Bethesda Bullies One Of Its Creative Fans Over Website Metatags

from the jerk-like dept

Bethesda has something of a complicated history on our pages. The company is at once often terrible on matters of enforcing its intellectual property in a protectionist manner, while also occasionally acting quite good on matters of connecting with its fans in a meaningful and downright sweet manner. Few and far between have been the stories of those two separate philosophies intersecting, but we have such an instance now as Bethesda has demanded any Bethesda trademark words be removed in metatags on the website for DoomRL, a fan-made rogue-like inspired by the classic Doom games.

It's a strangely worded letter in a couple of respects. First, the letter seems to be focused on the use of words and/or phrases trademarked by Bethesda/ZeniMax within the metatags for the DoomRL website, as opposed to making any sort of copyright claim on the game itself. In other words, it's not at all clear from the threat letter whether or not the company is objecting to the fan-game in any way, or just the use of the metatags. If the latter, the threat makes very little sense. The text on the website doesn't mention Bethesda or ZeniMax at all and only mentions ID Software to credit it for being the creators of the Doom franchise. The trademarks that appear to be in question are references to Doom itself.

And these are a game, a website, and references that are years old. The game appears to have been in production for at least six years and has been publicized on the web for about as long. It's a game that doesn't resemble any actual Bethesda property and is instead a fan's new take on the franchise, offered for free. I don't read any objection into the game itself in the threat letter, so why make such a big deal over the use of the Doom name itself? Is Bethesda cool with a fan making a Doom inspired game, so long as that fan never mentions it to anyone?

As a result of the threat, however, creator Kornel Kisielewicz has decided to scrap DoomRL for a successor that doesn't include any Doom IP. This is about the time that defenders of copyright and trademark will chime in to suggest that intellectual property enforcement has led to the creation of new intellectual property, thus fulfilling its purpose... except that isn't really true. It's basically the same game, just with the added effort of pretending like it's something it wasn't originally. Yay?

And, more importantly, the stripping of references to Doom helps Bethesda how, exactly? What was once a native expansion of the franchise as an expression of love from a fan, one which could only serve to point new potential customers back to the original game series, has instead become something independent of that series. Kisielewicz has even started a Kickstarter for the sanitized game to now profit off of it, instead of acting as a free promoter for Bethesda's game. At best, Bethesda loses out on a free marketing vector for its Doom franchise, while at worst some in the gaming public will want to punish the company for this aggressive behavior. How exactly is this kind of IP bludgeoning a better option than working with the fan/creator?

Filed Under: bullying, doomrl, fans, metatags
Companies: bethesda, zenimax

Take Note: Copyright Troll Gets Stiff Response From Someone It Tried To Bully, Immediately Runs Away

from the bully-the-bully dept

It should be well-known by readers of this site that copyright trolls are essentially bullies. They send out their settlement threat letters, hoping to extort money from a public that typically doesn't know better than to be terrified by the legalese claims within the letters. It's a practice fraught with deception, as the evidence referenced in the letters typically amounts to nothing more than an IP address -- which itself may or may not be correct -- while the threats themselves can often times include consequences not remotely plausible. Still, the bullying goes on, because it works enough to make it profitable.

That's why it's important to highlight how these bullies tend to respond when a target decides to stand up to them. Much like the bullies we've had in our personal lives, they tend to run away as quickly as possible. One recent example of this is James Collins, who received a troll letter from LHF Productions, the company behind the movie London Has Fallen. The company accused Collins of both downloading the movie via BitTorrent, as well as then making it available to others via the same means. Rather than acquiescing, however, Collins got himself a lawyer and had him punch back.

In a letter obtained by the troll watchers over at DieTrollDie, Collins’ lawyer J. Christopher Lynch informs LHF lawyer David A. Lowe of this stance in no uncertain terms.

“As Mr. Collins told you in his letter dated October 6, 2016, he is innocent. Mr. Collins was asleep on the date at the time the Amended Complaint accuses him of being ‘observed infringing’,” Lynch writes. “Likewise, Mr. Collins has no secondary liability because he never aided, directed, facilitated, benefitted from, or shared in the proceeds of any violations of the law by anyone. We are optimistic that your client and its foreign representatives will see the wisdom of dismissing Mr. Collins. We recognize this requires ‘taking our word’ that Mr. Collins is wholly innocent, but, believe me, he is, just like he told you he is."

That bit about foreign representatives is important. Many of the companies that send out these threat letters rely on foreign groups to do the IP address tracking on which the threats rely. Any ancillary "evidence" of the infringement is typically also compiled by these foreign groups. That's actually something of a problem for the copyright troll, as the foreign group then becomes the "witness" to the infringement, and witnesses both can be called into court to testify and, in the case of those acting as investigators, face licensing requirements in some areas. Lynch further hammers this home in his letter to LHF Productions.

“Your client’s foreign representatives could have complied with Washington law by hiring a licensed investigator to corroborate the foreign investigation in real time, since the purported location of the entrapped IP addresses is known,” he writes. “But your client’s representatives chose not to invest in compliance with Washington law, and are taking a chance that somehow the foreign witness to the ‘observed infringing’ can testify, and that somehow the entrapped ‘blip’ of the movie in question will be sufficient evidence of U.S. copyright infringement.”

Had everything been done on the level by the copyright troll and its foreign associates, this language ought to have had no impact on the troll's actions. Good evidence and a justifiable case deserves its day in court, after all. That makes it all the more telling what LHF Productions did instead.

As noted by DieTrollDie, that threat proved too much for LHF Productions. The company dismissed the case against Mr Collins in preference to being put under the microscope. There are probably very good reasons for that and ones that other recipients of threatening letters should consider exploring.

Remember, friends, bullies tend to run away when someone stands up to them. If the majority of the public were aware of stories like these, copyright trolling would stop due to its lack of profitability.

Filed Under: bullying, copyright trolling, james collins, run away
Companies: lhf productions

Fertility Company Bullies Unhappy Customer With Bogus Legal Threats And Nonexistent Lawyers

from the reputation-still-feeling-protected? dept

It looks like another company wants to ruin its reputation by "protecting" its reputation. Paul Alan Levy of Public Citizen is helping an unhappy customer fight back against the litigious threats of Fertility Bridges, which allegedly promised her one thing, but delivered another.

After searching the Fertility Bridges web site, identifying what appeared to be an ideal donor, and receiving confirmation from Fertility Bridges that the donor had confirmed her willingness to proceed, Oliver wrote a large check to Fertility Bridges. However, as soon as the company had received Oliver’s payment, Fertility Bridges went dark concerning the donor's availability instead of moving forward with an egg donation. Then, just after Oliver’s check had cleared, Fertility Bridges admitted that the donor was unwilling to go forward with the procedure, without giving any reason, and suggested that she choose another of the company's available donors. But when Oliver asked for a refund of the entire fee that she had paid Fertility Bridges, the company temporized for a while, and then refused. In the circumstances, Oliver suspected that she had been the victim of a bait and switch.

Oliver took her complaint to the Better Business Bureau. Shortly thereafter, she received a threatening email (the first of several) from Fertility Bridges stating that the agreement it had failed to uphold on its end had been violated by Oliver's complaint.

"You directly violated our legal agreement by attempting to post an online review. As such, we are setting the plans in motion for a multi-million dollar defamation case against you. . . . unless you withdraw your unwarranted BBB complaint or any illegal online reviews, we will proceed at lightening [sic] speed in a defamation case against you to minimize as much damage as possible. We have your signed legal agreement clearly stating you will NOT post online reviews."

The provisions the threatening email alluded to are these:

"M. ONLINE REVIEWS
"Because of the extremely private and emotionally delicate nature of the egg donation business Recipients agree NOT to post any online reviews anywhere on the Internet without first presenting it to Fertility Bridges for legal review. . . .

"N. APPLICATION OF LAW
"Recipients agree that this Agreement will be governed and interpreted by California jurisdiction. . . .

"Q. SETTLEMENT OF DISPUTES
"Recipients agree to mediation to resolve any disputes. If mediation does not resolve the issues then Recipients agree to binding arbitration to settle disputes [and] in California Jurisdiction..."

Fertility Bridges' own agreement immediately undercuts its threats of a (baseless) "multi-million dollar defamation case," as it binds both parties to mediation and arbitration. The parts about California's jurisdiction undercut the rest.

[G]iven the (oddly-worded) provision subjecting the agreement to California law, even if the clause were construed as forbidding disparaging reviews without prior approval, the clause would be forbidden by the new California law that prevents companies from imposing non-disparagement clauses in consumer agreements.

The combination of legal errors might cause one to wonder what sort of lawyer helped compose the threatening emails sent to Oliver. Levy tried to speak to Fertility Bridges' legal representation on behalf of Oliver. His attempt was met by Fertility Bridges tugging at its suspenders and claiming it was just a humble, small-time fertility consulting company that didn't much care for big city lawyerin' -- despite its succession of escalating emails suggesting Oliver would be sued into the ground for attempting to badmouth the company.

In fact, for all of its assertions that any review or complaint about its services would first need to be viewed by Fertility Bridges' legal team before publication, the company appears to have no legal representation retained to handle this task. In an email conversation with Levy, the company (comically) makes it clear it would need to retain a specific type of lawyer to handle Oliver's challenge of its non-disparagement clause. [All spelling and grammatical errors in the following are quoted directly. Emphasis added.]

Thanks for your prompt response. If the Olivers feel the need to post something on the Internet, we can't stop them. As you have read we do not have a gag clause, we ask that they present to our attorney or mediator to verify the facts are truthful and void of medical privacy data so that they do not subject themselves to libel.

Do have them post away and we will hire a separate attorney who focuses specifically on false claims (not truthful ones - since those are ok to post and have always been.) As you know different attorneys specialize in different types of the law so we will hire one who specializes in this. We are not lawyers and don't intent to be. Our goal is to create a service that helps and leave the legal matters up to the experts.

We have an attorney who is responding to their NJ claim but we don't feel she has the expertise to advise on libel claim since it will be important to learn the details of libel once we head into mediation with the client.

Will you serve as their lawyer defending them against their lies they are intending to write online? Are you libel attorney?

[...]

If you feel there is anything else we need to know about this case, please pass all and we will share with our with a specialized libel attorney when we hire one. 9 days is too short a time to find and hire This special kind of attorney so we will do this after posts are made and take the right amount of time to find the right one. Once they are made, we will know how extreme the situation is, exactly the nature of their post and we will have a chance to state our response refuting their claims in the public forum they are posting on and what potential damages that might occur as a result. I am sure there is some case law that already defines what the legal remedies are for posting libelous remarks online and we will aim to find an attorney who knows.

I assume once an actual lawyer is retained by Fertility Bridges, all communication along these lines will cease. The non-disparagement clause Fertility Bridges claims isn't a non-disparagement clause is actually unenforceable in California -- the state it's chosen to handle its litigation in. And if Oliver's review actually contains defamatory statements, there are legal remedies the company can pursue that have nothing to do with its shady "run it by our [nonexistent] lawyers first" clause. As Levy points out, given the legal remedies readily available, the only reason to insert language like this into service agreements is to discourage unhappy customers from making their complaints public.

Filed Under: bullying, fertility, gag order, legal threats, non-disparagement clause
Companies: fertility bridges

Workplace Commission In Australia: Unfriending A Co-Worker Is A Factor In Bullying Case

from the dislike dept

Workplace rules: who can understand them, am I right? I mean, they give me a computer at work and I'm not supposed to use it to find the most hilarious NSFW pictures possible? They give me co-workers but I'm not allowed to question them about exactly where they fit into the Illuminati conspiracy that may or may not be going on and why are you running away? My workplace encourages me to use social media in a responsible way, but I'm not allowed to unfriend people I don't get along with?

No, no I'm not. At least, if I worked in Australia I wouldn't be allowed to, according to the Australian government's Fair Work Commission, which recently claimed that de-friending a co-worker is a form of emotional immaturity in the workplace.

Rachael Roberts, a Launceston real estate agent, complained to the commission that she was bullied by her colleague Lisa Bird, leaving her with depression and anxiety. The Facebook incident took place in January this year, after Ms Bird allegedly called Ms Roberts a "naughty little schoolgirl running to the teacher" during an aggressive meeting in the tea room.

Ms Roberts told the commission she left the office crying and when she later checked Facebook to see if Ms Bird has commented on Facebook about the incident, she found that Ms Bird had deleted her as a Facebook friend. Fair Work Commission deputy president Nicole Wells said in her decision that the unfriending was unreasonable behaviour and that Ms Roberts had been bullied at work.

Can you hear that commotion off in the distance? That's a hundred-million workplace trolls throughout the world rejoicing as though it were troll-Christmas, because a ruling like this is not only nonsensical, but it's also a mandate that the trolled must continue to be trolled in the form of Facebook. Yes, upon review of the incidents that Roberts complained about, the ruling seems to indicate that Bird, whatever her feelings and interactions with Roberts might be, must continue to have her digital space invaded against her will. Even if Roberts is correct that Bird has acted like something of a jerk, and judging from the commission's other findings that seems to be the case, what business is it of government to mandate who a Facebook user must or must not continue to connect with both in and out of the workplace? Put more succinctly: what the ever-loving hell is going on here?

Well, here to provide a non-explanation is a lawyer who is about to not make sense.

Josh Bornstein, from Maurice Blackburn lawyers, argues the Facebook unfriending is bullying but only because it happened in the context of several other incidents.

"The Fair Work Commission didn't find that unfriending someone on Facebook constitutes workplace bullying," he said. "What the Fair Work Commission did find is that a pattern of unreasonable behaviour, hostile behaviour, belittling behaviour over about a two-year period, which featured a range of different behaviours including berating, excluding and so on, constituted a workplace bullying.

I love this kind of argument. Acting hostile towards the victim? That's bullying. Belittling them? That's a-bullying, too. Berating them and otherwise interacting with them in a negative way? Bullying. Cutting all of that off by ceasing communication with the person? Well screw you because that's bullying, too. I do believe this is the first time I've ever heard an argument for any kind of harrassment stemming from non-communication between two parties. The commission went so far as to decide that Mrs. Bird's defriending was emotional immaturity on the part of Mrs. Bird, and saying so in the context of discussing Mrs. Bird being a bully.

[89] The evidence of Ms Roberts as to Mrs Bird defriending her on Facebook immediately after the incident is supported by a contemporaneous text message between Ms Roberts and Mr Bird. 64 It was not refute by Mrs Bird in evidence. This action by Mrs Bird evinces a lack of emotional maturity and is indicative of unreasonable behaviour, the likes of which I have already made findings on. The ‘school girl’ comment, even accepting of Mrs Bird’s version of events, which I am not, is evidence of an inappropriate dealing with Ms Roberts which was provocative and disobliging. I am of the view that Mrs Bird took the first opportunity to draw a line under the relationship with Ms Roberts on 29 January 2015, when she removed her as a friend on Facebook as she did not like Ms Roberts and would prefer not to have to deal with her. I am satisfied that the evidence of Ms Roberts, as to the incident on 29 January 2015, is to be preferred and that the allegation of unreasonable behaviour by Mrs Bird in Allegation 17 is made out.

Experts about bullying appear to agree that this is an overreach by the commission.

Bullying expert Oscar Yildiz said the Fair Work Commission has set a dangerous precedent, and Ms Bird's actions on social media did not constitute a personal attack.

"In this case, what is the future threat? That this person has unfriended someone on Facebook? Well, big deal," Mr Yildiz said. "As far as I'm concerned that doesn't constitute bullying and it shouldn't. If it does, what the commission has done here is set precedent."

Of course it doesn't. If anyone in any part of their lives has a negative interaction with a person, it's a perfectly natural thing to un-friend them from social media. Hell, thousands of personal relationships take this course every single day. Government stepping in to decide who a person may or may not keep in their social media circles is an overreach of astounding proportions.

Filed Under: australia, bullying, harassment, unfriending
Companies: facebook

A ContentID For Online Bullying? What Could Possibly Go Wrong...

from the let's-think-this-through dept

Let me start out by saying that I think online harassment and bullying is a significant problem -- though also one that is often misrepresented and distorted. I worry about the very real consequences of those who are bullied, harassed and threatened online, in that it can often lead to silencing voices that need to be heard, or even causing some to not even bother to participate for fear of the resulting bullying. That said, way too frequently, it seems that those who are speaking out about online bullying assume that the best way to deal with this is to move to push for censorship as the solution. This rarely works. Too frequently we see "cyberbullying" being used as a catchall for attacking speech people simply do not like. Even here at Techdirt, people who dislike our viewpoint will frequently claim that we "bullied" someone, merely for pointing out and discussing statements or arguments that we find questionable.

There are no easy answers to the question of how do we create spaces where people feel safer to speak their minds -- though I think it's an important goal to strive for. But I fear the seemingly simple idea of "silence those accused of bullying" will have incredibly negative consequences (with almost none of the expected benefits). We already see many attempts to censor speech that people dislike online, with frequent cases of abusive copyright takedown notices or bogus claims of defamation. Giving people an additional tool to silence such speech will be abused widely, creating tremendous damage.

We already see this in the form of ContentID from YouTube. A tool that was created with good intent, to deal with copyright infringement on the site, is all too often used to silence speech on the site, either to silence a critic or just through over-aggressive robots.

So, imagine what a total mess it would be if we had a ContentID for online bullying. And yet, it appears that the good folks at SRI are trying to build exactly that. Now, SRI certainly has led the way with many computing advancements, but it's not clear to me how this solution could possibly do anything other than create new headaches:

But what if you didn’t need humans to identify when online abuse was happening? If a computer was smart enough to spot cyberbullying as it happened, maybe it could be halted faster, without the emotional and financial costs that come with humans doing the job. At SRI International, the Silicon Valley incubator where Apple’s Siri digital assistant was born, researchers believe they’ve developed algorithms that come close to doing just that.

“Social networks are overwhelmed with these kinds of problems, and human curators can’t manage the load,” says Normal Winarsky, president of SRI Ventures. But SRI is developing an artificial intelligence with a deep understanding of how people communicate online that he says can help.

This is certainly going to sound quite appealing to those who push for anti-cyberbullying campaigns. But, at what cost? Again, there are legitimate concerns about people who are being harassed. But one person's cyberbullying could just be another person's aggressive debate tactics. Hell, I'd argue that abusing tools like contentID or false defamation claims are a form of "cyberbullying" as well. Thus, it's quite possible that the same would be true of this new tool, which can be used to "bully" those the algorithm decides is bullying as well.

Determining copyright infringement is already much more difficult than people imagine -- which is why ContentID makes so many errors. You have to take into account context, fair use, de minimis use, parody, etc. That's not easy for a machine. But at least there are some direct rules about what truly is "copyright infringement." With "bullying" or "harassment," there is no clear legal definition to match up to and it's often very much in the eye of the beholder. As such, any tool that is used to "deal" with cyberbullying is going to create tremendous problems, often just from misunderstandings between multiple people. And that could create a real chilling effect on speech.

Perhaps instead of focusing so much technical know-how on "detecting" and trying to "block" cyberbullying, we should be spending more time looking for ways to positively reinforce good behavior online. We've built up this belief that the only way to encourage good behavior online is to punish bad behavior. But we've got enough evidence at this point showing how rarely this actually works, that it seems like perhaps it's time for a different approach. And a "ContentID for harassment" seems unlikely to help.

Filed Under: automation, bullying, contentid, cyberbullying, harassment
Companies: sri

ICANN's Threat To Privacy Is Not Theoretical

from the a-very-real-threat dept

A few weeks ago we wrote about ICANN's new attack on whois privacy, laying out a proposal to deny private/proxy registrations to anyone involved in "commercial" activity on their websites. While it may be difficult for some to comprehend why this is a big deal, it is not a theoretical concern at all. Cathy Gellis has a great story over at Popehat reminding everyone of the time litigious lawyer Charles Carreon was able to uncover the identity of a critic, who he then threatened repeatedly.

As we wrote at the time, even though the critic had used Register.com's privacy guard tool, when Carreon showed up, the company coughed up his identity, and Carreon used that to threaten the critic, making it quite clear that he was doing so just to piss off the critic. In a letter to the critic's lawyer, Paul Levy at Public Citizen, Carreon noted "there is essentially no statute of limitations on this claim" and "I have the known capacity to litigate appeals for years." Eventually, Carreon was forced to cough up money for the bogus legal threats.

Gellis was co-counsel with Levy in defending Carreon's critic and her Popehat post details how that experience makes it even clearer as to just how bad ICANN's proposal is:

It is a proposal that is extraordinarily glib about its consequences for any Internet speaker preferring not to be dependent on another domain host for their online speech. First, it naively pre-supposes that the identifying information of a domain name holder would only ever be used for litigation purposes, when we sadly already know that this presumption is misplaced. As this letter to ICANN points out (linked to from the independently expressive domain name “icann.wtf”), people objecting to others’ speech often use identifying information about Internet speakers to enable campaigns of harassment against them, sometimes even with the threat of life and limb (for example, by “swatting”).

Secondly, it pre-supposes that even if this identifying information were to be used solely for litigation purposes that a lawsuit is a negligible thing for a speaker to find itself on the receiving end of, when of course it is not. In the case of Carreon’s critic he was fortunate to be able to secure pro bono counsel, but not everyone can, and having to pay for representation can often be ruinously expensive.

Thirdly it pre-supposes that there is somehow an IP-related exemption to the First Amendment, when there most certainly is not. Speech is speech and it is all protected by the First Amendment. Attempts to carve out exemptions from its protections for speech that somehow implicates IP should not be tolerated, particularly when the consequences to discourse are just as damaging to speech chilled by IP owners as they are by anyone else seeking to suppress what people may say.

If you haven't yet seen it, that icann.wtf letter to ICANN is worth reading. It's not only a rare case where anti-harassment advocates and free speech advocates can actually come together and agree on a really, really bad idea, but it lays out the arguments for why this Hollywood-backed proposal is just incredibly stupid and dangerous.

If you want to contact ICANN to explain why this policy is a problem please do so today -- as it's the last day they're accepting comments on the proposal.

Filed Under: bullying, charles carreon, privacy, whois
Companies: icann

Court Upholds Decision Against Trademark-Bullying AIDS Denialist, But More Needs To Be Done To Deter Censorious Lawsuits

from the a-win,-but-not-a-fix dept

You may wonder what kind of person would deny that HIV leads to AIDS or death, but when you come across someone like prominent "AIDS denialist" Clark Baker, you may be inclined to believe that this is but a small part of his misanthropy. Baker has -- previous to his IP-abusing lawsuit against an HIV-positive blogger -- been arrested for assaulting a jaywalker and provides legal counsel to people accused of endangering sexual partners by concealing their HIV/AIDS status.

Baker sued a critic of his (the above-mentioned blogger) but had no legal basis for doing so. This didn't stop him from pursuing the lawsuit because intellectual property laws always seem willing to lend a hand when there's some censoring to be done. Baker originally skewed the blogger's postings as defamatory, but apparently wasn't too confident in letting that accusation stand on its own. So, he added something about trademark law -- supposed Lanham Act violations tied to the use of his entity's (HIV Innocence Project) name in the defendant's URL (hivinnocenceprojectruth.com).

The addition of trademark bullying resulted in a net loss for Baker at the hands of the Fifth Circuit Court.

Although the appellate decision itself is not very illuminating, the fact that the court indicated that its reasoning was the same as that of the trial judge helps illuminate the ruling as well as reinforcing the important precedent that it set — that when a defamation plaintiff throws in a trademark claim to justify suing in federal court, as well as hoping to make the whole proceedings more intimidating to the defendant, it really is possible to get the case thrown out at the pleading stage.

Good news for bloggers, as Public Citizen's Paul Alan Levy points out. Getting a case tossed at the pleading stage saves a whole lot of money and bloggers who utilize trademarks in their writing (especially when writing critical pieces) need a safety valve to prevent them from trademark bullies. This case does offer some hope in that respect, although there's still many gray areas of IP law left untouched in the decision -- including crucial defenses like protected speech and fair use.

The main reason why Levy took this case (apart from answering the Popehat signal) is to help establish precedent in terms of legal fee awards in clear cases of trademark bullying. The Fifth's two-page affirmation of the lower court's decision leaves this particular aspect unaddressed.

But I have been concerned about the fact that some circuits, the Fifth Circuit among them, set a standard for awarding attorney fees for winning trademark defendants -- demanding a showing of bad faith by clear and convincing evidence. There is wide-ranging agreement among the various circuits about just what standard should govern trademark attorney fees awards. Our long-standing argument has been that, when a trademark theory is used to try to shut down an expressive use, groundlessness of the claim should alone be sufficient to treat the claim as "exceptional."

What has been applied to patent cases by the Supreme Court should also be applied to trademark cases, Levy argues in a brief to the circuit court. In Octane Fitness v. Icon Health and Fitness, it ruled that the groundless nature of the lawsuit itself can be enough to award attorneys' fees -- overturning a lower court's finding that this alone wasn't sufficient enough to raise the case to the "exceptional" level.

In our brief to the Fifth Circuit on the fees issue, we argue that because the Lanham Act and Patent Act both allow awards of fees in “exceptional” cases, and because a variety of other aids to statutory construction suggest that the standards for fees under the Lanham Act should follow patent-law precedent, the court ought to take Octane Fitness as its new governing standard for trademark cases. We also argue that the fact that the complaint could have been dismissed on several different grounds supports a conclusion that the lawsuit was sufficiently lacking in merit to warrant an award of attorney fees without considering the evidence that plaintiffs were using the litigation to pursue the improper purpose of intimidating a critic and using discovery to pursue some pretty wild conspiracy theories.

Better deterrents are needed to ward off future censorious lawsuits. Anti-SLAPP laws are a start, but they've only been adopted in a handful of states. Precedent from a higher court would at least establish a new baseline in the court's district, sending the message that baseless lawsuits -- if not tossed nearly immediately -- will open plaintiffs up to further damages in the form of legal fees.

Filed Under: aids denialist, attorney fees, bullying, censorship, clark baker, free speech, trademark

IP-Bullying University Fails To Have First Amendment Lawsuit Against It Tossed

from the our-threats-weren't-actual-threats,-you-gotta-believe-us! dept

Chicago is a big city -- big enough to contain two universities diametrically opposed on the issue of free speech. The University of Chicago recently updated its free speech policy to, you know, actually protect free speech, unlike many universities who feel protecting free speech means protecting every student's feelings.

On the other end, we have Chicago State University, which has abused both its administrative powers and IP rights to shut down free speech. A couple of years back, CSU issued a cease-and-desist order against a critical blog, claiming its trademarks were being infringed by the inclusion of the university's name and logo. Of course, no such infringement was occurring because trademarks protect use in commerce, not criticism.

But this sort of free speech-muting activity is fairly common at CSU. At one point, it instituted a policy forbidding anyone but the school's "authorized media representatives" from speaking to the press. It also said prior approval would be needed for everything from social media posts to opinion pieces. It also retaliated against its own school newspaper for publishing critical articles, ultimately resulting in a lawsuit in which the school paid out $200,000 in legal fees. In the midst of all of this, the school also played hardball on FOIA requests, refusing them for clearly spurious reasons and firing one of its attorneys for having the unmitigated gall to compile responsive documents.

Now, it's in court again, having its motives and legal maneuverings criticized by the presiding judge. Here's what's been happening since we last covered CSU's actions against the bloggers at the CSU Faculty Voice Blog.

CSU has engaged in a campaign of intimidation against both professors, starting with a letter demanding that Beverly take down the CSU Faculty Voice blog based on several dubious claims of trademark infringement. Since Beverly refused, CSU has steadily escalated its efforts, including initiating disciplinary hearings against Beverly for holding a class in an unauthorized location when he had the students in his public management seminar attend a Faculty Senate hearing to address censorship on campus. Bionaz was also charged with “cyber-bullying” for comments made to a CSU administrator in a face-to-face conversation.

The presiding federal judge, Joan Gottschall, doesn't discuss all of these incidents in her decision to toss the school's motion to dismiss [pdf link], but she does address the cease-and-desist letter, which was nominally about trademark infringement, but was really about telling two bloggers to shut up. She establishes the allegations first:

According to the plaintiffs, the defendants collectively attempted to chill their First Amendment right to free speech by sending a cease and desist letter demanding that they shut down the blog. In that letter, in addition to assertions about the use of CSU’s trademarks, Cage states that “the lack of civility and professionalism expressed on the blog violates the University’s values and policies requiring civility and professionalism.”

The plaintiffs stress that this letter is dated one business day after a post appeared on the blog contending that a senior CSU administrator (Angela Henderson, CSU’s Interim Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs) had partially falsified her resume. The plaintiffs allege that they fear discipline under the Computer Usage Policy for publishing the CSU Faculty Voice, even though that the blog is not hosted in CSU’s servers. They also allege that the Computer Usage Policy is improperly vague and overbroad. Finally, they allege that they fear discipline under CSU’s Cyberbullying Policy.

And then refuses to cut the university any slack when it tries to have it both ways.

In contrast, the defendants contend that the reference to civility in the cease and desist letter does not show that CSU threatened the plaintiffs with legal action based on the Computer Usage or Cyberbullying Policies. The court disagrees… The references to civility do not appear to be related to the claims of trademark infringement raised elsewhere in the cease and desist letter. It is eminently reasonable to read the letter as a demand to shut down the CSU Faculty Voice blog based on its alleged failure to meet CSU on-line civility standards.

As the judge notes, the school's civility standards (and cyberbullying policy) are broadly written, and it can be "reasonably inferred" that CSU would seek to use these policies against the blog, even though it isn't hosted on CSU servers. She points out that the policies apply to "electronic communications" that "prohibit any communication which tends to embarrass or humiliate any member of the community." Likewise, the Computer Usage Policy says "includes web sites and blogs hosted on the university's server," rather than specifically restricting CSU's area of control solely to the contents of its servers. And, on top of it all, the school did actually threaten to use these policies against the bloggers.

It is not explicitly limited to Internet websites and blog posts hosted on CSU’s server. That is a possible interpretation of the policy but the court cannot make findings of fact at this stage of the proceedings. Similarly, the Cyberbullying Policy is not limited to communications made using CSU’s computer equipment. Thus, the allegation that the blog is hosted on a non-CSU server does not negate the inference that the defendants were threatening the plaintiffs based on the Computer Usage and Cyberbullying Policies.

[...]

[The court] declines to ignore the fact that a letter ostensibly about alleged trademark violations contains assertions about the tone and content of the CSU Faculty Voice blog.

And, once again, the university tries to drag IP rights back into this, even though the plaintiffs aren't even interested in this small part of CSU's actions. (Because criticism is not commerce and the trademark claims wouldn't stick.) And again, the judge kicks this particular crutch out from underneath the school.

With respect to redressability, the defendants argue that if the court rules in the plaintiffs’ favor, it “would have no impact on the trademark issues about which [p]laintiffs complain in this lawsuit.” (Dkt. 49 at Page ID# 356). The plaintiffs, however, referred to the defendants’ assertions about trademark infringement to provide context for their claims. They do not seek any relief regarding trademark claims, such as a declaratory judgment finding that their use of CSU’s marks was proper. Instead, they seek relief based on a variety of First Amendment theories. The defendants’ arguments about redressability are, therefore, unconvincing.

CSU's motion to dismiss has been denied, and the next time it appears in court, it will be facing the bloggers' motion for a preliminary injunction. So far, the judge seems unimpressed with the school's arguments. When your attempts to bully someone into silence fail, you often find yourself trying to explain your actions to a federal judge. And CSU is trying oh so hard to make it look like it never did any of the things it did. The future of this case doesn't look promising for CSU, but at least it's had previous experience in writing checks out to wronged parties.

Filed Under: bullying, free speech
Companies: chicago state univerity

Police File On Student 'Bullied Into Committing Suicide' Strangely Lacking In Evidence Of Bullying

from the scapegoating-still-easier-than-addressing-the-ugliness-of-real-life dept

CNN recently published a follow up story dealing with the circumstances surrounding the suicide of Rebecca Sedwick, a 12-year-old who leapt to her death reportedly due to intense bullying -- and it appears the whole "bullying" part is almost entirely absent.

One of the more unexpected outcomes of Sedwick's suicide was the arrest of two students in connection with her death. (Though not wholly without precedent...) According to Sheriff Grady Judd, the two suspects posted messages both before and after Sedwick's death that indicated they were involved in her bullying. The older of the two suspects (one was 14 and the other 12) posted the following on Facebook after Sedwick took her own life.

Yes ik [I know] I bullied Rebecca nd she killed her self but IDGAF [I don't give a (expletive)].

Sheriff Judd took it upon himself to have these two arrested, setting a somewhat dangerous precedent in his county that people could be held criminally responsible for someone else's voluntary action. He seemed to approach this as a crusade against the cruelty of youth, one in which laws and common sense could be overturned in order to right wrongs.

Judd, as it turns out, has had plenty of crusades in his past. One of his more notable efforts involved sending deputies 1,900 miles away to arrest a suspected pedophile. Judd's moral compass, however, skews a bit further north than most, which makes his stance on issues like pornography and bullying somewhat suspect.

In 2007, commenting on a case in which he had arrested a man who was running a porn site out of his home in Polk, [Judd] said: "No normal person could even imagine what's depicted in those videos and in those photographs." A sexual behavior expert from the University of Central Florida said in a motion in the man's court file that it was run-of-the-mill erotica available anywhere on the Internet to anyone.

Judd also seldom performs his work without an audience. One colleague of his memorably stated that the most dangerous place to be is "between Judd and a camera." This calls into question Judd's judgement as well, which seems to be at least as populist-oriented as it is crime-oriented.

Not long after Judd's high-profile arrest of two students, the charges were dropped by the State District Attorney. Judd applied spin to his prized arrests being cut loose, claiming all he wanted to do was, "bring this conduct to the proper authorities." Considering Judd is one of the "proper authorities," one wonders what endgame he envisioned. It certainly couldn't have been his righteous crusade being found legally untenable by the state.

Another crusader, this time a lawyer, decided Sedwick's death called for a new law -- one that targeted parents for not policing their children's online behavior. According to his extrapolations, the parents should be held responsible for an unrelated person's suicide, something even further removed than Judd's assertion that the two students should be held criminally responsible for Sedwick's suicide. (Of course, Judd also thought the parents should be punished somehow, and even hauled in one of the parents for unrelated abuse/neglect charges.)

By the time this had all been sorted out, rumors were beginning to surface that Sedwick's home life wasn't quite the placid safehouse her grieving mother had portrayed it as.

More than a year before her death, Sedwick had been battling depression resulting from her deteriorating relationship with her father, according to intake reports from a counselor that are included in the police file. She also complained about fights between her mother and stepfather. The file, which has been reviewed by CNN, says she cut herself on a few occasions, had suicidal ideations and had been committed for psychiatric evaluation for two days.

In November 2012, she accused her mother of abusing her and then took back the accusation, saying she was pushed to lie by classmates who forced her off campus and told her they wouldn't let her return home unless she lied to an officer. Her mother denied abusing Sedwick but said she slapped the girl's face once during an argument about Sedwick being too young to date.

Sometime before her death, Sedwick's relationship with an online boyfriend came to an end, according to the documents. Family conflict, in addition to bullying from girls at school, weighed on her.

What wasn't found in the files, however, was much evidence that Sedwick was unrelentingly bullied.

"I don't think I was prepared for the abysmal lack ... of any evidence of bullying for the seven months prior to her suicide," said Nancy Willard, director of Embrace Civility in the Digital Age, a group that focuses on combating cyberbullying, and author of a handful of books including "Positive Relations @ School (& Elsewhere)."

Willard says this case is like many others: parents and authorities leaping to the wrong conclusions in the aftermath of a tragedy. The haste to pin a suicide on bullying buried the rest of Sedwick's background. This is somewhat understandable, given the circumstances. In the wake of a tragedy, no one wants to point the finger at the parents as possibly being partially responsible for their own child's death.

But if these teens were somehow responsible for Sedwick's suicide, then why wouldn't anyone go after the other factors, all of which were included in the police file? Why didn't someone haul in the ex-boyfriend? Surely he's as "culpable" as anyone.

No one would think to haul in anyone else (parents, ex-boyfriend) who contributed to Sedwick's unhappiness, but it was considered perfectly OK to haul in two teens and attempt to press criminal charges, even when faced with a dearth of evidence. But that's exactly how ridiculous Judd's efforts were.

Now that Judd has apparently seen this lack of evidence for the first time, he's backpedaling quickly.

"We never said that bullying was the only reason Rebecca committed suicide," Judd told The Associated Press. "But what the bullies did is that they continued to stack bricks on an already overloaded wagon till finally, it broke."

But these "bricks" could have been "stacked" in any order. Judd simply made the most popular move, one that brought in the most unsympathetic suspects. And then he rode his hobby horse hard, until it collapsed under the weight of his misguided convictions.

But there are still those who want to make someone pay. The lawyer for Sedwick's mother is planning to sue the school district as well as at least one of the two girls Judd arrested. He claims to have evidence that the teens bullied Sedwick and that the school not only knew, but did nothing to stop it.

There is evidence that indicates Sedwick was bullied in the months leading up to her death, but that evidence is scattershot at best. The lack of evidence doesn't necessarily mean it didn't happen, but it does suggest that, coupled with other information coming to light, it was hardly the only factor in Sedwick's decision to end her life.

The point here isn't to excuse the bullies for their actions. The point is that far too often the instantaneous reaction to tragedies is misguided and myopic, focusing on the least sympathetic protagonists and ignoring anything else that doesn't fit the narrative that's easiest to accept. The larger problem is that law enforcement and legislators are especially prone to act on this limited (or willfully ignored) information, and that results in all sorts of questionable actions and terrible laws -- things that negatively affect the general public.

Filed Under: blame, bullying, grady judd, rebecca sedwick, suicide

Finally, Someone Acts Like An Adult: District Attorney Drops Charges Against Bullied Teen Who Recorded His Tormentors

from the and-to-think,-this-all-could-have-been-prevented dept

South Fayette School in Pennsylvania, along with a complicit criminal justice system, recently made headlines with its groundbreaking anti-bullying program, which apparently deters bullying by punishing bullied students.

Here's a short recap:

A bullied student used an iPad to make an audio recording of other students abusing him. He brought this to school administration who a) called in a police officer (after being advised by its legal team that this might be a violation of the state's wiretapping law) and b) deleted the recording.

The police officer, unable to actually bring a felony charge against the minor, settled for disorderly conduct. This charge brought him before a judge, who first stated her firm belief in the school's inability to do wrong before finding him guilty.

Throughout the entire debacle, not a single person involved even considered the possibility that the student had committed no crime or the fact that he had followed all of the school's prescribed steps for reporting bullying incidents. Instead, the desire to punish someone was obliged every step of the way.

Finally, someone within the justice system has chosen to act like an adult, rather than a bunch of clique-y, vindictive children.

Stanfield (the student) had announced that he and his attorney would file an appeal to that ruling but his fight may already be coming to an end. Today, Benswann.com has been told by Stanfield’s attorney that the District Attorney will allow the appeal to go forward but will no longer pursue this case.

More specifically, both the wiretapping charge (which was apparently still brought despite the involved officer's statement otherwise) and the disorderly conduct charge (which the judge found the student guilty of) were dropped.

A wiretapping charge against a South Fayette High School student who recorded two classmates bullying him has been dropped by the Allegheny County District Attorney's Office.

Mike Manko, a spokesman for District Attorney Stephen Zappala, said Judge Robert Gallo signed an order Thursday to withdraw the citation against 15-year-old Christian Stanfield.

"No one in our office who is authorized to give advice on wiretap issues or school conduct issues was ever contacted in this matter. We have made multiple attempts to contact the officer who wrote the citation and (the) results have been unsuccessful," Manko said in a written statement. "We do not believe this behavior rises to the level of a citation."

Odd that a police officer wouldn't talk to a district attorney. Unless, of course, a little bit of hindsight made him realize his every move fell between vindictive and buffoonish. Lt. Murka, who apparently considered both wiretapping and disorderly conduct to be appropriate "remedies" for a bullied student recording his tormentors, seems to have recused himself from the public eye. Manko, speaking for the DA, hits the heart of the issue -- one simple sentence that any of those involved could have deployed to call an end to this ridiculous situation before it ended up in front of a judge: "We do not believe this behavior rises to the level of a citation."

The school has now gone on record to declare it's everyone else who's wrong:

The South Fayette Township School District wishes to address recent reports in the local and national media concerning a student of the South Fayette Township School District. It is to be noted that certain information being disseminated by the media is inaccurate and/or incomplete.

Rather than clear up what exactly was "inaccurate and/or incomplete" about the reporting, it instead has chosen to hide behind "confidentiality."

The School District is legally precluded from commenting specifically in regard to these reports as the issue involves a confidential student matter.

Considering the story has been all over the news, it seems a bit weak to claim the matter is still "confidential." It would seem it could comment on any of the specifics already in the public domain. The story has gone nationwide, so it's disingenuous to pretend it's still a "confidential" matter.

While it's nice that the DA has dropped the charges and allowed the student to proceed through school without criminal charges hanging over his head, one wonders if this same outcome would have forthcoming without the attendant public outcry. Any adult can start acting like one with enough public shaming. But the application of a little common sense would have averted this incident completely.

A bit more troubling is one of the suggestions that escaped the lips of a local politician who showed up to the teen's "not a criminal" celebration.

State lawmaker Jesse White joined the rally, telling Stanfield he wants to name a law after him. He said it would close the loophole in the wiretapping law and allow victims of bullying to record it as proof for police and school officials.

His opportunistic heart's in the right place, but naming laws after people often indicates the new law is a bad one. This isn't an issue where a new law will fix things. This is an issue where no one in this chain of events showing the courage (and common sense) to stand up and ask why they were punishing a bullied kid for recording bullies.

Filed Under: bullying, recording, students, wiretapping