FunnyJunk lawyer to subpoena Twitter, Ars Technica

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/06/doubling-down-funnyjunk-lawyer-to-subpoena-ars-twitter/

by rkudeshi • 14 years ago

131 91 14 years ago

I can fully guarantee this is going the Jack Thompson route, and he'll continue to waste court time, money and patience up until a judge finally goes "License to law, revoked" and kicks him out. He's got himself stuck in an infinite loop where each time something happens he feels more and more obliged to beef up the threat.

brian_cloutier2• 14 years ago

When a comment of yours is marked dead, that's typically not an invitation to immediately make the same comment verbatim.

ghshephard• 14 years ago

You get "dead" on a dupe submit (happens periodically with me - not sure why) - not just down voting.

nicholassmith3• 14 years ago

When a comment has clearly been double posted by accident that's not an invitation to make a snarky comment.

tptacek6• 14 years ago

I'd be willing to put money against that.

Both Thompson and Carreon (FJ's lawyer) appear to be delusional about the merits of the causes they're putting in front of the court.

But Thompson also appears to be delusional about reality and his role in it: he submitted repeated filings to the court that were laden with cartoons, images, pictures of people he believed were persecuting him, and tirades against the court itself. He did that after being repeatedly warned by the court not to deliver more filings. He did that while one of his previous filings was currently being considered; instead of waiting for a response for the court, he continued to send them additional filings. Here, I'll just let the Florida Supreme Court describe it:

    Thompson has submitted over fifty filings directly with this Court, all of 
    which have either been forwarded to the referee, dismissed, or denied.  
    Additionally, Thompson’s most recent filings are repetitive, frivolous, and, like his 
    earlier ones, insulting to the Court.  One of Thompson’s recent filings contains 
    what Thompson refers to as a “children’s picture book for adults” that rehashes his 
    previous arguments in illustrated form which he states was necessary due to “the 
    Court’s inability to comprehend” his arguments.  Between the text of the motion, 
    Thompson pasted images depicting swastikas, kangaroos in court, a reproduced 
    dollar bill, cartoon squirrels, Paul Simon, Paul Newman, Ray Charles, a handprint 
    with the word "SLAP!" written under it, Bar Governor Benedict P. Kuehne, a 
    baby, Ed Bradley, Jack Nicholson, Justice Clarence Thomas, Julius Caesar, keys, 
    and a house of cards, and the motion concludes with a photograph of the 
    cover of Thompson’s book, Out of Harm's Way.

Thompson therefore appears to have engaged in the legal equivalent of setting himself on fire in front of the building. Carreon is apparently abusing the California legal system, but he's doing it (to date) like a sniper, not like an suicidal schizophrenic street prophet.

nicholassmith3• 14 years ago

Very true, but Thompson at first wasn't all out crazy like a bag of snakes at first. It was as the situation spiralled we got the full crazy.

evilbit• 14 years ago

carreon v. the internet. mr carreon is clearly intent on leaving his mark on the history of internet.

a skid mark, perhaps, but mark no less.

debacle• 14 years ago

I wonder how this will reflect on FunnyJunk in the future.

mrgoldenbrown• 14 years ago

People that use FunnyJunk may not care. It was already full of non attributed, obviously stolen content, but some people still patronized it. In fact it seems as though many people passionately defended it at various times!

praptak• 14 years ago

The internet crowds might cheer you on when you grab content without attribution, but being litigious is pitchforks and torches to you, especially when it is against freedom of expression on the internet.

grassclip• 14 years ago

"It might not have seemed very dehumanizing when Walt Disney made Japanese people look silly with buck teeth and big glasses who could not pronounce their 'R's or their 'L's," he said. "But it was dehumanizing, and the purpose was to direct evil intentions against them, which ultimately resulted in the only nuclear holocaust that ever occurred in the history of humanity. I don't think Truman would have ever done that if we hadn't so dehumanized the enemy. When you dehumanize someone, that is the first step to inciting people."

Ha. He claims that Disney was the reason the U.S. dropped the nuclear bombs. Interesting analogy.

riffraff• 14 years ago

read more carefully, he uses disney as an example, but then he says _we_ (americans) have dehumanized the enemy.

While i find this completely irrelevant to the discussion at hand, he may have a bit of a point on that.

bicknergseng2• 14 years ago

Every war time country dehumanizes their enemies. If we portrayed the Taliban or Vietcong as freedom fighters saving children from American boots or the Nazis portrayed the Jews as hardworking members of society, the surrounding events would have been much different.

That said, I'm quite certain Disney's cartoons had absolutely nothing... NOTHING... to do with HST's decision to drop the bombs. Furthermore, the poor analogy has an obscure correlation at best with the current lawsuit.

derleth3• 14 years ago

> which ultimately resulted in the only nuclear holocaust that ever occurred in the history of humanity

... which, in turn, prevented us from blockading Japan to starve them out a bit in preparation for a massive beach-head assault on the Home Islands, which would likely have been the most massive loss of life in conventional warfare in the history of the human race, and could well have ended the Japanese as a distinct culture and ethnicity.

If you're going to make a point, by all means make it; don't imply the opposite of what you intend.

pyre3• 14 years ago

After the fact, we know that they were about to surrender anyways. Had we avoided the bomb, there would have been no beach-head assault.

fatman• 14 years ago

Carreon is in on it, and is just intentionally creating some buzz to drum up donations to some worthy causes. Well played.

RobMcCullough• 14 years ago

Ooh, and the plot thickens! Just when I thought there could be no happy ending to this story!

chime2• 14 years ago

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.

warfangle• 14 years ago

Apparently most of what he was doing was just linking to CC's press interviews. According to TFA, at least.

chime2• 14 years ago

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.

crazygringo• 14 years ago

But doesn't Twitter have a "verified" badge for real-world people whose identities have been verified?

I thought it went without saying that Twitter handles, above all newly-created ones, were fake unless they had that additional badge.

petercooper• 14 years ago

No, only for a small subset of people and all chosen at Twitter's discretion (they don't take suggestions).

tptacek6• 14 years ago

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.

hobin• 14 years ago

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?

makomk• 14 years ago

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.

derleth3• 14 years ago

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?

purephase• 14 years ago

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.

rome• 14 years ago

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.

beedogs• 14 years ago

> 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.

bicknergseng2• 14 years ago

Wait.... did Carreon just try to blame the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on Walt Disney?

sageikosa3• 14 years ago

collect

vacri2• 14 years ago

He was saying that dehumanising speech contributed to it. And he's somewhat correct. The funny thing is that he is equating what's happening to him to the nuclear holocausts with his serious face on.

It's been overlooked a little, but in the article they juxtapose him saying "I always speak respectfully and never use even soft curse words" with his actual website with parodies using exactly what he says he doesn't.

chris_wot3• 14 years ago

It's possible he didn't write any of that material on that website.

solox3• 14 years ago

Not sure where this is going. Isn't there a law that persecutes lawyers wanting to abuse the law for personal gain?

engtech• 14 years ago

I wonder what would happen if everyone started calling him that "funny, junk lawyer"

SimHacker• 14 years ago

Reminds me of Brad Templeton, who moderated rec.humor.funny, and had a usenet address like utzoo!watmath!looking!brad -- so he was known as the "funny looking guy"!

jfoutz2• 14 years ago

Lets try to ruin lives over imaginary internet points!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayres_law

derleth3• 14 years ago

Fixed link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre%27s_law

(Your link really doesn't lead anywhere useful. Try it.)

jlgreco3• 14 years ago

I wonder how hard it would be to make mediawiki automatically redirect in cases like this.

From what I've heard of mediawiki's code.. probably very. Oh well.

jfoutz2• 14 years ago

Thanks, to old to fix. I'll have to be more vigilant.

seanalltogether• 14 years ago

I think it's really important to point out that Inman never directed his attack toward Carreon personally, it was all directed toward the letter, which FunnyJunk is responsible for. The only point of the blog post that is directed personally towards Carreon is in the beginning.

>The owner of FunnyJunk hired Charles Carreon, a lawyer who became famous in the 90s after successfully litigating sex.com. Charles does a bit of modeling too, apparently.

grellas• 14 years ago

If I am a boxing manager sitting at the corner of the ring to encourage my guy during the fight, I don't do him a good service by leaping into it and taking wild swings at the opposing fighter, or at the ref, or at any crazy person from the crowd who also happens to want to jump in spoiling for a brawl. The result in such a case is not likely to bode well for either me or my fighter and I stand a good chance of being made to look ridiculous in the process.

In a sense, like the manager above, Mr. Carreon has thrown himself personally into a fight that was not his fight but that of his client. He has made it personal and now finds himself suing in spray-gun fashion hoping to hit the nearest target connected with the events, whether the law supports him strongly, feebly, or perhaps not at all - all the while standing forth in a public spotlight that magnifies his every action whether good, bad, or indifferent. There is no winning for him in that situation, whatever the merits of his claims.

The most valuable asset of a lawyer is his reputation. I won't presume to tell Mr. Carreon how best to defend his but, whatever else he does, he needs to be very careful not to exacerbate a situation that already is very difficult for him. Whatever wrong may have been done to him, the solution does not lie in a lawsuit of the type that has been filed here.

lmkg• 14 years ago

Should/can Funny Junk fire Carreon at this point for his foolish behavior? If they do so, how much does Carreon's own cases depend on his relationship with Funny Junk, and what are the consequences? If I were FJ I would be pretty pissed, because Carreon is using FJ's case for his own personal benefit, and in so doing is dragging his client's name into a potential second shitstorm above and beyond the first one they already signed up for. I'm curious how that relationship will pan out, and what alternatives are available to each party.

alttab• 14 years ago

And even more hilarious if FunkyJunk sues him for tarnishing their site's reputation by acting like an idiot on their behalf.

JackC• 14 years ago

Yeah, you can (just about) always fire your lawyer. The right to have the lawyer of your choosing -- or not -- is pretty fundamental. If they're working on a contingency ("I get X% of anything we recover"), you'll have to pay them a fair hourly rate for the work they've already done.

(Incidentally, this makes it pretty tough to hold lawyers to non-compete agreements, because their clients have a right to keep working with them even if they switch firms.)

Now, whether FunnyJunk likes or doesn't like the publicity this is bringing them is a separate question. You got me on that one.

chris_wot3• 14 years ago

Funny Junk has already exhibited foolish behaviour. What makes you think they aren't egging him on?

raquo• 14 years ago

A more general lesson out of here: sunk costs are sunk, and Martingale strategy never pays off (it only pays back, and even then – if you're lucky).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martingale_(betting_system)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost

AncientPC2• 14 years ago

Actually, the Martingale system does pay off if you have unlimited resources. However casinos artificially create limited resources by setting table limits.

nhebb• 14 years ago

> Martingale strategy never pays off

It did for me. I used it at the roulette wheel on my last trip to Vegas. I knew the strategy's critical flaw, but thought I would try it for a while. I went up over a $900 and quit for the evening. The next day, I quickly dropped $200 and stopped. I know it was just luck (and I won't be buying Lanai with the proceeds), but you did say never pays off, practically forcing me to be the contrariaHN.

uvTwitch• 14 years ago

I think Matthew Inman put it best: "It's interesting to watch a man with his dick in a hornet's nest try to solve the problem by tossing his balls in as well."

slavak• 14 years ago

  As to who the person was, Carreon had some ideas: it was someone "incited by Inman, or in the alternative and on information and belief, Inman himself."

Isn't this by itself libel?

EDIT: Formatting.

pwg• 14 years ago

Those who fail to learn from the Streisand Effect [1] are doomed to repeat it.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect

FunnyJunk lawyer to subpoena Twitter, Ars Technica

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