Writer Claims Libel, Copyright Infringement When Screencap Of Her Tweet Is Used In An Online Article

from the not-the-way-this-works dept

A person can undo the damage of a particularly stupid assertion by acting quickly and contritely. Too bad far too many people opt for making the situation much, much worse.

David Paxton included a screenshot of Forbes contributor Frances Coppola touting her own personal conspiracy theory about the rash of sexual assaults by immigrants in Cologne, Germany, in his article for Quillette.

According to Coppola's hot take, the assaults were apparently some sort of anti-immigration false flag operation.

"I suspect anti-immigration ppl of organising the Cologne sex crimes. Fastest way of getting borders closed."

Coppola has since deleted the tweet and apologized at length for it, but her first few responses were less useful. Paxton's blog post on the subject notes that his use of her tweet was met with a handful of increasingly dubious legal threats.

The first was to claim his direct quote (via screenshot) of her tweet was libelous.

remove the section about me or face libel charges.

This line of thinking continued for a few more tweets, with Coppola insisting that taking her tweet out of context (it really wasn't -- see here) was "defamatory," as was Paxton's opinion that the contents of the tweet were "stupid" and "insane."

She then claimed the tweet was "satire" and was being misread by everyone (except, apparently, the other party in the original Twitter conversation, who gave no indication that he felt her tweet was some sort of joke). She claimed this despite espousing similar sentiments throughout the rest of the conversation ("I think we will find indigenous people were paid to do it to stir up hatred of refugees").

With the vague threat of a libel lawsuit still hanging in the air, Coppola moved on to another popular "MUTE" button: IP law.

@aleprechaunist @CanYouFlyBobby has deliberately quoted a tweet screen scraped without my permission from my personal Twitter account +

There's nothing "personal" about a Twitter account. Any tweet viewable by the public can be screencapped or quoted without permission of the account owner. If a Twitter account holder doesn't care to have their tweets quoted or posted elsewhere in any form, they can always lock their account, making it only viewable by their followers. Coppola's account was public then and -- after briefly taking it private -- it is public once again.

Other imaginary rights were touted during Coppola's dispute with Paxton.

@CanYouFlyBobby You didn't contact me, you didn't research context & provenance, you used derogatory terms and didn't offer right of reply.

In summation: my feelings were hurt by what you said, and you didn't give me a chance to head this off by giving me the "right" to forbid you from using my tweet in your Quillette post.

There is no "right of reply" and even if there was, she had plenty of chances to reply with comments on both Paxton's Quillette post and his blog, as well as in her own tweets and long explanatory post at her own site.

Her response to Paxton's "misuse" of her "out of context" tweet notes the tweet was stupid, as were her initial responses.

I have to straighten something out.

On 7th January, I made a remark on Twitter which with hindsight was - unwise. Well, ok, it was worse than unwise, it was stupid. I did not think about the consequences. It never occurred to me that issuing that tweet would lead to three weeks of sustained and vicious personal abuse.

[...]

He had used the tweet as an example of temporary "insanity" in a normally rational person caused by a highly emotive event. Had I been thinking straight, I would have seen that this was what he meant. But I'm not thinking straight. I took it as yet another personal attack - an attempt to stir up the whole tweetstorm all over again. I told him to take down the section referring to me or face libel charges.

That was both unfair to him and very foolish. There followed an unpleasant argument on Twitter in which I tried again to explain what the purpose of the original tweet was and he insisted that I did not mean that - all of it watched by a huge crowd who were mostly not on my side. It achieved precisely the opposite of what I wanted: not only did the blogger refuse to amend the piece, the piece ended up being circulated far more widely than it probably would have been, and a new tweetstorm developed, this time expressing outrage at my allegation of libel.

My attempt to resolve the situation by leaving a comment on his post and retweeting it myself also appears to have backfired, though it was intended as something of a climbdown. The blogger has now written a very angry post about me. I have to say that although the criticism he levels at me in this post is harsh, it is deserved. I have handled this very badly indeed and am genuinely sorry about the mess I have made. I have left a comment on that post apologising for accusing him of libel.

Had this been her response from the beginning, it never would have reached the point of her having to write a full blog post about the backlash she triggered. Apologies are nice but Coppola is now Yet Another Cautionary Tale about the right way to respond to criticism.The original post that set this all off (Coppola's tweet was preceded by Paxton stating she "writes cogently and intelligently about economics") was far from harsh.

Coppola's tweet was presented as short-term "insanity" -- the kind that blows over once someone starts thinking about issues, rather than simply reacting to them. Coppola's response to Paxton ignored all of the helpful context and focused on the word "insanity." Had she simply moved on, the "sustained abuse" would have been over in a matter of days, rather than "three weeks."

The problem with being Yet Another Cautionary Tale is that the internet is full of them. The foreseeable consequences of reacting to criticism (especially very mild criticism) with baseless legal threats and clueless assertions about nonexistent rights are exactly that: foreseeable. And yet, it's not as though the flow of cautionary tales has slowed. There's always another one right around the corner.

And it's not as though this is only perpetrated by "stupid" people. Intelligent people react badly to criticism as well and make situations exponentially worse by shouting "libel" or "copyright infringement" when they should -- and possibly do -- know better. Even worse are those who can afford to pay a lawyer to espouse their stupidity on scary-looking letterhead, leading to people who are wholly in the right backing down from the justified criticism.

Sometimes it's incredibly difficult to accept criticism. But, compared to the consequences of doubling down on stupid threats, accepting it is much less painful.

Filed Under: copyright, david paxton, defamation, frances coppola, twitter fight

Judge In Free Speech Case Over Twitter Fight Apparently Fooled By Parody Account

from the ouch dept

We just reported on a good ruling in Canada that threw out a criminal (yes, criminal) harassment case over what appeared to be a somewhat ridiculous Twitter spat. As we noted, basically no one came out of the spat looking particularly good, but to argue that such a spat should be criminal seemed ridiculous no matter how you looked at it. In the ruling, the judge did find that the tweets sent by Greg Elliott were harassing, but that it wasn't criminal because of the circumstances, including the fact that it was a public discussion and many of the tweets involved Elliott trying (perhaps aggressively) to defend himself against attacks against himself. However, as the very first commenter on our post pointed out, and which other reporters have now reported as well, at least one of the tweets that the judge pointed to as an example of Elliott's aggressive language actually came from a parody account.

The tweet in question came from the @greg_a_eliott account, which is ever so slightly from Greg Elliott's real account, which spells his name (as it is spelled) with two "Ls" instead of just one: @greg_a_elliott. But apparently the judge missed that and assumed the following homophobic tweet was from Elliott: The judge specifically cites that tweet in the ruling, and four separate times notes that at least one of Elliott's tweets were homophobic:

His language is vulgar and sometimes obscene, and once inexplicably homophobic...

It didn't really have an impact on the case, as the judge still tossed out the charges, but it does still seem at least mildly problematic, as the judge clearly regularly referenced that tweet, even though admitting that it wasn't in the evidence that was submitted, but which he found on his own. The judge went through a somewhat long explanation, noting that he found the tweet on his own and was at least somewhat confused why it had not been entered into evidence originally, suggesting that the search tool used by the police, called Sysomos, did a bad job.

Again, in this case, it didn't really matter, but this may be something to watch out for in future cases, where such mistakes could have a huge impact.

Filed Under: canada, criminal harassment, free speech, greg elliott, harassment, parody account, twitter fight

Judge Tosses Out Criminal Case In Canada Over Twitter Fight

from the good-move dept

Last summer, we wrote about a troubling criminal case up in Canada, exploring whether or not a Twitter fight constituted criminal harassment. The details are long and complex and I tried to summarize them in the last post so if you want more details go there. However, the super short version was as follows:

1. Angry person (not involved in lawsuit) creates a stupid, immature video game that allows users to punch another person (focused on someone who is controversial in certain circles).
2. Some people who are angry about this game, convene other people online to speak out against the game, and to try to shame the developer (to the point of trying to block employment opportunities).
3. Another person challenges the reasonableness of the attack in part 2, suggesting that the campaign goes too far.

That's the short version of it. Again, there's a lot more involved, but suffice it to say that two of the people who were involved in part (2) above, Stephanie Guthrie and Heather Reilly, felt that the guy who was behind part 3, Greg Elliott, went too far in his tweets in condemning their actions. As we noted none of the tweets appeared to involve actual threats -- just heated rhetoric, which is not uncommon in Twitter debates.

Thankfully, in a fairly long and detailed ruling, the court ended up dismissing all of the charges. It's not, as some might loosely believe, a clear pass to allow harassment online in Canada, but pretty specific to the circumstances of this particular case. The judge first reflected on the nature of Twitter and free speech, including the use of hashtags, which was a central part of the issue raised in the case. A key point: that Twitter is a public forum, rather than a targeted one. And while you can do direct person-to-person communication, that's not it's main function. And it would be somewhat tricky to argue that people talking in a public forum are directly targeting someone just by using a hashtag they might follow.

Once someone creates a hashtag, anyone can use it. Everyone has to be able to use it freely; anything less will limit the operation of Twitter in a way that is not consistent with freedom of expression.

On the other hand, someone may want to participate in a discussion anchored by a hashtag but not want to communicate with a particular person. Of many possible reasons for this, one may be that the person to be excluded does not want to hear from the other or has even told the other to stop contacting them. To interpret using a hashtag that you know another person also has used, may use, is using for an event, or even created (by using it first) as communicating indirectly with that person would prevent legitimate use of the hashtag. No one could use the hashtag without checking that anyone who did not want to hear from them was not using or following it, or might use or follow it.

The judge then did suggest that the two women did legitimately feel harassed by the tweets -- but that alone isn't enough. They also need to show that Greg Elliott knew that the women were "being harassed," that his tweets caused them to be fearful for their safety, and that the fear was reasonable. And that's where the case falls down. Again, no one denies that he said some mean or crass things, but none of the things he said apparently tipped the scales far enough to suggest that he "knew" that what he was tweeting was harassing them or making them fear for their safety.

Given Ms. Guthrie’s view, Mr. Elliott would have had to know it in order to know that she was harassed. Knowledge, as discussed above, is really knowing. But that he knew that he was harassing her is not the only reasonable inference, based on the evidence that at the time, he was observing her constant involvement with him: participating in the mocking of him, unblocking to communicate with him, telling others he was a men’s rights activist harassing women online, saying his name and celebrating the “Ugh” at the mention of his name at the meeting.

This very context and history, which the prosecution relies on to show that Ms. Guthrie was harassed, raises doubt as to whether Mr. Elliott knew she was harassed. This is quite apart from the campaigns against Mr. Elliott that were hatched at the summer meeting, and the Twitter discussions among Ms. Guthrie and her followers about his alleged harassment of women.

The court also noted that many of the tweets that were called harassing were Elliott (perhaps over-aggressively) trying to defend himself from claims made by others:

All of Mr. Elliott’s tweets at issue were responses to the attacks on him that I have listed, or a return to the original dinner and the Bendilin Spurr dispute. I say “all” his tweets because Crown counsel does not rely on the content of any one tweet to suggest harassment. His not letting go of a topic is stubborn and may be considered childish, but it does not provide a basis for a recipient of his tweets to fear danger, especially if the recipient is herself still making negative comments about the sender.

Another premise of Ms. Guthrie’s is that Mr. Elliott was not allowed to tweet using hashtags that she created, was closely associated with or followed. But he was. She held a view of hashtags and Twitter that is she is entitled to but, according to this evidence, is not reasonable.

The court notes that the result might have been different "had there been anything in the tweets of a violent or sexual nature" but that after reviewing all the tweets the judge "found no such tweet."

The court looked separately at the case of Heather Reilly, and again found that she was "harassed" based on the tweets sent her way, but that the circumstances were not reasonable -- in that Reilly basically demanded that Elliott not refer to or look at her public communications:

On this evidentiary record, asking a person to stop reading one’s feed from a freely chosen open account is not reasonable. Nor is it reasonable to ask someone to stop alluding to one’s tweets. To subscribe to Twitter and keep your account open is to waive your right to privacy in your tweets. Arranging a meeting or social event using tweets other than direct messages is like inviting strangers into your home or onto your phone line while you talk to your friends. Blocking only goes so far, as long as you choose to remain open.

On the whole, it's a good result. Again, as we explained originally, the whole case seemed like a mess involving a lot of people doing really crappy things online, and then getting angry at others. However, nearly all of it involved protected expression and protected counter speech. It may have been ugly (on basically all sides by basically everyone involved), but none of that makes it illegal.

Filed Under: canada, criminal harassment, free speech, greg allen, harassment, heather reilly, offensive, stephanie guthrie, twitter fight
Companies: twitter

Pointless Journalist Fight: Who Gets Credit For Tweeting A Story First?

from the get-over-yourselves dept

One thing I always find particularly silly in the mainstream media is when they claim "exclusive" on a story. News is not "ownable," and the second someone gets a story out, that news is out there and the facts are available to anyone else. So every time I see publications claim "exclusive!" it makes me laugh. It may be exclusive for a few seconds, at best. But, old school journalists seem to get really really picky about those things, as evidenced by this particularly stupid argument over who gets "credit" for a story. It seems that the NY Times and Reuters both had reporters working on the story, and the NYTimes tweeted the news out about 26 seconds before Reuters did -- but the Reuters reporter is still demanding credit -- first claiming (incorrectly) that he tweeted it first, but then noting (correctly) that they published first. The simple fact is that no one cares, other than a couple of journalists. No one keeps score, and no one owns the news. After all, if we have to go back to the "original" source, then wouldn't it be the person the story is actually about?

Filed Under: facts, pointless, twitter fight
Companies: new york times, reuters