Letters to the Editor
-
Tracking
It may be quite easy (sort of) to track the IP addresses of the defendants. However you then need to prove it is they who have posted the offensive items. If this is a civil suit then, under the standard, this is a feasible prosecution... except, that tons of folks out there leave their wireless routers unprotected, meaning anyone in range can jump on. I am not sure whether it is possible to evaluate post facto, whether a router was previously using encryption, but I doubt it. I know that about 30 posts from as single IP address over the course of a month or two, or more accurately, physical address location, given an unencrypted wireless network in an urban area woul give me enough doubt to question the certainty of the identification.
Unless, we want to assert that people have to be responsible for their own networks and what happens therein...yuck.
How about this: Don't post your picture on 'social networking' sites, idiot.
-
This looks like a simple enough lawsuit.
As others have stated, you file a lawsuit, subpoena the site's records and find out the names of the posters. From there you can locate them easily. If they made slanderous/libelous/defamatory remarks about either of the plaintiffs by name or with such specificity that the individual plaintiff can be identified, it's actionable. The "encouraging rape" allegation I'm not so sure about. Simply posting those words on a blog doesn't look like grounds to sue to me absent the present ability to carry out the threat, but I could be wrong. Now what their damages are, I couldn't guess. I'd be hard pressed to make much of an argument on that. What have they actually lost? I mean who reads this stuff and takes it seriously?
I for one wish blog sites did more to police posters. There's so much that is designed solely to offend and is therefore utterly superfluous to any responsible discussion of issues. If you can't express yourself without libeling another person or encouraging violence against him/her, you don't have much to say. Deleting those posts wouldn't be much of a loss.
-
Warning:
The Internet Is Serious Business(tm).
-
Protected Free Speech...Not
Wow, some people who posted earlier on here are truly psychic. You know that they both hate men. You know they have a man-hating website. You know that they both love to sue people. You should be on that NBC show that on now. Forget about professional magicians!
This is not something to be taken lightly. All of you should know that making derogatory statements about a person's chasteness or lack thereof is DEFAMATORY PER SE. You don't need to prove much more than the statements were made. It's time people think before they post. Potential employers google job applicants now as a matter of routine. You think an employer may not think twice about hiring a woman who arouses such hatred from people? You think an employer may not think that there is the potential for violence? You're wrong. This is more than a comment that someone's a moron, etc. This is hate speech that is trying to incite to violence and it's not protected by the First Amendment. The site should have taken down the posts when asked just like when a newspaper is asked to publish a retraction of a libelous statement. That likely would have been the end of it, but no, the decided that these statements, which have no apparent applicability to the content of the website, should remain. Probably, the operator liked the publicity. Sick.
-
A couple of things to remember
I just want to jump in here and make a couple of things clear.
One is that these women did NOT post their photos to AutoAdmit - their photos were taken from other social networking sites and used without their permission. I'm not sure about the legalities of that situation, but these women were not putting themselves out there to be commented on by these hideous losers.
The other thing is that many AutoAdmit commenters didn't only know the women from their online photos. Many of the commenters went to school with them, described seeing them at campus gyms, etc. That ups the threatening nature of their comments - the women didn't know which of their law school classmates were posting rape threats about them. It wasn't just a case of some anonymous guy across the internet and across the country, it could have been the guy they sit next to in Family Law class, etc. MUCH creepier and more threatening. So it's not just about the potential damage to their careers, but personal safety, too.
This whole situation is just sickening. I can't believe that these assholes are training to be lawyers. I hope none of them ever gets within 100 feet of a rape case.
-
Striesand Effect
While many of the comments made regarding the YLS students were quite loathsome, and some of them are even actionable (most of the comments actually described in the amended complaint would appear to be opinion speech, not defamation or incitement to violence) this case graphically demonstrates why it's better to ignore this sort of behavior. First, if "Doe I" and "Doe II" had ignored it, only a handful of people would have ever read or heard about. Now probably millions of people are aware of what was said about them. And, of course, as a result, the identities and pictures of "Doe I" and "Doe II" have been spread across the Internet to countless other forums. Second, although the complaint is artfully drafted to obfuscate this point, if you read it carefully you'll notice that in fact most of the obnoxious posts were made *after* the lawsuit was originally filed. So the plaintiffs, who claim to be traumatized by these posts, actually attracted *more* abuse to themselves by filing the lawsuit. Keker & Van Nest are laughing themselves all the way to the bank, however.
The title of this comment, by the way, refers to Barbra Streisand's attempts to suppress photographs of her house, which of course just led to the pictures getting wider distribution and more publicity. Pick your battles very carefully on defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress claims.