The Streisand Effect

Congressman Lives up to Reputation

Florida Congressman, Alan Grayson (Rep), should have kept his mouth shut (is that even possible for a politician?) when a local Florida resident expressed her views of the Congressman online.

Angie Langley set up a blog entitled MyCongressmanIsNuts.com, in parody to Grayson’s site, CongressmanWithGuts.com.  Within the content of her blog Langley falsely claimed she was a constituent of Grayson’s district, amongst other negative propaganda against the politician.

In response to Langley’s site, Grayson sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder stating that she is misrepresenting herself as Grayson’s constituent, and should be fined and jailed for 5 years!

Not only did Grayson turn a non-issue into a major issue, but he also brought Langley’s campaign to the public eye.  Major news networks have posted articles on this story, and Langley has had some time in front of the camera herself.

Seems like the only person benefiting from Grayson’s request for imprisonment is Langley.  It’s certainly not Grayson.

Posted in Politics, Websites | Tags: alan grayson, angie langley, Florida, Politics |
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Tiger has more to reveal

What’s worse than having nude photographs of you floating around?  Try being Tiger Woods and having nude photographs of you floating around.  Yes, things could actually still get worse for ol’ Tiger, and his Lawyers aren’t helping the situation.

According to TechDirt, Tiger’s London based lawyers have recently gagged the UK press from discussing certain details of his personal life.  This only means one thing – there are more saucy details yet to be revealed about Tiger’s escapades.  The question is, what are these details?

Reuters.com published an article mentioning this court order, and noted that the request specifically banned any British media from publishing nude photos or video of Tiger having sex.  Of course, that’s “not to be taken as an admission that any such photographs exist.”

They’re just covering their bases, right?  Maybe a better option would have been to keep their mouths shut altogether rather than bringing up the “supposed” pictures in the first place.

Just wait until the US media gets ahold of this one…those photos won’t be so private anymore!

Posted in Celebrities, Sports | Tags: tiger woods |
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The Video Professor wants to make sure you know how scammy he is.

You’ve seen his ads on TV — “The Video Professor”.  He’ll teach you eBay or PowerPoint or some such program, with a free trial.  As it turns out the trial is pretty sneaky.

When you sign up, you pay about $5 for shipping and that’s it.  However, buried deep in the site it tells you that they’ll be sending you a bunch of other stuff and charging you $290 for it.  Not good.

Michael Arrington at TechCrunch called them out on it, and they’ve responded by loudly complaining about it.  Their complaints have led to even more people finding out about what they do.

The Consumerist has a great recap of the entire situation.  Not only are they apparently a very shady company, they’re pretty dumb too.  When someone writes stuff like that about your company, the last thing you want to do is draw more attention to it.  Oops…

Posted in Companies | Tags: consumerist, ebay, john scherer, michael arrington, powerpoint, techcrunch, video professor |
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D. Marvin Jones can’t let it go

It’s kind of a sad story.  University of Miami law professor Donald Marvin Jones was arrested in 2007 for soliciting a prostitute.  He denied the claims, and the charges were later dropped.  The law blog AboveTheLaw had written a series of posts about the story and included his faculty photo.  Jones has filed a lawsuit against the blog, claiming that the use of the faculty photo is a copyright violation.

As TechDirt points out, there are two big problems with this:

1 — He likely doesn’t hold the copyright on the photo.
2 — Even if he does, it’s very clearly a fair use claim.

In the end, it just draws more people to the story.  I had never heard about Mr. Jones or this situation before, but now he’s bringing it all back to the forefront.

Posted in Copyright, Lawsuits, People | Tags: d marvin jones, donald marvin jones, university of miami |
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Ralph Lauren doesn’t like that you don’t like their ad

Ralph Lauren has a new ad out with an impossibly skinny model in it.  As Boing-Boing put it, “Dude, her head’s bigger than her pelvis”.

The ad was highlighted on PhotoshopDisasters, as an example of (we really hope) bad Photoshopping.  However, Ralph Lauren filed a (bogus) DMCA takedown notice on the post, which has since been removed.

That’s the end of it, right?  Post removed, story gone.  Ha!  BoingBoing has now covered the story, as has the Huffington Post, TechDirt and others.  Ralph Lauren filed a DMCA complaint against BoingBoing, but their ISP (Canada’s Priority Colo) knows what they’re doing, and didn’t remove the post.  They spoke with BoingBoing about it, and decided (rightfully) that the post can stay.

Not only can we all see the insane ad, but we can see just how out of touch Ralph Lauren is.

Posted in Copyright, Lawsuits | Tags: ad, boingboing, dmca, huffington post, ralph lauren, techdirt |
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Bank screws up; tries to sue Google so word doesn’t get out

A small bank in Wyoming made a double-oops last month.  They sent some sensitive information to the wrong Gmail address, but also included a document that shouldn’t have been sent at all.  They didn’t want their customers to learn of the breach, so they’ve sued Google.  Huh?

A customer of the Rocky Mountain Bank asked to have some loan documents sent to one of their representatives.  The bank sent the documents to someone with a similar e-mail address, and also included an attachment that held informtion on 1,325 other customers — names, tax ids, social security numbers, etc.  Amusingly, the bank employee then “tried to recall the e-mail without success”.  Yeah, I don’t think so.  You can read details about the breach here (PDF).

So far, Google is holding strong.  They say they won’t comply with a court order, even after which their policy is to notify an account holder and give the person a chance to object to the disclosure of their identity.

This is really so simply it’s stupid — if you want to keep a low profile, don’t sue Google.

Posted in Banking, Lawsuits | Tags: gmail, google, lawsuit, rocky mountain bank |
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Rick Pitino wants the press to not report on his press conference

Rick Pitino, head coach of the Louisville basketball team, has sure made a big mess — cheating on his wife, involved in an extortion attempt, and a variety of other strange things.  The problem is that he’s making it worse.

The story was starting to die down a bit, but Rick made sure it was front and center.  He called a press conference to discuss it, during which he told everyone to stop talking about it.  Huh?  What had drifted to being a third page story was now on the front page of every paper again — because of him!

To make it worse, he did some dumb things.  He loves to discuss national tragedies to make his problems seem relatively meek.  He brought up 9/11 in the past, and used Ted Kennedy this time.  The Sporting News theorizes that his statements during the press conference may get the trial moved to another state, which will be a headache for Rick to travel to during the basketball season.

Rick — you were advised by your lawyers not to say anything else.  Next time, listen to them!

You can watch the press conference below:

Posted in Celebrities, Sports | Tags: basketball, extortion, louisville, press conference, rick pitino, ted kennedy |
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How to look bad: File a bad lawsuit, lose, then appeal anyhow

Sedgwick Claims Management looked bad, then worse, now awful.  A guy was upset with the company so he took some pictures of Sedgwick and put them on fake “wanted” posters.  Sedgwick responded by hiring a big national law firm (Lord Locke) to go after the guy, who chose to defend himself.  Sedgwick lost the case, because the judge ruled it was (rightfully) fair use.

Not content with looking foolish in court once, Sedgwick is going back for more.  They’ve appealed the ruling and, as Eric Goldman states, they have “extra time to bask in the glow of the Streisand Effect”.

Posted in Lawsuits | Tags: appeal, lawsuit, lord locke, sedgwick |
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Did you know that Liskula Cohen is a skank?

Not only didn’t I know she might be considered a “skank”, I had never even heard of her.  However, because of a short-sighted lawsuit to uncover the identity of a blogger that called her that, a lot more people now know.

This is another case where letting it slide would have been the best thing to do.  Why?  The blog in question had a total of four posts on it.

The big problem is the potential legal ramifications of this lawsuit.  The judge has ruled that calling Cohen a “skank” is potentially defamatory and not just an opinion or everyday insult.  To quote CitMediaLaw:

But Madden found that use of the terms “skank,” “skanky,” “ho” and “whoring” defamed Cohen because they appeared in captions near photos of the model in provocative poses. “Under these circumstances,” Madden wrote, the words combined with the suggestive photos “carry a negative implication of sexual promiscuity.”

Madden also rejected the blogger’s contention that the words were vague insults. “In the context of this specific blog, such words cannot be reasonably viewed as comparable in meaning and usage to the word ‘jerk’ or any other loose and vague insult,” Madden held.

It’ll be interesting to see where this case goes.

Posted in Celebrities, Lawsuits | Tags: citmedialaw, liskula cohen, skank |
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