Conan O'Brien Explains The Insanity Of Fighting Bogus Joke Stealing Lawsuit For Years

from the they-beat-you-down dept

For a few years now we've been covering an absolutely ridiculous copyright lawsuit against Conan O'Brien claiming he and his staff had "stolen" jokes from some guy making silly one-liners on Twitter. As we noted at the time, most of the jokes at issue in the trial were topic jokes that likely lots of people might come up with. Here's one example of one of the key jokes in the case:

On Feb. 3, 2015, Kaseberg posted his version: "Tom Brady said he wants to give his MVP truck to the man who won the game for the Patriots. So enjoy that truck, Pete Carroll.”

That night, O'Brien ran with this: "Tom Brady said he wants to give the truck that he was given as Super Bowl MVP … to the guy who won the Super Bowl for the Patriots. Which is very nice. I think that’s nice. I do. Yes. So Brady’s giving his truck to Seahawks coach Pete Carroll."

As we pointed out almost a decade ago, especially when you're talking about quick, topical one-liners, it's not surprising that lots of people come up with the same exact joke. It's certainly not "stealing." And most of the time it's not copying.

However, fighting a lawsuit is crazy expensive and crazy time consuming, and for whatever reason the judge decided that three of the jokes at issue in the suit needed to go to actual trial. On the eve of that trial, after the lawsuit has dragged on for almost four years, O'Brien settled the lawsuit and penned a very thoughtful piece for Variety explaining (just as was fairly obvious) that lots of people come up with these kinds of jokes, and it's crazy to sue over that:

I knew because different people around the world come up with the same joke all the time, especially when the joke is topical. I was made aware of this 24 years ago, when, on the same night, David Letterman, Jay Leno, and I all told an identical “Dan Quayle is dumb” joke: “Dan Quayle announced today that he will not be running for President in ’96. However, he did not rule out running in ’97.” Back then, no one sued anyone because each of us knew that topical comedy often follows a pattern — it’s an occupational hazard. You try hard to avoid it, but sometimes, comedians inadvertently step on each other’s feet.

Now fast forward 20 years and add something called The Internet. On a chilly winter night, I delivered a joke about Tom Brady re-gifting his Super Bowl MVP truck to opposing coach Pete Carroll (trust me, Pete Carroll gags were hilarious back in 2015). What my writers and I didn’t know is that, at the same time, that joke was being written by literally 34 other people on Twitter, and one of those people decided he had been robbed. He then claimed we had stolen four other jokes, though we had proof that one of them was written prior to his posts.

He also notes that, in the years since the lawsuit has been filed, the same guy who sued them -- Robert Kaseberg -- has tweeted out a bunch of very similar jokes to Conan's own jokes but after they'd aired. He's not suggesting Kaseberg copies from him, just demonstrating the point that on things like this, lots of people are going to come up with the same joke ideas:

During this time, we asked our writers’ assistant to monitor our accuser’s tweets to avoid any other accidental overlap, and she discovered 15 examples where he tweeted similar jokes AFTER we had written them for my program. And this is the guy who is suing us?? Did we counter-sue? No, we did not, because I knew he had not “stolen” from us, just as we had never stolen from him.

And, he rightly notes, a ton of other people come up with similar jokes all the time, and this is exacerbated by Twitter being a platform for everyone to share those kinds of short, topical quips.

The fact of the matter is that with over 321 million monthly users on Twitter, and seemingly 60% of them budding comedy writers, the creation of the same jokes based on the day’s news is reaching staggering numbers. Two years ago one of our writers came up with a joke referencing Kendall Jenner’s ill-fated Pepsi commercial, and so did 111 Twitter users. This “parallel creation” of jokes is now so commonplace that Caroline Moss of CNBC and Melissa Radzimiski of the Huffington Post have given it a name: “tweet-saming.” And, by the way, the person who sued me also tweeted the same Pepsi joke, but only after our show and 24 other tweeters beat him to it.

But, as noted, a trial will wear you down. It's costly in terms of legal fees, time, and emotional costs. And, thus, O'Brien agreed to settle.

This saga ended with the gentleman in San Diego and I deciding to resolve our dispute amicably. I stand by every word I have written here, but I decided to forgo a potentially farcical and expensive jury trial in federal court over five jokes that don’t even make sense anymore. Four years and countless legal bills have been plenty.

The whole thing should never have gotten this far. Simple jokes like that -- like many other things -- probably don't deserve copyright at all in the first place. As we wrote over a decade ago, jokes have a long history of not needing copyright protection. Old time comedians would tell others jokes all the time, and there are tons of books that have collected jokes from all over. Most of the time, the really funny bits are in the telling of the joke -- the presentation, the timing, etc. It may be a bit different online, but again, there is no need for copyright as incentive to tell jokes on Twitter of all places.

On top of that, while the system may not be perfect, social pressure has done a pretty good job in "outing" and shaming those who actually appear to be doing more nefarious things, such as directly copying others without credit. Copyright is rarely needed for such things as social shaming is effective. But, here, it seems quite obvious that there was no copying at all. It was pure independent creation. And, as Judge Learned Hand famously said years ago:

"[I]f by some magic a man who had never known it were to compose anew Keats's 'Ode on a Grecian Urn,' he would be an 'author,' and if he copyrighted it, others might not copy that poem, though they might of course copy Keats's."

Independent creation is not copyright infringement either (despite some courts' terrible use of the substantial similarity test to suggest that even "subconscious plagiarism" could be infringing). And, yet, it's totally understandable why O'Brien chose to settle. It's just really unfortunate that the judicial system didn't toss this case out from the beginning.

Filed Under: conan o'brien, copyright, independent creation, joke stealing, jokes, robert kaseberg

Not Funny: The Conan O'Brien Joke-Stealing Lawsuit Is Still Going On

from the funny-story dept

We've obviously talked about the great deal of harm that a protectionist view of copyright can cause, both in terms of its ability to deny the public useful innovations and its use by the powerful to bully the weak. But one of the harms in protectionism and the ever-expanding culture of ownership that pervades modern life that is less talked about, possibly because it's somewhat obvious, is its sheer ability to bog down individuals in an absurdly lengthy legal process that seems to move at a pace purposefully calibrated to be as frustrating as possible.

A great example of this is the copyright case Conan O'Brien is embroiled in still, all over accusations that he and his writing staff "stole" a handful of jokes from a freelance comedian, who has claimed copyright over them. We first wrote about this case in the first half of 2017, where a judge had greenlit all of this for a jury trial, but the lawsuit itself was actually filed back in 2015. And, incredibly, it's still going on. The clock is still running at three years, with the most recent news being that the court has refused to allow O'Brien's team two affirmative defenses based on the actions of the plaintiff.

The court on Thursday dismissed two of O'Brien's affirmative defenses, one arguing that Kaseberg had committed fraud on the copyright office and the other that he isn't entitled to relief because he withheld relevant documents during discovery and has "unclean hands."

"Even if omission of the Court’s ultimate conclusion that the jokes were entitled only to thin copyright protection were misleading, however, the Court would have to conclude that there was no intent to defraud here," writes Sammartino. "It is undisputed that Plaintiff’s counsel attached a copy of the Court’s full Order to the letter to the Office. Had Plaintiff been attempting to pull a fast one on the Office by misrepresenting the Court’s Order, he would not have provided the Office with a means of verifying that deception."

I would quibble with the court's logic in that, actually. After all, the Copyright Office is not known for its stringent background checking work generally speaking. More generally, how often do we encounter folks making assertions with citations that don't fully support those assertions, as a way to try to bolster their claim under the assumption that nobody is actually going to dissect the citation? That happens all the time.

That said, the ruling isn't blatantly silly. Unlike, say, the fact that O'Brien is still dealing with a lawsuit nearly four years running due to a claim of copyright over a couple of jokes. Anyone that would want to claim that that isn't absurd needs medical care, in my view.

Filed Under: comedy, conan o'brien, copyright, joke theft

Conan O'Brien Joke-Stealing Case Gets Green-Lit For Jury Trial

from the no-laughing-matter dept

Consternation over so-called "joke stealing" goes back roughly as long as comedy itself has been a thing, but these past few years have seen something of a rise in awareness whenever a comedian is accused of copying a joke. Honestly, much of this hand-wringing is overblown, likely born of an ownership culture that values protectionism over expanded culture, and devoid of the understanding that a joke is much more than the words used to tell it. After all, timing and delivery factor into the success in telling any joke, and it almost seems too obvious to have to point out that multiple comedians come up with similar jokes all the time. For that reason, the bar for copyright infringement on jokes has tended to be very high in the few cases that actually get tried. On top of that, the common method for policing such copying involved the massive reputational hit the accused takes -- rather than legal action. And that's only accelerated thanks to the internet's public shaming engine. Because of that, actual lawsuits over this sort of thing are few and far between.

Which brings us to Conan O'Brien, who is still in the midst of a years-old copyright infringement suit over the claim that he and the writers of his show used several jokes from a freelance joke writer without authorization.

Experts in copyright law say the 2-year-old copyright infringement lawsuit filed against O'Brien, his writers for his late-night show, Conan, and Time Warner over a handful of topical jokes may never get before a jury, despite a ruling by a judge that the case can proceed.

The stakes are high, not just in time and litigation costs but in "reputational" costs: No comedian wants to be known as a joke thief. "Accusing a comedian of stealing a joke is the worst thing you can accuse them of, in my opinion, short of murder," O'Brien said in a deposition in the case. "I think it's absolutely terrible."

The relatively few lawsuits of this sort almost never get to trial for this very reason. It ends up being in the accused's best interest to settle, and settle quickly, regardless of the merits. The more public attention given to accusations, the bigger the reputation hit. Of course, those bringing the suits know this as well. The plaintiff in this case is Robert Kaseberg, a freelance joke writer who claims several of his jokes made their way onto Conan's show, unauthorized by him. In the ruling, you can get a flavor of how similar the jokes actually are, but here's a sample.

On Feb. 3, 2015, Kaseberg posted his version: "Tom Brady said he wants to give his MVP truck to the man who won the game for the Patriots. So enjoy that truck, Pete Carroll.”

That night, O'Brien ran with this: "Tom Brady said he wants to give the truck that he was given as Super Bowl MVP … to the guy who won the Super Bowl for the Patriots. Which is very nice. I think that’s nice. I do. Yes. So Brady’s giving his truck to Seahawks coach Pete Carroll."

Keep in mind that when it comes to jokes and copyright, the bar has generally been set really high. Generally, the word for word lifting of a joke is required for there to be infringement. While the examples in the suit don't rise quite to that level, the judge decided there was enough to push the trial to a jury.

"Plaintiff’s protectable expression is his implication that a fictionalized Tom Brady would therefore give his truck to the coach of the opposing team, Pete Carroll," she writes. "And although the Conan joke takes an active stance … the fundamental expression is the same, i.e., that there was no doubt Brady would be giving his MVP award to the opposing team’s coach. As previously stated, while not exactly identical, the jokes are sufficiently objectively virtually identical to create a triable issue of fact regarding whether a jury would find these objective similarities to be virtually identical within the context of the entire joke."

It's worth noting that while several jokes are currently at issue in this case, two more were, but are no longer part of it. Why? Well, because the judge ruled that they should be tossed, with the reasoning for one of them demonstrating exactly how it is that two comedians could come up with similar, nearly identical jokes in parallel.

Judge Sammartino threw out the jokes about UAB football and the Delta flight (finding in the latter case that one of O'Brien's writers had already pitched a similar joke before the one on the blog appeared). That left Kaseberg with the Tom Brady Joke, the Washington Monument Joke, and the Jenner Joke, as the judge labels them.

It's worth noting that while the judge ruled that the remaining jokes at issue were similar enough for this to go to trial, she also points out that though these jokes are deserving of copyright protection in general, that protection is mitigated by both the nature and length of the works. She notes that we're talking about two-sentence jokes in every case here, with a topical setup sentence and a punchline. There are only so many ways those jokes can be told, which means that for any infringement to have occurred, the bar for that is typically going to be that the uses must be virtually identical. It's a function of the jokes' format, which the judge appears to go to some lengths to point out.

Each joke begins with a factual sentence and then immediately concludes with another sentence providing humorous commentary on the preceding facts. Facts, of course, are not protected by copyright.

So now both sides of the lawsuit will attempt to calculate whether it's worth it to see this thing through to the completion of a trial. Conan and his team will have to weigh the reputation hit against the likelihood they will prevail given the high bar for infringement in these cases, while Kaseberg will have to weigh the cost of carrying on with the trial against that same high bar.

If it strikes you as silly to watch a legal system contemplate the nature of comedy and jokes in this manner, you aren't alone. It strikes me that all of this legal wrangling is only effective because of the reputation hit Conan has taken and will continue to take. So, why wasn't public shaming enough, even if there truly was joke-copying going on?

Filed Under: conan o'brien, copyright, joke stealing, jokes, robert kaseberg, thin copyright

Life Imitates Conan O'Brien As Samsung 'Opens Apple Store'

from the which-is-real,-which-is-o'brien? dept

Just a few weeks ago, Conan O'Brien did a satire video about the Samsung/Apple lawsuit, in which someone pretending to be a Samsung VP "defended" the company against charges of copying Apple, but everything he did, obviously, made it look like Samsung was copying Apple: In that, there's an amusing part, where the "VP" says "Don't believe me? Then come to our retail stores where you can talk more about our products with a 'Samsung Smart Guy.'" Truth, it seems, often matches fiction. Down in Australia, Samsung has now opened its own retail store that bears such an uncanny resemblance to the design of Apple's stores that the always-funny John Paczkowski brilliantly titled his article about it: Samsung Opens New Apple Store in Australia. Can you tell which picture was from the Conan O'Brien video and which actually came from this store?

Oh, did we mention that the Samsung store is... one block away from an Apple store? And, sounding almost exactly like the faux Apple VP in the O'Brien video, an actual Samsung VP told a reporter that Apple "didn't even come into the equation" when planning the store.

I'm firmly of the belief that the whole legal fight between the two companies is silly, and that they should just compete out in the market, but you have to admit that the resemblance here is a bit uncanny.

Filed Under: apple store, conan o'brien, copying, retail, samsung store
Companies: apple, samsung

Same Talking, Different Heads: How Not To Localize News

from the handed-the-same-envelope dept

If you haven't seen this short clip of a bunch of local TV newscasters all saying the exact same line about Conan O'Brien's officiating a same-sex marriage on stage in New York City during a show this week, it's really worth watching just for the mind-numbingly bizarre reaction you have to seeing so many newscasters all repeat the exact line: "Conan O'Brien may be about to push the envelope on late night television." Or, as O'Brien notes, watch as they each put "their own spin" on the news: Honestly, it's hard not to watch that and think that all of the newscasters didn't receive the identical script. While the phrase is a common one, it's not that common that it would lead so many newscasters to all use the identical phrasing. It's possible these are all news affiliates from a single company, who were sent a basic script -- but, once again, this seems to highlight the growing irrelevance/ridiculousness of TV news these days. If you're just going to have 50 different newscasters all read the identical script, why not just have a single newscaster do it, and air it directly on all those other stations.

Filed Under: conan o'brien, local news, pushing the envelope, same sex marriage

Conan O'Brien Has The Inside Scoop On More Netflix Changes

from the is-it-too-subtle dept

If you have been living under a rock for the last couple of weeks, you are probably not aware that Netflix dramatically increased its prices, separated its streaming and DVD by mail services and then branched the two services into two different companies. You have also probably missed Netflix CEO Reed Hastings' apology and explanation of the debacle. In case you fit this bill, here is the video:



You probably thought that was the end of it.

Well, Susannah from Team CoCo wrote in to tell us that Netflix has even more up its red sleeve to make our movie viewing experience even better.



Honestly, I think having Paul Hogan come over to hang out is quite the deal for only $1.49 a month.

Filed Under: apologies, conan o'brien, reed hastings
Companies: netflix, qwikster

Nice To See How Content Creators Have More Power Over Middlemen

from the it's-not-about-the-middlemen dept

We've talked a lot about how the role of middlemen is changing quite a bit these days. In the past, it was about them being gatekeepers. If you wanted to be a successful musician you had to sign a deal with one of a tiny number of big record labels. If you wanted to be a filmmaker you had to get a big studio to help you out. If you wanted to be an author, you had to sign a deal with a big publisher. And, since those middlemen acted as the only paths to success, they were able to dictate absolutely ridiculous terms. Just take, for example, the typical record label contract, which wasn't just a "loan" or an "investment," but them basically buying all of your copyrights and you still have to pay all of the money back from your earnings... but you don't get the copyrights back after you do so. These were amazingly one-sided deals that totally put the middlemen in the power position.

What's fascinating (and wonderful) to see today is how the changing marketplace means that the actual content creators are in control. This doesn't mean the death of middlemen -- not by a long shot. There's still a huge role for middlemen to play -- but it's as enablers, not gatekeepers. In a world with enablers, the content creators are still the ones in control. The middlemen become supporting players. This is why I always find it funny when those who support the old system claim that they're the ones "helping" creative types. But that's clearly not the case. What they're helping are the gatekeeper middlemen, who have done everything possible to pressure content creators into bad deals because they had no other choice. These days, thanks to the wider choices enabled by the internet, content creators are able to restack the pyramid and put themselves in control, with middlemen actually helping, rather than capturing all of the value.

We already wrote about Conan O'Brien's embrace of social media in Fortune's article about Conan 2.0, but there was another part of the article that I wanted to highlight in this post. And that's the fact that the deal O'Brien signed with TBS is quite different than the traditional TV deal, in that it's not TBS's show that O'Brien appears on, but it's O'Brien's show... with TBS as a distribution partner. But O'Brien and his company really have all the control -- including over the digital side of things. Even the video clips from his show don't come from TBS or use a TBS video player. They're all Team Coco.

O'Brien is in control of all the on-air creative and, just as important, all the digital use of his content. He and his production company Conaco own the show.... It's the opposite of O'Brien's setup at NBC, says Ross, a partner in the company. "Conaco owns the show, and TBS is a participant. At Tonight, NBC owned the show, and we were participants." And ownership makes all the difference for O'Brien and his team.

Team Coco, not TBS, chooses which clips to use, edits them, and posts them. Preview clips from each night's taping go up an hour before the show's East Coast broadcast; within an hour after the show's West Coast broadcast more than a half-dozen clips from that night's show are posted on its site and Facebook, and linked to via Twitter; and the full show is viewable online the next day at 11 a.m. Eastern time. Last year at The Tonight Show Bleyaert had tried to get pre-show clips posted, but even that seemingly simple idea was difficult to execute because NBC.com ran the show's site, and putting up such clips wasn't part of its normal workflow process. "After the experience that we had at NBC, we wanted to be in control," says O'Brien's agent, Rosen. "We wanted the freedom to exploit our content."

This reminds me of another story from a few years back about a band that announced a label had signed with them, rather than them signing with a label. It's happening slowly, but the power positions are shifting and the fact that the gatekeeper role is less and less important, and the enabler role is more and more important, also means that the content creators themselves have more power. They no longer need to sign soul-crushing, abusively one-sided deals. Instead, they can sign deals that put them in control, where the middlemen are truly middlemen helping the content creator, rather than owning the content creator.

We're really not there yet, for most content creators however. The old types of deals are still being signed. But I think we're starting to see signs of that changing. It'll take more time, but the good news is that the content creators are getting more leverage, just as the old middlemen are starting to lose their leverage. And the end result should be a lot better in the long run. The middlemen still have their role in the middle, rather than at the top of the pyramid.

Filed Under: conan o'brien, content creators, gatekeepers, middlemen

How NBC Wanted Conan O'Brien Dump His Twitter Account

from the you-really-don't-get-it dept

There are times that make you wonder how NBC Universal has survived this long, with its almost preternatural ability to screw up the most basic concepts. This is the company that freaked out about YouTube, even when YouTube specifically helped revive interest in shows like Saturday Night Live after the Lazy Sunday video went viral five years ago. This is the same company that was proud of the fact that they made it hard for people to watch the Olympics online -- even though NBC's own data showed that as more people watched online, it actually drove more people to watch on TV. Of course, this is also the company who has lobbied the government for greater protections, claiming that piracy hurts corn farmers and that more money should be spent stopping piracy than fighting bank robbers. And, most recently, it was the company that fired the guy who uploaded the amusing Today Show clip of Bryant Gumbel and Katie Couric discovering the internet.

But, apparently, no single moment seems to cement in people's minds the cluelessness of NBC more than the firing of Conan O'Brien.

Of course, out of that situation, O'Brien has emerged stronger than ever in many ways and a large part of that has been his somewhat unexpected and (initially) hesitant embrace of social media. Fortune has a wonderful article describing the details of what they call "Conan 2.0," which is fascinating in many ways -- including the many ways in which things are so different than when he was an employee at NBC. But the story that stood out most to me was how, soon after Conan started using Twitter, NBC threatened him and wanted him to shut down the account.

You may recall that as part of his separation package from NBC, Conan had to sign a deal that kept him off network TV for a while and forbade him from disparaging the network. But it said nothing about the internet -- in part because the folks at NBC still live in a TV centric world where they didn't even think about the internet as an issue. So the whole Twitter thing took them by surprise:

"What was interesting about it," points out O'Brien, "is that all the legal prohibitions were coming from people in the old media. They were saying you can't do all these things, and pretty quickly we realized, 'Wait a minute!' Someone said, 'Does that include Twitter? No. It doesn't include Twitter.' And so I started tweeting."

[...] Just as quickly, O'Brien's team began to hear that NBC was far from happy. "The network isn't crazy about you tweeting. They're not sure that's cool," O'Brien recalls being told. His response was simple: "Tell them I would be thrilled if they shut down my Twitter account. I'd love it if that got out. You think PR's been bad up till now? Wait till you take away my Twitter account."

The article then goes on to highlight how much more digitally connected O'Brien and his team have become, even to their own surprise. For example, while they had originally planned an ad budget to advertise O'Brien's standup tour last year, instead they decided to just mention it on Twitter. They figured if that failed, they could easily go back to traditional advertising. Turns out they didn't need to. Within hours of the first tweet about the tour, they had sold out two shows at Radio City Music Hall (which holds over 6,000 people). The first day alone they sold 120,000 tickets. The entire tour sold out within a few days -- with no money spent on advertising.

The other interesting bit -- that also shows a massive difference from NBC -- is how his team deals with online clips of his show. Rather than hoarding it, they get stuff online quickly and spread it widely:

Team Coco, not TBS, chooses which clips to use, edits them, and posts them. Preview clips from each night's taping go up an hour before the show's East Coast broadcast; within an hour after the show's West Coast broadcast more than a half-dozen clips from that night's show are posted on its site and Facebook, and linked to via Twitter; and the full show is viewable online the next day at 11 a.m. Eastern time. Last year at The Tonight Show Bleyaert had tried to get pre-show clips posted, but even that seemingly simple idea was difficult to execute because NBC.com ran the show's site, and putting up such clips wasn't part of its normal workflow process. "After the experience that we had at NBC, we wanted to be in control," says O'Brien's agent, Rosen. "We wanted the freedom to exploit our content."

Part of the reason this works is the structure of the deal with TBS. Basically, TBS is just a distribution partner, rather than the owner of the show. O'Brien's company owns the show and has full creative control, and can control all of the digital experience. The video player they use is their own -- not one from TBS. The whole article is really quite fascinating and worth reading, as it shows how embracing social media and what fans want in a really strong way can pay back amazing dividends.

Filed Under: conan o'brien, twitter
Companies: nbc universal

Levi Johnston's Lawyers Threaten Twitter, Despite No Legal Basis

from the the-law?-what's-that? dept

Last week, Conan O'Brien had William Shatner stop by and read what was believed (at the time) to be twitter messages by Levi Johnston, the former boyfriend to Sarah Palin's daughter Bristol (and father of Bristol's child). O'Brien has done this before, having Shatner read out Sarah Palin's twitter messages, as spoken word poetry. It's an amusing gimmick. The only problem this time around was that the tweets weren't actually by Johnston, but an impostor. O'Brien quickly apologized. Fair enough.

However, what caught my attention was that Johnston's lawyers didn't just threaten O'Brien, but they threatened Twitter itself:

"My client, Levi Johnston, is being impersonated on your media (Twitter) and this is leading to libel and slanderous statements being attributed to him. ... We want you to put an immediate end to this illegal activity. ... You are being used as a medium to promote this illegality and we want immediate action. ... You are now on notice and must take steps to put an end to what is clearly against the law and against your policy. ... We want to know what steps you will be taking to correct what is clearly a problem which is escalating."

Now, you can understand why they were upset, and Twitter is usually pretty good at responding to such requests and disabling the accounts (sometimes even going too far). However, the claim that Twitter is now "on notice and must take steps" to end the account is simply not true. Twitter, as the service provider, is protected against such claims and has no specific obligation under the law to change things, no matter how much "notice" his lawyers give. You would think that Johnston's lawyers would understand that -- and that they would be aware of earlier attempts, like the one by Tony La Russa to blame Twitter for an impostor, in which La Russa was forced to learn why Twitter is not liable.

Filed Under: conan o'brien, levi johnston, section 230, william shatner
Companies: twitter