While I'm on the side of TheOatMeal on this one, I wouldn't be so quick to defend someone signing up as @Charles_Carreon on Twitter. That person impersonated the lawyer during a very sensitive time and negatively changed public view, even if later Twitter suspended the account. It's not parody, it's impersonation.
I can't create a fake account 'pg[invisible-unicode-character]' here and start posting things like "I wish dhouston would just sell Dropbox to Apple already." That's not acceptable, regardless of whether the person being impersonated is loved or hated by all.
I've been following this case on Popehat and Lowering The Bar (two excellent legal blogs) and both have been at pains, in every post, to plead with the Internet to stop fucking with Carreon and FJ: the Internet pranks are, regardless of how Carreon appears to be reacting to them, making Carreon's actual goals easier to obtain.
The consensus seems to be that Carreon has less than no case, and may in fact be setting himself up for significant reprisals from the courts... except to the extent that douchey Internet pranksters build a case for him by breaking the law themselves.
But are such people breaking the law? To my knowledge, being a douchebag on the internet is not a crime (nor do I think it should be). Could you perhaps point me to one of those posts that explain this in more detail?
If being a douchebag involves defamation, then yes, you can be sued in civil court. This is all going under civil action, not criminal court (big difference).
Remember, broadly speaking, defamation is just undertaking some action that gives some entity a negative image. Before you go nuts on that, yes, truth is a defense against defamation (ie: it is not defamation if it is true). At which point parody becomes defamation is something of a grey line, which Carreon will try his hardest to use.
If Carreon can paint the image in court that the internet is after him, it would probably help him make his case that the fake twitter account is defamation, not mere parody. After all, context matters.
That is an excellent point. I know it will be next to impossible, but the best tactic at this point is to ignore him and not rise to the "threat".
He's decided to blindly start swinging. While it is certainly possible that he will not hit anything regardless of the community reaction, the minimal probability of success will be such a pain-in-the-ass that it is not worth it.
I don't quite get the logic here: "Random people you have no control over acted like assholes (in a possibly illegal fashion), therefore you lose your lawsuit and are an asshole loser in the eyes of the law." How does that work?
The idea is simply that Carreon's current complaints are almost utterly meritless, but if he's hacked or unlawfully slandered, his claims actually do have merit; even if they won't in the end be held against Matthew Inman, it'll still be a drag on everyone to sort them out.
Maybe not so much legally, but in any other way it might not work so well. It only takes someone to summarise the course of events as "Inman incites mob to exact revenge on audacious lawyer", and suddenly Carreon is the victim.
Of course, the mob's lust for blood achieves nothing but self preservation, and even if the claims are baseless, we're observing each day the consequences of its actions; mostly in the form of Carreon building up his case with ostensibly supportive evidence, and dragging other websites into the fray who had no involvement except to allow people to comment.
But, I dunno, I'm not the greatest advocate of internet vigilantism.
I agree it doesn't make any sense, but the fact of the matter is that even judges commit the fallacy of guilt by association, without being aware of it. If hundreds of assholes and a dozen criminals support you, then that makes it seem more likely that you are an asshole or a criminal. Statistically that is probably even correct, even though it's still guilt-by-association in an individual case.
> If hundreds of assholes and a dozen criminals support
> you, then that makes it seem more likely that you are
> an asshole or a criminal.
I'll bet there are a lot of criminals/assholes that like watching The Colbert Report. If they do illegal (or douchey) things on behalf of Stephen Colbert, does that mean that he can be personally held accountable (assuming he doesn't make a call to action on-air).
Of course, it's impossible to stop anonymous individuals from the Internet from fucking with someone once they're riled up, and I'm pretty sure everyone involved in this knows that. Indeed, The Oatmeal appears to be relying on this as a tactic.
The Oatmeal appears to be relying on this as a tactic
I'm not sure why you feel this is the case. They've been careful to redact Carreon's contact info from the document's they've published and they've been saying things like "And to anyone else who is reading this: it goes without saying, but stop harassing Carreon. Be lawful and civil in your interactions with him."
If Matthew Inman wrote anything with the specific intention of goading anonymous Internet users into committing torts or crimes against Carreon, then Inman could have real problems.
I don't believe at all that that's Inman's intent.
Everything The Oatmeal wrote is still available[1][2][3], and I didn't see any suggestions that users attack or otherwise harass Carreon or FunnyJunk. In fact, the owner of Funny Junk sent a direct message to all users of the site asking them to "contact" Inman "any way [they could]".
According to the article on Ars Technica, the lawyer sent copies of his ID to Twitter to verify he was being impersonated and the account was suspended.
Twitter requires no ID to create an account. The account could have been Carreon in so much as Twitter knows. Even Facebook, which requires your "real name", has no idea if you are who you say you are.
> While I'm on the side of TheOatMeal on this one, I wouldn't be so quick to defend someone signing up as @Charles_Carreon on Twitter. That person impersonated the lawyer during a very sensitive time and negatively changed public view, even if later Twitter suspended the account. It's not parody, it's impersonation.
And the person that created the account was from Sweden.
Carreon is going to have a fun time getting him into court in the US for a civil case.
You just need one line to change public opinion. I myself fell for the following line when I saw it last week:
> "You sir, are a dumbass. I am doing what any sane individual would do."
I saw it linked somewhere, briefly glanced at it, thought "wow, this guy's not fit to be anyone's lawyer", and moved on. I didn't have time or desire to dig into it to find out if it was really him or not. This article has managed to salvage some of that but I doubt everyone who saw the impersonated tweet will learn about the truth.
It's really no different from being labelled "Arrested for XYZ" by the media and then being proven 100% guilt-free. Even if the media redacts the stories or posts new information, the damage is already done in most cases.
> I saw it linked somewhere, briefly glanced at it, thought "wow, this guy's not fit to be anyone's lawyer", and moved on.
In fairness, the real guy's public statements have had the same effect. I'm not sure a parody account can really be said to have affected the guy's reputation, it's already about as tanked as can be.
I can't create a fake account 'pg[invisible-unicode-character]' here and start posting things like "I wish dhouston would just sell Dropbox to Apple already." That's not acceptable, regardless of whether the person being impersonated is loved or hated by all.