Ares Rights Gets EFF Lawyer Suspended From Twitter For Posting Mild Criticism

from the really-now? dept

We've written a few times now (including just recently) about the Spanish firm Ares Rights, whose sole purpose and job in this world appears to be to abuse any and all systems to take down content to try to hide content that either Ares Rights or its clients dislike. Mainly, the takedowns seem to focus on the interests of what appears to be its main client, the government of Ecuador, and its main tool is totally bogus DMCA notices, that too many companies follow without looking at the details.

However, Ares Rights also has a history of abusing takedowns to try to hide negative information about itself. And apparently, it will abuse other tools as well, such as Twitter's policy on shutting down accounts for abuse.

Daniel Nazer is a lawyer for EFF (focusing mostly on patent issues). Last week, he found out that his Twitter account had been shut down. Eventually, he was allowed back into the account, but was told he could only reopen the account if he agreed to delete a tweet. Which tweet? One in which he referenced Ares Rights and linked to an email exchange he'd had with the head of Ares Rights, Jon Palma. As background, Nazer explained how, back in 2014, he had tweeted negatively about Ares Rights, (accurately) calling what the company engages in as "copyfraud." Palma, apparently misunderstood Nazer's tweet, thinking that it was in support of Ares Rights, and emailed Daniel asking for business advice. Nazer posted the content of that email:

There are all sorts of levels of ridiculousness here, from Palma misunderstanding Nazer's tweet, to the fact that he filed an abuse complaint with Twitter, to Twitter's decision to disable Nazer's account. Someone from Twitter who saw me discussing this (on Twitter, naturally), reached out to point to Twitter's policy on private information posted on Twitter. This is the policy that's supposed to allow Twitter to shut down accounts of people doxxing someone, posting credit cards, harassing people, or posting revenge porn or whatnot. And it seems likely that the folks at Twitter would argue that Nazer's original screenshot of the email revealed Palma's "non-public" email address. If that's the case, even then it seems like a stretch. In context, it's clearly not for the sake of "doxxing" or harassing Palma, and it's unlikely that anyone actually looked at the original screenshot and decided to angrily email Palma.

Twitter claims that it "may consider the context and nature of the information posted," but it's hard to see how that was the case this time. In the end, things worked out, and Ares Rights, yet again, looks like a horrible, censorious, thin-skinned bully. But it's a bit disappointing that Twitter was willing to help the company along in that endeavor.

Filed Under: abuse, censorship, copyfraud, criticism, daniel nazer, dmca, jon palma, takedowns
Companies: ares rights, eff, twitter