Internet Defamation Suit Tests Online Anonymity 249
The Xoxo Reader writes "Reuters reports that two women at Yale Law School have filed suit for defamation and infliction of emotional distress against an administrator and 28 anonymous posters on AutoAdmit (a.k.a. Xoxohth), a popular law student discussion site. Experts are watching to see if the suit will unmask the posters, who are identified in the complaint only by their pseudonyms. Since AutoAdmit's administrators have previously said that they do not retain IP logs of posters, identifying the defendants may test the limits of the legal system and anonymity on the Internet. So far, one method tried was to post the summons on the message board itself and ask the defendants to step forward. The controversy leading to this lawsuit was previously discussed on Slashdot."
nonsense (Score:5, Funny)
Furthermore, if they don't have sex with children, embezzle money, practise cruelty to animals and throw firebombs at orphans as a recreational activitiy, then my name is not Anonymous Coward.
Mod parent up (Score:2)
Re:nonsense (Score:5, Funny)
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That's the spirit lad! All female teachers sleep with male students, all farmers have sex with goats, all democrats are communists, and all republicans are nazis. Keep going, you're on a roll!
sense (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Rudy Guiliani (Score:2, Funny)
Serving the summons? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Serving the summons? (Score:5, Informative)
Posting a summons on an internet message board would probably do a lot to get people's attention (which, IMHO, seems to be kind of the root cause of this case to begin with), but there's no legal way to prove it was read unless the defendants post in thread. Which, even then, sounds rather lame to me..
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Re:Serving the summons? (Score:5, Insightful)
Really? I would assert that privacy is fundamental to the perpetuation of a free society. But this isn't an issue about privacy, it's about anonymity, which is different. I may privately think that another person molests children. I may even write this down in my diary, and I would maintain that it would be unethical for others to force me to reveal these completely private thoughts.
I certainly wouldn't have the ethical standing to publish this diary anonymously, however. Do you see the difference?
Re:Serving the summons? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok, so say I'm imagining some horrors. What then? What do you propose should be done to me, to "sort me out"? You're assuming that I'm going to "do something stupid" so are you suggesting that my "ignorance and fear" should be corrected preemptively?
If I'm prone to imagining horrors, should I be submitted to some kind of corrective therapy, against my will, just to be sure that my ignorance and fear don't get the better of me? Even if I never really would do "something stupid" about it? What's wrong with letting me have my ignorance and fear? Who are you to tell me what I should or shouldn't think or imagine?
Frankly, I think a world where privacy is unneeded would be great, but in such a world everyone would have to mind their own business. As long as there are people who believe in thoughtcrime, and people who want to "sort you out" before you "do something stupid", I think maybe privacy is something we should hang onto for just a bit longer.
Mod parent up (Score:2)
Mod your own parents up. Mine are busy watching TV (Score:2, Insightful)
To what extent do we want to restrict privacy to the detriment of so called human rights? Who here is in favour of the patriot act?
Well, this lawsuit could have some serious precedent-setting potential. This could well remove the very anonymity that makes the internet so attractive to trolls, flamers, poets, artists, bloggers and all those other people who feel that they are safe out there because the everyday overly litigious yuppie can't figure out
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These things must be done systematically. It must be a sea-change that affects everyone. I will support that sea change and participate in it willingly, but I'm not opening myself up all alone and being the target of our societies most corrupt elements, those who have the most to lose from what I'm proposing.
My point was basically the same; at this point in time, there are people who will take your information and your thoughts and use it against you. They will see the things you've done and the thoughts you've had, and they will "turn you out".
You're right, if there was a 100% complete sea-change in the attitudes of everyone in the world, priva
Re:Serving the summons? (Score:5, Insightful)
Strange. I would think that a free society would be one that cannot assume, based on a person's private thoughts, that said person would "do something stupid." Nor, for that matter, would a free society be one where people may be investigated based on the private, groundless suspicions of others. A free society is not one that seeks to deal with every paranoid instance of its members' private thoughts.
Now, if I periodically saw other peoples' crying children leave the individual's house, or saw illegal child porn on display after being invited into their house, I certainly would have an obligation to have this "sorted out right away." Fact is, people have groundless suspicions about things every day, and a society with the right to get to the bottom of every such suspicion - even when the suspicious person understands that there is no tangible certainty - is the opposite of free.
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These things must be done systematically. It must be a sea-change that affects everyone. I will support that sea change and participate in it willingly, but I'm not opening myself up all alone and being the target of our societies most corrupt elements,
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Abraham Lincoln was a Republican, dumbass.
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Yeah but they've really have liked his suspension-of-habeas-corpus thing.
Re:Serving the summons? (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think this is limited to GOP, as the DEMs also have their issues. Just take a look at the members of congress (both parties), and see who's children are registered lobbyists on issues before congress. If you think that GWB has a low approval rating, and that is in and of itself grounds for impeachment, I would suggest that we impeach the entirety of congress, because the approval rating of congress is even lower than that of GWB.
The problem is, that everyone loves (or likes enough) their congressman, who brings home the bacon from DC, but hates everyone else's for doing exactly the same thing.
I do have a suggestion for the future. Vote third party. I'm Libertarian (big and little "L"), but quite honestly, i'd vote Green (YUCK), Peace n Freedom (Yuck), American Independent (Yuck), Natural Law Party (Yuck) rather than D or R, just to shake DC up. As long as you keep voting for D or R, you're gonna get the same thing as you have now. If you vote for change, and don't get it, you deserve what you get if you don't vote third party.
In fact, I dare say, that if you vote D or R expecting change, you are insane (literally). Only way to change things is to vote third party. Three or four third party congress critters might be enough to shake things up enough to cause a greater revolt.
Sadly, too many people have been brainwashed into thinking that there is only two choices.
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Lincoln, as a politician of the pre-FDR era, does not fit w
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You mean that he suspended habeas corpus, imprisoned 18,000 "suspected" enemies of the state without trial, shut down newspapers that were critical of his presidency and arrested the reporters.
Add to that Lincoln never really opposed slavery... Lincoln did everything to preserve the institution of slavery, and "freed the slaves" simply as a pragmatic measure to harm the Southern economy.
Look, while Lincoln probably has a lot in common with the m
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You have had instances where DNA, from a rape, has been used then once the owner of the DNA was identified they served that person. I would guess this would be the same kind of thing, they have filed with the court that they are suing LawGuy69, then they would request that a judge give them the right to ide
It's Libel (Score:5, Interesting)
I can't see how this could move forward unless the identities are revealed. How else are you going to serve a summons to "LawGuy69" and "LegallyBlonde11111one"? The laws regarding serving summons are pretty explicit.
From what the article said, there's a clear case of libel here. The remarks were untrue, malicious and there's considerable damage. It's surprising that people would take an internet forum attack seriously, but lawyers are slow learners. If the people responsible for that little fuck fest are unmasked, they are going to be made to pay. In cases like this, the damage is what counts even if it now looks foolish.
The unmasking should be easy, if StanfordTroll and friends really are law students. I doubt they have a botnet, so they should be easy enough to root out from records the ISPs keep. If they are not really students or are more sophisticated than average, there's a more interesting story here. I would not put it past either political party to engage in these kinds of attacks for political ends.
The rub is not the burning of the trolls but the lack of anonymity for whistle blowers and others actually reporting news that might embarrass the powers that be.
So? Burn the Trolls! (Score:2)
The rub is not the burning of the trolls but the lack of anonymity for whistle blowers and others actually reporting news that might embarrass the powers that be.
So you might as well burn the trolls. Those other bad things are happening and cases like this and worse have already been used as excuses to violate your privacy. The rest of us might as well get something good out of it while we work to restore real privacy on the internet.
Bwahahah (Score:2, Redundant)
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"Defamation is a false and defamatory statement which is intentionally or negligently published to third persons, is understood by those third persons as relating to the plaintiff, and is actual and proximate cause of damage to plaintiff's reputation."
According to my outline (based on Prossor and Keaton on Torts and Gilbert's Law Summaries), "Damage" is presumed to exist if plaintiff is 1) accused of a crime, 2) of having a loathsome disease, 3) of being sexually promiscuous, or 4) of doing/being something inconsistent with his or her business (something that incline others to not deal with him in his business).
So,
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Better make sure the kids are in bed before you go looking at them, methinks.
Easy, just get the memory (Score:5, Funny)
What's even more surprising (Score:2)
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For one of the women (I'm not sure if she's one of the plaintiffs or someone else), they apparently posted the Facebook and Flickr picture
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Now most people agree on criminal offenses. It's very specifically spelled out in law, precedent, and even the constitution.
Civil offenses are a grey area. You can take the person to court, if you can figure out who they are, but you can't send the cops to their house without the support of a judge,
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No, because ISPs generally are not common carriers to begin with.
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Generally speaking, postings on the internet are assumed to be the property of the poster, and not of the site itself. This is clearly the assumption the litigators in this particular case are working under, as they are still attempting to sue the posters, rather than the site.
From TFA: (Score:5, Insightful)
Except that isn't what you've created, you naive jackass. There is no anonymity in the town square: people speaking their "brilliant or foolish" (or slanderous and defamatory) thoughts are identifiable, and the repercussions for their actions can range from social disapproval to legal sanction. Blanket anonymity creates the exact fucking opposite environment from that of the town square. What Mr. Cohen has created rather resembles a public toilet. This is the same problem with news articles that rely entirely on anonymous sources to divulge personal details about the subject: how is the content any more credible than the random scrawlings of an interstate rest area?
Anonymity is one thing if there is the possibility of unjust sanction for free speech, as in the case of whistleblowing. But if major law firms are, apparently, making decisions about others' character based on a bunch of anonymous cowards on online forums, it just goes to show that no amount of expensive education can cure idiocy.
Of course, Congress is mostly a bunch of lawyers, and it's fun to imagine leading politicians being brought up on specious charges. Perhaps I'll have a change of heart if the president gets impeached, and the impeachment cites "A reputable source named Sunburnt on an anonymous Internet forum, who repeatedly asserts that the President secretly collaborates with the North Korean government."
Re:From TFA: (Score:4, Insightful)
You are 100% correct. When are people going to learn that typing stuff and putting it out on the public Internet is the electronic equivalent of shouting things to the world? There is no anonymity; everything can be traced back to somebody given the time and resources. If you say something in writing and allow it to be published to the world in order to damage someone's reputation, that's libel. Pure and simple. Hiding behind a pseudonym doesn't make it legal or right. If you can't stand by what you say, then don't say it, least of all in a public forum!
Thank you, we now return to you to your normally-scheduled incoherent Slashdot ramblings.
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See, now I just feel cynical. I think most already know this, and are in fact eager to share their thoughtful gems with the world-at-large. MySpace, Blogger, Livejournal, etc...it seems that one can make a fair bit of cash by encouraging folks to seek the attention of anonymous others.
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You may have something there. Even those putting their pictures, locations, and private thoughts on their MySpace page may think, "It's not like anyone really cares about who I am." What they're not getting is that, with the refined searching mechanisms that have risen alongside Internet technology, it takes just one crazy/stupid person to abuse the posters' privacy.
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There is really no reason to bash our nation's fine rest areas, sir. Since the bathhouses closed, they're the source of 90% of my dates.
you're confused (Score:4, Interesting)
therefore, all that is important is the speech we make. who we "are" is no more, or ess, than the words we say. i kind of like this idea: a complete meritocracy of ideas. attaching my speech or your speech to an "identity" won't make it any more or less responsible. so the line in the sand that you are drawing is a red herring: there is no public toilet posting board versus philosopher's lounge posting board. all posting boards are pretty much a special combination of interstate rest stop and town square tha toyu find on the internet. go ahead and view this thread with the cutoff point of -1 for posts. cheek to jowl with some high level intellignet and witty comments, you will find the most utterly retarded and ignorant asocial negative bullshit
in other words, welcome to the internet. you should try to familiarize yourself a little more with your chosen subject matter. there is no such thing as an identity on the internet. it's all without accountability and recourse. which makes it truly free speech
free speech brings out the good the bad and the ugly in human nature. so rather than some rather naive and idealistic individuals expecting that all human speech somehow become only good on the internet, maybe instead some of you, like these litigious law students, need to develop a higher level of tolerance to simple pointlessly negative and useless juvenile snark. it's not going away, no matter what you do. so just get used to it
using your analogy, when you use a rest stop on the highway, and you see the retarded commentary on the walls, does it devastate you? emotionally damage you? no. you just roll your eyes and forget about it 10 seconds later. so why would the snarky juvenile idiocy damage you on the internet?
Re:you're confused (Score:5, Insightful)
I always read Slashdot at -1, in fact, and you're absolutely correct.
Thanks for presuming that I am unfamiliar with the Internet, but your contention is incorrect. One's real ID is certainly traceable in most instances from an online posting, given the proper court authority and technology.
Also, we do have some form of ID on Slashdot. Mine's "Sunburnt (890890)". When you read a post and see my ID at the top, you might recall previous posts of mine and think, "Hey, this guy's usually pretty sharp and probably onto something here, I should credit this more than most other posts" or "Hey, this guy's usually a total jackass and is probably lying about everything in this post." On the other hand, if I post anonymously, you can't even look at my comment history to make such a determination. The concept of anonymity can be applied to varying degrees in diverse situations.
How did you get that conviction out of my comments? I'm a bit too misanthropic to ever expect such a thing.
RTFA. The plaintiffs are specifically alleging material damages as a result of the posts in question. If anyone in this situation needs to adjust their credibility detectors, it's probably the hiring managers who apparently take this sort of juvenile shit-slinging seriously. (Not hard to believe, given their profession.)
you're completely wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
how does it affect you materially? juvenile snarky commentary about your sexuality affects you materially? are you a prostitute? if i say something negative about your tits on the internet, that's going to affect your job as a lawyer?! how?
now let's say some hypothetical retarded hiring manager is just as juvenile as one of the posters, and it DOES aff
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It certainly seems to have done so to the plaintiffs, but that's the matter in front of the court, isn't it?
thank you for the object lesson (Score:2)
that comment doesn't bother me at all. because i am mature. you can attack me all you want. because my ego doesn't depend upon the negativity one finds easily on the internet. your ego seems to though. and amazingly, what you wrote about me being an illiterate shit is preceded by:
I was unaware that mischaracterizing another's attitude, swearing at them, and giving a dime-store psychoanalysis of their personality based on a Slashdot comment were hallmarks of "MATURITY" an
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Little hint: following "that comment doesn't bother me at all" with a 500 word rant on why your opponent sucks... tends to undermine your assertion a bit.
but it doesn't bother me (Score:2)
doesn't bother me. really
but suggest to me there should be no such thing as anonymous posting on the internet?: that bothers the hell out of me. it's oppressive, and controlling, and it was what i was babbling on about. i wasn't mindlessly attacking the poster, i was MINDFULLY attacking the IDEA
understand?
furthermore, you are attacking me about my past behavior. huh? WHATEVER my past behavior, good or bad, because i was wrong in the past means i can't
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Indeed. Still, something can always be learned from unpleasantness, and I think I'll take this fellow's suggestion,
and "serve women's rights" by ceasing to "empower" his retarded juvenilia.
Anonymity vs Pseudonymity (Score:2)
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Pseudonymity - good word, that. Just goes to show that there is a descriptive word for every shade of grey.
More frustrating, to me, than other poster's facile assumption that being upset by abuses of anonymity
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To be fair, future potential employers won't drive by that rest stop to see if there's anything written about you, and use that as part of the hiring decision.
what you just said can be turned on its head (Score:2)
#1: future potential employers who use juvenile commentary on someone's sexuality in a hiring decision are just as retarded and juvenile as the comments themselves, and therefore:
a. aren't worth working for.
b. actionable in a court of law WAY more than the juvenile commentary is.
#2: if you took a future employer out to that hypothetical truck stop and he/she saw that commentary, then what do you imagine happening? "oh, thanks, we can't hire this person. some retard scrawled something re
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What if an anonymous blog entry appeared on some forum with a WMV of you rubbing one out on the jon to a copy of your moms Sears & Roebuck maternity lingerie catalog? (apologies to Sam Kinneson for stealing this) Now
your analogy doesn't hold (Score:2)
i think if someone walked down the street and yelled "jackass" at you the most prudent course of action is to ignore them
and i think that if someone hit you on the head just walking down the street, ignoring them would be pretty stupid
in other words, the issue is more complex than "ignore always" or "respond always"
you have to gauge the severity of the attack. if the attack approached the level of your analogy, perhaps a response is appropriate. but for the severity of everyt
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so If i am in the town square and start screaming about how you are a crazy silly walking fool you can positively identify me?
I think you do not even have a clue as to how hard it is to identify a person from memory or even photograph if you do not personally know them. Then add in I can wear a wig and a fake beard and even make it nearly impossible for even close friends to identify me from a photograph.
That is no different than right here in the internet. I don the wig, beard and glasses when I
Re:From TFA: (Score:5, Interesting)
If you started slandering me in public, I can identify at least which physical person is doing so, and probably get a police officer to tell you to quit disturbing the peace.
Not the point. The point is that you can be apprehended - a body can be associated with its speech. Posting anonymously on the Internet is more like leaving a boom box with a slanderous recording in the public square: while the speaker may ultimately be identified, it's immeasurably harder.
You must have been watching a "Jeeves and Wooster" marathon.
Sorry, but you're just plain wrong. Unless you go to greater lengths to concel the place from where you're posting, the FBI or Secret Service can certainly find you from an anonymous post if you're noticed and deemed a possible threat worth investigating.
I wonder how much time you must spend on the Internet to be unable to recognize the differences between a physical and an online presence?Re: (Score:2)
Not the point. The point is that you can be apprehended - a body can be associated with its speech. Posting anonymously on the Internet is more like leaving a boom box with a slanderous recording in the public square: while the speaker may ultimately be identified, it's immeasurably harder.
But how do you propose to stop anonymous postings on the internet? It is all fine and dandy to say how bad it is, but without fundamentally changing the technology of the internet to allow global tracking of individuals (something that would be hard to achieve, and would have other undesirable effects), and also creating a global law enforcement body with the power to go after people over "bad speech" (which is pretty damn scary), there is nothing that can be done to stop it.
It is up to people doing hiring
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You're not alone in mistakenly inferring this from my posts, but that's not what I propose. I propose that people who use a format they believe to be anonymous (not knowing, as I'll bet these law students didn't know, that there is little real anonymity on the net for the non-tech-savvy) to slander others should be open to the same sanction as people who do attach their own name to slander.
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It isn't like that on the web. Things on the web seem to get automatic credibility, or at least more credibility than they should. I have no idea why, but it probably dates back to when we lived up trees.
The net is different to in-person communication (just a
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No, and I'm dismayed that many posters have hastily inferred such from my distaste for anonymity. I suggest that people who slander or defame others using something they mistakenly assume to be anonymous should be sanctioned in the same way as people who attach their own name to slander or defamation. The problem here is that the idiot law students somehow believe that Internet forums provide anonymity.
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Exactly. Of course, if the suit is correct in asserting material damages as the result of anonymous slander, then it just shows that the hiring folks at major law firms aren't quite so bright.
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A vivid metaphor, indeed. Unfortunately, ever since Dave Chappelle's show, I can't help but think of it more as an exceptionally shitty shopping mall. [tv.com]
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I agree. In the instance described in TFA, however, the suit alleges that such comments did negatively reflect on them - and materially, to boot. If this is the case (and I have no idea how they'll prove that these law firms were influenced in their decision by anonymous we postings), then the law already provides remedies for slander, and the fact that the slande
Could a program slander you ? (Score:2)
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The web is becoming laden with the same (Score:2)
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Are you kidding? It's still always September on U****t.
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Oh, no use hiding that one. They've already found us here.
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u****t
ME TOO!!!!
:
:P
I was going to make a comment as to you need a low enough Slashdot ID to know what U*****T is, but
ClaraBow (212734) Knows
Sunburnt (890890) Knows
I Am Defragged (982459) Doesn't Know
His name cannot be s (16831) Definitly Knows, but won't say
Seems something is out of place. I suspect that ClaraBow has a sufficiently low ID, and Sunburnt must have forgot his original Slashdot ID, and has created another one.
One could easily argue that it's been September around here forever too.
Damn kids.
i'ts like a school project for them (Score:2, Insightful)
hey ladies: random pointless negative asocial retards is pretty much par for the course on internet posting boards, especially when done anonymously. if you post with any regularity on the intertubes, you will get trolled, violently and personal
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what did the juvenile snarky comments say? (Score:2)
1. a company that the woman doesn't really want to work for. if the hiring manager is that stupid, do you really want to work for a company that puts someone that ignorant in the position of hiring manager?
2. a company you could happily sue if it was because of that reason that they weren't hired. and these women have shown they have no problem suing over litt
They are hurting themselves more with this lawsuit (Score:2)
Re:They are hurting themselves more with this laws (Score:2)
Try this: If you find yourself in the position of working for a company which has just hired these women, here are the steps you can take to avoid a lawsuit:
1) Forget to start a thread on the internal company bulletin boards entitled "Stupid Bitch to join MegaDominationCorp."
There is no step two.
All these women have demonstrated is that there is a certain, very high threshold of career-ruining slander that they're not willing
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Or as I say, never attribute to bigotry, what can be explained by misanthropy.
On a more serious note, Dahlia Lithwick on Slate wrote an article [slate.com] that may be of interest here, about how female law students
i have no idea who you are talking about (Score:2)
i might have said i suspected they were another account on k5. i know no one there in real life
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Beyond that, threatening to rape and sodomize som
Phew (Score:5, Funny)
Wow.. so did it work?
If not, they gotta try to post the Internet summons in the form of a "IT'S NOT A JOKE. YOU WON. CLICK HERE TO CLAIM YOUR PRIZE" banner. Maybe throw in a "FREE TRIP!!!" next to it.
That works. Every time.
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Why would law firms read this stuff anyway? (Score:5, Interesting)
Can someone please explain to me why allegedly prestigious law firms would use anonymous and clearly libelous postings as any sort of basis to decide whether to employ someone? Especially when many of the comments appear to be unrelated to legal ability (breast size, sexual orientation etc).
Surely, if these women are indeed excellent graduates, they will have completely non-anonymous references from prestigious law professors saying so. Why would a potential employer need anything else.
Perhaps this problem could best be solved by some sort of automated system which publishes random derogatory comments about all law graduates. Then, these law firms would not be able to employ any new graduates and would eventually go out of business!!
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Re:Why would law firms read this stuff anyway? (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, in the real world, most people applying for jobs, especially for nice jobs at big companies, have to compete with many other people with very similar qualifications. A manager might see some of these defamatory comments (some of which, according to the article, were work related) and decide not to bother with you because they have five other candidates without that baggage. That seems to be what happened in this case.
I'm not saying I agree with this as a hiring practice, by the way. I think it's bullshit, and you wouldn't catch me doing it if I were in a position to hire someone. It's unquestionable that it does happen out there, though.
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Let's say you're in charge of hiring, and still have some contacts at the college you're looking to pull from. You call your buddy and tell him that Doe I looks good on paper, what's the story from the school's perspective. You get a long story about various misdeeds from your buddy. Maybe all you get is a cryptic "I wouldn't recommend them" which is probably more in keeping with hiring law/practices. You elect not to hire based o
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Discovery in this case against the plaintiffs will be interesting. The firms she applied to would probably have to answer why they
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Un-moderated board flame war.. (Score:3, Interesting)
In the new day, insulting comments have greater than a 15 mile range and are still there days/weeks/months later. It's harder to catch the abuser and the damage is greater. The AC bully is still with us. IP logging helps some.
There is a disconnect from the abuser and the victem. The victem sees just the grafiti on the forum and does not have the advantage of the raw transmission to obtain the source data such as login info and IP address. That is why that abuse info has to be required from the site owner if it was ever logged.
Online humiliation of posting an abusers IP address doesn't have the same impact as announcing a radio abuser's street address. I had more than one online radio bully call my DF bluff and had the misfortune to find out I wasn't bluffing. When that realisation became clear, he tried keying on the top of me. I was very patient and simply re-broadcast when he un-keyed. After 40 minutes, he went silent in defeat.
Unfortunately, the only way to clean up the mess is either moderation, or validation. Un-moderated forum space permitting anonymous posting is a bully's paridise. A flame war can quickly fry the place. It has spilled into the legal system. I don't post on un-moderated boards.
Privacy is no right to commit wrong (Score:2)
The justification for privacy is simple: prevention of prejudice. But it is a shield against unfair blows, not a tank where you can launch attacks from protection.
Anonymity has some tradition (Federalist Papers) and protection in the US. But
Why are the plantiffs "Doe I" and "Doe II" (Score:2)
Perhaps a double standard, perhaps I just don't know the relative case law.
What's In a Name? (Score:2)
Cosmic justice - needs volunteer? (Score:3, Interesting)
Then figure out who that pseudonym belongs to. Offer a reward of 10 paypal bucks, an i-five, you know - stupid schwagg that should be more than enough to out the guy by his acquaintances, who undoubtedly also think he's an asshole. Confirm it of course, as best as you're able - maybe get a few pics of the guy along with his schedule, a pic of him taking a pic of one of his targets would be funny as hell, and then come back to Slashdot with the results. A "Hall of assholes who post on AutoAdmit".
Guaranteed those dicks will have a hard time getting a job (or staying in law school if some of those comments are to be believed). And it's not really actionable since all you did was tie his anonymous pseudonym to his real name (again, you'd need a really solid source for who he is), and by God, you didn't promise him any such anonymity.
Now I know, we'd all be in trouble if someone did this to us (for example, my own essays on the transcendent joy of seeing goatse...
I just wasted 15 minutes and still have no opinion (Score:3, Interesting)
After reading Jill's own words, seeing what she was exposed to, I understand her frustration. I can't empathize because I'm not female and subjected to constant oogling, but I can sympathize if she feels wronged. Obviously she does because she is suing. Obviously, as a law student, she realizes the consequences and did more than just spout, "IAMNAL, but blah blah blah" like most people would. If she felt scorned, she knows the suit will increse the actions of the unjust. Hence the really vile emails and comments she is now getting. I don't care how bad a person is or isn't, no one deserves to be called "a diseased AIDS infected cum bucket..."
On the other hand, these are just idiots posting on a message board similar to ours. I wish all boards had our moderation (and meta-moderate). Would it stop it? Nah, but I can decide on days with little time to read the meat (read 2+), or on days with not much to do see the "nice rack" comments (reading -1) which of course would make me pull up the pics since I'm def interested in any pics described in that manner
So where does that leave us? A meager attempt by the law to do what's possibly moral in the eyes of a few. We know they got it dead wrong with DMCA, but right with attempted murder. Yes, I picked extremes, but you can see my point. Morally, is it wrong and they should be sued for calling her what they did? I guess if you had to nail me to the wall one way or the other, I'd say I agree with Jill. Yeah, it makes me uncomfortable agreeing with anyone who associates with variations of the word "feminist" but she might also be using it in a different construct/context. The reason I am comfortable is that free speech has responsible constraints. If you disagree, post a very public attack on $cientology with personal info about yourself, and then tell me in 6 months how you feel. I have a feeling you'll think Jill might have a point.
Interesting Question (Score:3, Interesting)
So if a website is purposefully not logging IPs to avoid identifying anonymous posters, and they receive such a notice, does failure to start logging IPs count as failing to preserve material with possible evidentiary value?