ivory Coast, commissioned by Trafigura.

This certainly implies that The Guardian has been barred due to this original story of how British oil trader Trafigura was offering to pay "historic damages" to 31,000 people injured in the dumping of toxic waste in Africa.

Of course, my guess is that Trafigura and Carter-Ruck are about to learn about The Streisand Effect, and UK politicians are about to get another lesson on why its libel laws need to be fixed. In the meantime, in the absence of all of this, how many people would have heard about this whole Trafigura affair? How many more people are about to become aware of it?

Update: After this story got spread all over the internet (especially on Twitter), it looks like Carter-Ruck backed down. Of course... the end result? Much worse than if they had never tried to gag the newspapers. A lot more people are aware of the story. Why do lawyers still think banning such things will work?

Filed Under: freedom of the press, gag order, parliament, streisand effect, uk
Companies: carter-ruck, trafigura

Ralph Lauren And Its Lawyers Discover The Streisand Effect On Bogus DMCA Takedown

from the someone's-bright-idea dept

Will they never learn? Issuing bogus DMCA takedowns to get content down that you don't like, rather than which is actually infringing, is going to backfire. Badly. Last week, the website Photoshop Disasters put up a post showing a ridiculous Ralph Lauren ad with a woman who was too skinny to be alive. Boing Boing put up a post about it, along with the tag line "Dude, her head's bigger than her pelvis." While some have questioned whether the ad is even real, one thing is clear: Ralph Lauren was not pleased. The company's lawyers at Greenberg Traurig sent DMCA takedown notices concerning both posts. Despite Blogger's new DMCA policy, Google still quickly took down the post at Photoshop Disasters, causing the site to ask whether or not Ralph Lauren or its lawyers have ever heard of the Streisand Effect (yay). BoingBoing's host, however, doesn't automatically take content down and passed along the info to BoingBoing, who quickly pointed out that this was clearly fair use (commentary, criticism, etc.) and the DMCA takedown wasn't being used to stop infringing content, but to stifle speech.



So, not surprisingly, BoingBoing put up a nice post explaining the whole thing, including a nice quote from lawyer Wendy Seltzer about fair use... and, of course, another version of the image, and dared Ralph Lauren to sue. Hopefully Ralph Lauren and its lawyers get the message and offer a quick apology. In the meantime, it makes you wonder what the hell anyone was thinking in sending out such a bogus DMCA. Do people really not recognize the consequences?

Filed Under: copyright, dmca, streisand effect, takedown
Companies: ralph lauren