NJ Mayor Can't Stop Streisanding Himself After Being On The Receiving End Of The Crying Jordan Meme

from the i-see-what-he-memes dept

Of all the wonderful gifts the internet has bestowed upon humanity, there is perhaps none more precious to me than the now famous Crying Jordan meme. After Michael Jordan's tearful Hall of Fame induction speech, an image of him in tears took on the secondary purpose of being photoshopped onto anyone the internet wanted to portray as being sad or upset about pretty much anything. The creativity of some of the memes is nearly unmatched, leading to it becoming so popular that then President Obama brought it up when giving Jordan the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In other words, as far as internet memes go, the crying Jordan meme is nearly as prolific and celebrated as the basketball career of Jordan itself.

Which is why it's somewhat odd that the loser of a local township committee election went completely bonkers when he himself got "crying Jordan'd."

Cinnaminson (N.J.) mayor Anthony Minniti lost his bid for re-election to the township committee Tuesday when a retired police sergeant defeated him in the Republican primary. When a Facebook user Crying Jordan’d Minniti’s campaign flyer and posted the image to the Cinnaminson Friends & Neighbors page, well, the mayor got real mad:

“Obviously, I’m disgusted by this post, but sadly not surprised,” Minniti said about what he described as the “inflammatory, outrageous rhetoric” of the Facebook page. “It was only a matter of time before someone took this moblike behavior too far, and this is definitely too far,” he said. “Hate has no place in Cinnaminson, and this needs to be treated with the seriousness it warrants.”

In other communications, Minniti has suggested not just that the meme is an output of some demonic hate-engine, but that it's racist. Why? Because the Jordan meme is barely known in common circles and its true purpose is to put white people in "blackface." Yeah, seriously.

Portraying any white person in blackface is racist and unacceptable. There’s no question about that,” he said. “If this was such a well-known meme and this is something everybody knows about, why did the Facebook administrator pull it down? It was flagged as racist by others. It was taken down because it was racist, or deemed racist by the administrator.

We'll do the easy part of this first: the crying Jordan meme is most certainly not racist. Jordan himself has noticed the meme and has reportedly received it with somewhere between a shrug and mild annoyance. Also, I'm fairly certain our first ever black President would not toss around jokes about a racist meme while celebrating an African American award recipient. In addition to all of that: shut up, it's not racist. It's just not.

But it's worth noting that this is a story about a person who lost a mayoral election at the primary stage in a small town in New Jersey. I'm not certain how many people would be aware of the story at all, nor would they have seen the following meme in question, had Minniti not chosen to throw his shit fit about it all. But I'm fairly certain that answer could be stated as "less", with so much media coverage over Minniti Streisanding this into the mainstream.

Anger about being the subject of a meme that then makes that meme go viral is not anger well spent.

Filed Under: anthony minniti, cinnaminson, crying jordan, memes, streisand effect

Mormon Church Tries To Censor MormonLeaks Using Copyright, Streisand Effect Takes Over

from the stop-sharing-our-golden-tablets dept

The Mormon Church has been somewhat flip-floppy when it comes to criticism against it. On the one hand, the notoriously tight-knit Church has been admirably tolerant of many attempts to parody it, including public commentary and a certain Broadway show of world renown. On the other hand, it seems the Church tends to draw a line in the sand when it comes to disseminating official church documents, even when this is done by journalists and organizations dedicated to commentary and news. In the past, the Mormon Church has attempted to utilize copyright law to have those documents removed from such sites as Wikimedia and Wikileaks, which of course resulted in the wider viewership of those same documents as news of the threats wove through the media. The Streisand Effect, it seems, offers no quarter of religious institutions.

A decade later, it seems our friends in Utah have not learned this lesson, as the Mormon Church reportedly threatened the MormonLeaks website with legal action over copyright infringement after the site hosted a PowerPoint presentation.

The site, which has generated past headlines by displaying restricted church papers on topics ranging from the salaries of Mormon apostles to rules governing calls home by missionaries, had taken down the presentation after The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints threatened legal action March 1. Based on a copyright-violation allegation, it marked the first time that the Utah-based faith had turned to its attorneys to challenge MormonLeaks' revelations in the four months the site has been up. On Tuesday, the site reposted the material, along with a letter sent Monday to Barry Taggart, a representative of the LDS Church's Intellectual Property Office.

In the letter, MormonLeaks' Las Vegas-based attorney Marc Randazza contends the site "obtained this document lawfully and had a right to distribute it in its capacity as a journalistic resource devoted to discussing facts about the LDS Church."

Readers of this site will be familiar with Randazza and his reputation for repudiating bogus takedowns and lame uses of intellectual property in this matter. His involvement does not bode well for the Mormon Church's prospects for the continued bullying of MormonLeaks through the inappropriate application of copyright law. The site is clearly well within the boundaries of Fair Use. And, while Utah's version of an anti-SLAPP law is horribly neutered, limited only to suits involving "the process of government", Randazza's otherwise congenial notice to the Church hints that there will be consequences of it doesn't walk away from all of this.

"At this point, my client is willing to let bygones be bygones," Randazza writes. "If your client is willing to step back from the brink, and to cease efforts to censor this material, my client is willing to refrain from bringing a claim [of abusing copyright law]."

While it should be clear to the Church that the best move now is to walk away, it would have been far better had it never tried this bullying tactic to begin with. After all, the Streisand Effect has now taken over, with news of the dispute resulting in wider publicity for the site and documents that were targeted for removal.

Filed Under: copyright, first amendment, free speech, journalism, mormon church, mormon leaks, streisand effect
Companies: churh of latter-day saints, mormon church, mormonleaks

GOP Senate Streisands Elizabeth Warren And Coretta King In Attempt To Silence Her

from the oops dept

We've covered all kinds of stories about the Streisand Effect here at Techdirt, for the obvious reason that our overlord originally coined the term. From individuals to professional sports leagues to celebrities, there is something of a pantheon in these pages of those that attempt to silence speech or coverage they don't like which instead results in much wider coverage of that speech or coverage. But I can't seem to find an instance where we've had the opportunity to ding an entire wing of a congressional body for failing to understand how all of this works before.

And so it is with great pride that I am able to bring you the story of how the Senate silenced Elizabeth Warren as she read a letter authored by Martin Luther King Jr.'s widow during the debate over confirming fellow Senator Jeff Sessions as Trump's Attorney General.

The rebuke of Warren came after the Massachusetts Democrat read a letter written 30 years ago by Coretta Scott King, the widow of Martin Luther King Jr., opposing the nomination of Jeff Sessions for a federal judgeship. Warren cited the letter during a debate on the nomination of Sessions -- now an Alabama senator -- as Donald Trump's attorney general. Reading from King's letter to members of the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1986, Warren said: "Mr. Sessions has used the awesome power of his office to chill the free exercise of the vote by black citizens in the district he now seeks to serve as a federal judge."

Republicans cried foul -- charging that Warren violated Senate rules against impugning another senator. A vote along party lines upheld that decision, turning what could have been an ordinary late-night partisan floor speech for political devotees into a national story.

We'll get to that last bit in just a moment, but let's not fail to point out how silly the application of this rule is and what it means for the prospect of sitting Senators filling cabinet positions. If Senate rules prohibit another Senator form impugning a cabinet appointee during the debate over that appointee's cabinet nomination, what would be the point of the debate? And keep in mind that Warren was not going on some self-authored tirade. She was reading a letter from the widow of the single most recognized civil rights leader, which was sent to Congress in the past -- though Senator Strom Thurmond refused to put it into the Congressional record. That letter still had a hand in defeating a previous nomination of Sessions to judgeship. In February, which is Black History Month. This is banal as it gets.

Separately, Senators complained about Warren quoting former Senator Ted Kennedy on his opposition to Sessions back in 1986. So, apparently the rule is that even if you're quoting former Senators and people closely associated with the civil rights movement, you can't say anything that might upset a sitting Senator, even if it was discussed previously in the Senate and now as part of the debate over his own nomination to be Attorney General.

Of course, by invoking this rarely used Senate rule, one which has previously been ignored, Senator Warren and King's letter is splashing headlines all over the place. On top of that, Warren and others rushed to social media circles to make sure the letter was heard by everyone who would listen. Which, given the way all of this is trending on social media, was a great many people.

Warren went straight from the Senate floor to a call-in appearance on Rachel Maddow's MSNBC show, a favorite of progressives. "I've been red-carded on Sen. Sessions. I'm out of the game of the Senate floor," she told Maddow.

She also read King's letter outside the Senate floor in a Facebook live video.

That Facebook live video now has over 7.5 million views. That seems like approximately 7.5 million more people than would have watched Warren's hour-long speech on C-SPAN.

We can leave politics aside completely and still shake our heads at how badly this attempt to silence Warren and the reading of the letter has gone for those that attempted the silencing. This is pure Streisand Effect at work, and it's being supercharged by those that raised the objection to the letter's reading, who don't seem to understand how easily this situation and their own words will be used against them.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell defended evoking Rule 19, a rarely evoked chamber regulation that prohibits senators from impugning each other.

"She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted," the Kentucky Republican said on the Senate floor, delivering an instantly classic line -- the kind liberals imagine being replayed ad nauseum in TV ads in a future presidential campaign.

Again, this isn't about political teams. If you're in favor of Sessions, if you're a Republican, if you're a Trump voter, you should still be able to understand how bungled this whole thing was. Had there been no attempt to silence Warren, coverage of the letter being read likely would have registered as a curiosity at most. Instead, this thing is everywhere. Including below.

Filed Under: coretta scott king, elizabeth warren, jeff sessions, mitch mcconnell, rule xix, senate, streisand effect, ted kennedy

Streisand Effect Derails Man's Analog Plan To Buy Up All The Newspapers Detailing His DWI Arrest

from the oops dept

The concept of buying up all the newspapers in town to avoid some embarrassing story or picture of oneself is old humor. The concept, featured in sitcoms of yester-yore, relies on a couple of things: newspapers being the single source of a story or photo and for news stories to not travel quickly nor beyond the insular community in which they occurred. Because of that, the joke doesn't really work in a hyperconnected world with digital media.

This was a lesson painfully learned by Joseph Talbot of Newark, it seems. Talbot, an otherwise apparently well-respected businessman, was arrested recently for driving while intoxicated. Understandably, he was embarrassed upon learning that news of his arrest had been written up in the local newspaper. His solution was to deploy the sitcom-level chicanery previously discussed.

Several Newark store clerks told the Times of Wayne County they saw Talbot buy hundreds of copies of the newspaper over the weekend, said Ron Holdraker, the editor and owner of newspaper. He estimated Talbot purchased somewhere between 900 and 1,000 copies of the paper from at least eight locations.

Holdraker, who graduated from Syracuse University in 1974, said the newspapers cost about $1.25 each, meaning Talbot would have spent at least $1,125 to buy the papers.

And that's roughly when the Streisand Effect took over. Talbot may now be wondering how much it costs to buy up all the internets, because the once-mundane and localized story of his arrest in the community newspaper has instead become a far more widespread story about his attempt to cover it up, featured across many websites. Spending over a thousand dollars to buy up the local papers is one thing. Trying to silence all of these internet sites would likely be far more expensive. Our own price tag, for instance, is a hundred million and one dollars, and we're likely to be on the cheap end of things.

Look, there's no joy in understanding that Talbot's emarrassment has multiplied because of his admittedly hilarious attempt at a coverup, but the world does need to understand that attempts to hide information in this manner will only result in it being further spread.

Filed Under: dui, hiding info, joseph talbot, newspapers, streisand effect

NFL Cuts Out Shout-Out To St. Louis In HoF Speech YouTube Upload, Streisand Effect Takes Over

from the rammed-home dept

The NFL is almost a perfect study in how the combination of an attempt at strict control of its content and a complete lack of understanding of the Streisand Effect will produce the opposite of the intended result. Past versions of this have included the NFL's insane claim of copyright on the only footage that exists of the original Super Bowl, meaning nobody actually gets to see the footage, as well as the league's attempt to bury an ESPN documentary about head trauma as it relates to football. In both cases, the NFL comes out looking petty at best, and much worse in the case of trying to hide the negative health effects of the game from the parents of children who might otherwise play it.

But even that kind of evil and petty takes a back seat to the NFL deciding to cut out a portion of Orlando Pace's Hall of Fame induction speech in which he gives a shout-out to the city of St. Louis, former host of the Rams.

St. Louis football fans who hoped to see a shout-out from the Rams’ newest Hall-of-Famer Orlando Pace might have been disappointed if they watched the version of his speech uploaded to the NFL’s YouTube channel. While the other inductees’ speeches from last night’s event are presented unedited by the NFL—including Brett Favre’s 37-minute misunderstanding of “go long”—Pace’s speech is cut off before he gets to the portion where he tells St. Louis fans that “nothing can ever take [our championship] away from you.”

The Rams, of course, just recently bailed on St. Louis for Los Angeles, to the tune of much strife and controversy. And as much as I love digging at St. Louis sports fans, the NFL's attempt to control its brand message by removing a short, innocuous tip of the cap to a city that a Hall of Fame player called home for so long is almost hilarious in its petty cruelty.

And, as per usual, it didn't really work anyway. That Streisand Effect will get you every time. When people noticed that the NFL's official upload had the shout-out to St. Louis edited out, that editing was reported on, and the portion of the speech that had been omitted suddenly became share-worthy. Nice try, guys.

Filed Under: orlando pace, rams, streisand effect
Companies: nfl

With The Brexit In The Bag, 'Vote Leave' Starts Vanishing Away Its Promises And Faulty Math

from the nothing-is-ever-truly-removed-from-the-internet dept

In the aftermath of what is generally considered to be a Bad Idea, the forces behind the UK's exit from the European Union has pulled up stakes on its website and shut the whole thing down. The problem is that it looks more like an attempt to bury the past than to warmly greet the future it helped create, as Wired's Matt Kamen notes.

While this may simply be the campaign closing down in the wake of its victory, this removes all clear record of speeches, editorials, statistics, and information the Leave campaign used on the run up to the referendum on membership of the European Union on June 23.

The content is still there, but links to information have been removed and the landing page is nothing more than a static image. Visitors looking for promises that may be broken in the future (like rerouting of EU fees to the NHS) will have to know the page's URL in order to access it. Given comments made by those involved with the dubious promises and dubious math, the quasi-wipe of the site's content may not just be Vote Leave's idea of a victory lap.

Senior Leave politicians such as Iain Duncan Smith have, in the days since the referendum, denied the money was promised to the NHS, despite other figures in the campaign saying "the Government should use some of the billions saved from leaving the EU to give at least a £100 million per week cash transfusion to the NHS".

Vote Leave has yet to comment on its post-exit scrub, but others have noted that the internet (almost never) forgets. The Internet Archive's Wayback Machine has preserved Vote Leave's promises and other statements for posterity, ensuring that it won't be able to easily decouple itself from its assertions.

The movement spent plenty of its own money talking about all the money the UK was handing over to the EU, rather than spending on its own citizens. Tracing backwards from its still-live YouTube account, one can still access its £50 million giveaway -- supposedly the amount turned over every day to the EU. This number was referred to by the UK Statistics Authority as "potentially misleading," due to the fact that Vote Leave based it on gross contributions without factoring in rebates received from the EU or any flow of offsetting income resulting from trade agreements.

In addition, other claims made during the Brexit campaign -- mostly related to stemming the flow of immigrants into the UK and preventing Turkey and handful of other nations from joining the EU -- have proven to be just as false. The original narrative of cutting back the flow of immigrants to the UK by "tens of thousands" now appears to have been replaced with a more hesitant assertion that not a whole lot will change. As for concerns about Turkey joining the EU and bringing with it thousands of jihadists from neighboring nations, the best guess is that the nation's possible inclusion is still several years -- if not several decades off. (UK Prime Minister David Cameron suggested the year 3000 as a good estimate based on current progress. Turkey has been moving towards this since 1963 and hasn't budged the needle much over the past 50 years.)

If Vote Leave is truly trying to bury its misleading math and promises it can't keep, it made its first mistake by publishing them to the web where things tend to live forever.

Filed Under: brexit, internet never forgets, promises, streisand effect, vote leave, web

DOJ Rushed To Link Orlando Shooter To ISIS, Now Plans To Redact What He Said During 911 Call For... Reasons

from the huh? dept

The FBI/DOJ had no problem rushing out claims last week that Omar Mateen, the guy who killed 49 people in a rampage at a club in Orlando last weekend, had "pledged allegiance" to ISIS. James Comey delivered remarks that said as much last Monday:

It is also not entirely clear at this point just what terrorist group he aspired to support; although, he made clear his affinity, at the time of the attack, for ISIL, and generally, leading up to the attack, for radical Islamist groups. He made 911 calls from the club, during the attack, at about 2:30 in the morning, Sunday morning. There were three different calls. He called and he hung up. He called again and spoke briefly with the dispatcher, and then he hung up, and then the dispatcher called him back again and they spoke briefly. There were three total calls.

During the calls he said he was doing this for the leader of ISIL, who he named and pledged loyalty to, but he also appeared to claim solidarity with the perpetrators of the Boston Marathon bombing, and solidarity with a Florida man who died as a suicide bomber in Syria for al Nusra Front, a group in conflict with Islamic State. The bombers at the Boston Marathon and the suicide bomber from Florida were not inspired by ISIL, which adds a little bit to the confusion about his motives.

By now, it's pretty clear that the link to terrorism is basically non-existent, and that he fits the profile of a "typical mass shooter" rather than someone doing this for ISIS or any other terrorist reasons. As Marcy Wheeler points out, this also may explain why even though the FBI had checked out Mateen twice, including using the FBI's infamous "confidential informants" who often push people to join them in made up terrorist plots, they decided he wasn't a threat. It appears that Mateen didn't give any indication that he was really into aligning himself with ISIS or any other terrorist group, and Wheeler wonders if the FBI cared that he might do other damage, since they're so focused just on terrorism these days.

Instead, it appears, the FBI assessed Mateen for one and only one thing: whether his bogus claims of ties to terrorist organizations were real. There have been a slew of articles, such as this one or this one, wondering why the FBI didn’t “identify” Mateen as a “real” terrorist in its two investigations of him. But it appears the FBI was assessing only whether he was likely to commit violence because of–and with the support of–an Islamic terrorist group. It appears they weren’t assessing whether he was, like the overwhelming majority of men who commit mass shootings in this country, really screwed up, expressing it in violent ways, and seeking attention with such actions.

It is true that Islamic extremists want to attack this country. It is also true that far, far more Americans die when men carry out mass killings because they’re fucked up and begging for attention. If you’re Muslim, the easiest way to get attention right now is to say that word, “ISIS,” because it’s a guarantee law enforcement and politicians will give that killing more due then they might give the next disturbed mass shooter.

Of course, now that the DOJ seems to be realizing that this wasn't based on any connection to middle east groups, it seems to want to bury the issue. Attorney General Loretta Lynch has declared that when the transcript of Mateen's 911 calls are released, they're going to redact his claims to be doing it for ISIS for [reasons].

LORETTA LYNCH:

Yes, I’ll be going to Orlando on Tuesday to continue my briefings in the case. Actually though what we are announcing tomorrow is that the F.B.I. is releasing a partial transcript of the killer’s calls with law enforcement from inside the club. These are the calls with the Orlando P.D. negotiating team who were trying to ascertain who he was, where he was, and why he was doing this, all the while the rescue operations were continuing. That’ll be coming out tomorrow and I’ll be headed to Orlando on Tuesday.

CHUCK TODD:

Including the hostage negotiation part of this?

LORETTA LYNCH:

Yes. It will be primarily a partial transcript of his calls with the hostage negotiators.

CHUCK TODD:

You say partial. What’s being left out?

LORETTA LYNCH:

Well, what we’re not going to do is further proclaim this individual’s pledges of allegiance to terrorist groups and further his propaganda.

CHUCK TODD:

So we’re not going to hear him talk about those things?

LORETTA LYNCH:

We will hear him talk about some of those things, but we’re not going to hear him make his ascertains of allegiance and that. This will not be audio. This will be a printed transcript. But it will begin to capture the back and forth between him and the negotiators. We’re trying to get as much information about this investigation out as possible. As you know, because the killer is dead, we have a bit more leeway there. And so we will be producing that information tomorrow.

Marcy Wheeler again points out how absolutely ridiculous this is, including the idea that releasing such statements would "re-victimize" people. That makes absolutely no sense:

If releasing these claims of affiliation would “revictimize” the victims, then releasing them in the first place served to victimize them. So the much better approach would be the release the full transcripts and admit the Department fucked up, both in its assessment of a potential mass killer, and in rushing to blame ISIS in the first place. Not to mention that this will just feed conspiracy theories.

If DOJ fucked up — and the claim this could revictimize people is tacit admission it seriously fucked up — then admit that and make it right. Pay the political consequences of admitting that our obsessive focus on terrorism has distracted us from the more general, and therefore more lethal, problem with mass killings. Don’t try to pretend there’s a good reason for suppressing the very same claims you made a big deal of a week ago.

If DOJ now believes the claims served to do nothing more than give Mateen’s rampage more attention — and it was a key part of generating that attention — then it needs to come clean.

And, of course, as everyone knows, redacting such information is only calling more attention to it, and almost certainly feeding into the typical plot lines of conspiracy theorists. Why not just release the full transcripts (as required under Florida's public records laws) and with it a full explanation for why the claims of being associated with various groups (many of which are in conflict with each other) make no sense. That is, why not try to calm down the kneejerk reaction the DOJ set off in the first place?

Filed Under: doj, fbi, isis, omar mateen, redactions, streisand effect

Axl Rose DMCAs Unflattering Photo For Which He Doesn't Hold The Copyright

from the by-any-other-name dept

Show of hands: who remembers Axl Rose? Last we here at Techdirt checked in on him, Rose was busy suing video games and hassling music bloggers over album leaks. The younger among you may chiefly be familiar with his Axl-ness via a somewhat popular string of internet memes centered on some rather unflattering pictures of the musician taken from a concert in 2010.

There are, like, tons of these. And, as you can surely understand, Rose isn't pleased that these memes are going around. Hell, we all have photos taken of us that we probably don't find flattering, and Father Time ends up foisting pounds and wrinkles on all of us that we'd rather not have. What most of us don't do, however, is cook up a copyright claim on a photograph we didn't take and try to get Google to remove every use of the picture from the internet. Rose has done that. And you'll never guess who he employed to help him do so!

“Copyright image of Axl Rose. Please be advised that no permission has been granted to publish the copyright image so we cannot direct you to an authorized example of it,” the notices sent by Web Sheriff on behalf of the singer read.

Hi there, Web Sheriff! In between money-laundering, abusing human rights, and generally breaking roughly all the laws over here at Techdirt, we had just enough time to notice you have a strange view on how copyright law works! This comes as only a mild shock to us, given how confused you folks appear to be on all the other laws you routinely talk about, but let's give this a go, shall we?

The DMCA notices all revolve around photos taken in 2010 at a concert. Those photos were taken by Boris Minkevich and published by the Winnipeg Free Press.

TorrentFreak tracked down the photographer who captured this moment to see if he was aware of these takedown efforts. We eventually found Boris Minkevich at the Winnipeg Free Press where his fine work is published in all its glory. During our initial discussions a few things became clear. Firstly, Minkevich definitely took the photo. Second, Minkevich had no idea that Rose was trying to “cleanse the web” of his photo. Perhaps the first reaction here is that Rose has no right to take down Minkevich’s photo. Since Minkevich was the one who took it, he must own the copyright, right? Web Sheriff doesn’t seem to think so.

“We can gladly confirm that all official / accredited photographers at [Axl Rose] shows sign-off on ‘Photography Permission’ contracts / ‘Photographic Release’ agreements which A. specify and limit the manner in which the photos can be exploited and B. transfer copyright ownership in such photos to AR’s relevant service company,” the company told TF in a statement.

Now, TorrentFreak reached out to Minkevich, who had no idea this takedown blitz was underway. He confirmed that some concerts do indeed make photographers sign these types of agreements, but couldn't recall if this concert included one or not. Web Sheriff, who certainly should be able to produce the agreement, having taken the lead on the copyright claims, isn't doing so. When asked, Web Sheriff's response was instead to insist that even if the photographer had not signed an agreement -- leading me to believe he probably didn't --, that Rose would still be able to claim ownership over the photo.

“[If a photographer] was there and taking shots without permission or authority, then other considerations / factors would come-into-play as to what such individuals can and cannot do in terms of attempting to commercially exploit the resultant images of someone else’s show,” TF was informed.

I would politely ask Web Sheriff what the sweet child of mine it is talking about here. Unless the photographer transferred copyright of the photo over to Axl Rose, the photographer retains copyright ownership over it. One would think that if any transfer had actually taken place, Web Sheriff would simply produce it, but it hasn't. If no transfer ever occurred, Web Sheriff is simply wrong in claiming copyright over the image. Indeed, Minkevich even mentioned to TorrentFreak that the photos are infringing, but that they are infringing on his and/or the Winnipeg Free Press' copyrights. And even that may not be true, given the room that Fair Use carves for using copyright images.

And the best part of this is that Axl Rose employed Web Sheriff to do all of this to keep the unflattering images out of the public sphere. How is that working out for him?

Filed Under: axl rose, boris minkevich, copyright, fair use, memes, streisand effect, takedowns
Companies: web sheriff

Court Dumps Hastily-Granted Restraining Order, Says MuckRock Can Publish Smart Meter Documents

from the prior-restraint-much? dept

It took a little less than a week, but the EFF, with the invaluable assistance of Venkat Balasubramani of FOCAL PLLC, has persuaded a Washington state judge to strike down the temporary restraining order against MuckRock he hastily granted back on May 27th.

Landis+Gyr, a multinational corporation owned by Toshiba, recently secured a contract to upgrade Seattle's "dumb" meters to smart meters. Privacy activist Phil Mocek requested information on the city's smart meter plan through MuckRock and was handed two Landis+Gyr documents in unredacted form by the city.

These documents worth suing over spent a month uploaded to MuckRock before Landis+Gyr took notice. Once it had secured the city contract, L+G then demanded -- via a request for a temporary restraining order -- that MuckRock take the documents down, turn over info on site users who may have seen/downloaded them, and somehow help L+G shove its smart meter genie back into the bottle.

Fortunately, the judge has now struck down the restraining order he issued earlier in the week.

Agreeing with EFF, King County Superior Court Judge William Downing ruled that the previous order amounted to a prior restraint on speech that violated the First Amendment, and rescinded it along with denying plaintiffs’ request to extend it.

Not that Landis+Gyr didn't try to keep its restraining order alive -- despite openly acknowledging that one of the two documents contained nothing worth withholding. In its final attempt to salvage its request, L+G claimed that an internet full of evildoers now has access to sensitive information that could place citizens in danger.

Defendants knowingly posted Landis+Gyr’s protected information on its publicly-accessible website, where Landis+Gyr’s competitors, as well as hackers and saboteurs, had access to the information. In fact, internet traffic surrounding the disclosure reveals the danger caused by Defendants’ refusal to remove the information. See Second Supplemental Declaration of Eric Lee Christensen in Support of Motion for Preliminary Injunction, ¶¶ 2, Exhs. A. (“I read all your secret information, you [expletives deleted]”), ¶ 4, Exh. C, p. 8 (“visit the link below to download disputed documents”).

Without access to the exhibits, I can only assume the deleted expletives were "censorious asshats" and that "visit the link below to download disputed documents" is internet code for "seize the means of production, starting with the power grid."

Landis+Gyr's fears of terrorism are overblown, if these are the best pull quotes it could find to illustrate its "hackers n' saboteurs" theory. It may be that its trade secret claims are more based in reality, but that still doesn't explain its attempt to silence a third-party FOIA clearinghouse for doing nothing more than publishing documents handed to it by a government body.

Filed Under: foia, prior restraint, seattle, smart meters, streisand effect
Companies: eff, landis+gyr, muckrock

Law Firm Subpoenas Glassdoor For Negative Anonymous Reviews, Supercharges Streisand Effect With Its Response

from the whoo-boy dept

Many of you likely know about Glassdoor.com, which is a website used by both employers and propsective employees for recruiting, job applications and reviews of companies by former employees as to what it's like to work at a given company. As with any source of crowdsourced reviews, it is not without its pitfalls and controversy, but most of that has to do with different methods by which companies and former employees try to promote or slam a partricularly workplace with anonymous reviews. Anyone who has done job placement research, however, knows how valuable the site is.

Yet the use of anonymous reviews, as is typical of other sites, breeds discontent amongst some. Typically you will hear complaints from companies being reviewed negatively about these anonymous reviews being unfair, untrue, or ginned up by a limited number of ex-employees. That's usually the end of it. Occasionally, however, you get a company that wants to sue over reviews like this. California law firm Layfield & Barrett is apparently one such firm.

California trial attorney Philip Layfield, joined by his firm, has filed a defamation claim against 25 John Does over anonymous comments they left online about Layfield, his current firm of Layfield & Barrett, and his former firm of Layfield & Wallace. Our network of tipsters is mighty, and we’ve gotten our hands on a third-party subpoena served upon Glassdoor.com, a jobs and recruiting website, that allows users to post anonymous reviews of places they are current or former employees of, in order to provide an assessment of the working environment for job seekers. The subpoena seeks the identifying information of several users who have taken to this anonymous online forum to complain about their allegedly miserable work.

You can see the full subpoena below, but it does indeed seem that some of the reviews left for the firm were quite nasty. Titles for some of the posts include "Deceptive, Unethical, Poorly Managed, No Sense Of Direction," "Working Here is Psychological Torture," and my personal favorite "For the love of God, do NOT work here." One can understand why an employer would be unhappy about the existance of these reviews.

Suing over them, however, is likely to be as feeble as it is misguided. This is typically the part of the post where we talk first about the difficulty of suing successfully over these types of opinion-based reviews, move on to then talk about the importance of sites like Glassdoor.com honoring its users' anonymity, before finally coming around to explain that the Streisand Effect will now take hold of this whole thing, with the lawsuit serving mostly to catapult the negative opinions the firm disliked into the forefront of more people's minds than otherwise would have been. And that would usually be the end of the post.

That is not the end of this post, in part because Glassdoor has promised to fight the attempt to out its anonymous contributors, but even more so because Philip Layfield agreed to comment on the story for Above The Law, and Oh. My. God.

With respect to the lawsuit filed, here is the reality. Our law firm has approximately 150 employees and 35 attorneys. We demand the best of the best. Many people lie about their skills, their experience and their desire to be the best when the interview. We pay top dollar for candidates and many of our attorneys earn in excess of $1 million per year. When people are lazy or incompetent, they either quit because the writing is on the wall or they are terminated. Unfortunately, most of those people are unwilling to recognize their shortcomings and they turn to anonymous blogs to spit their venom. The reality is that they should be upset with their parents for raising lazy and incompetent young adults, but they choose to spew false information on blogs such as Glassdoor. The majority of these posts contain blatantly false information. We are going to obtain the identities of these cowards and bring them to justice.These people are going to have to answer for their conduct and we will shine a light on this very cowardly practice that has become an epidemic. People need to realize that just because you are sitting anonymously behind a keyboard, you can’t break the law. Ultimately, future employers will have to decide whether they want to employ people who post false and hateful information about former employers. The same way that Glassdoor operates as a hate forum for disgruntled employees, employers have a right to know information about job applicants.

Unfortunately, most employers are too busy to spend time posting negative information about former employees on job sites, although that would probably do a lot of good for society. For example, I would love to post information about employees who graduated law school, but can’t put two sentences together, or those that are sick at least one day every week.

We will not give any further comments until the case is over.

Imagine yourself for a moment as someone who was willing to give Layfield and his firm the benefit of the doubt thus far. Are you any longer? Probably not. This comment does nothing to verify the accuracy of the complaints at Glassdoor, but it does solidify them in the mind to some degree, does it not? In addition to the demeaning nature with which Layfield addresses his former employees, the aggrandizing tone with which he describes his own firm, and his silly labeling of Glassdoor as a hate forum, he does us all a service by outlining his desire to have employers act every bit as vindictively towards former employees as he complains about in reverse. That kind of delicious hypocrisy isn't in rare supply, of course, but that doesn't make it any less scrumptious to behold.

And, to the previous point, whatever Streisand-y Effect might have resulted from the legal action the firm had already taken will now be supercharged by this boorish comment at a well-read legal industry blog. And here at Techdirt. Any likely many other places as well. If the goal was to make the firm a more attractive place to work, it's difficult to think of a better strategy than this to achieve the opposite.

Filed Under: anonymity, anonymous reviews, comments, law firm, lawsuit, philip layfield, reviews, slapp, streisand effect
Companies: glassdoor, layfied & barrett, layfied & wallace