Techdirt. Stories filed under "misappropriation"

Tony La Russa Twitter Lawsuit Ended For Real

Mike Masnick — Mon, 6 Jul 2009 17:45:00 PDT

Last month, we noted that baseball manager Tony La Russa had sued Twitter over an obviously fake profile pretending to be him (the profile bio even said it was fake). Even if there was any sort of claim here, it would be against the person who created the account, not Twitter itself. Oddly, a few days later, La Russa announced that Twitter had settled the case, and was donating money to La Russa's charity. That seemed like it would set a bad precedent in that it would just give others incentive to sue Twitter. Except... it turned out it wasn't true. Even though La Russa said it happened, Twitter said there was no truth at all to the settlement or the charitable donation (quick question: would that make La Russa guilty of defamation?)

However, as Michael Scott alerts us, the lawsuit has now ended for real, with La Russa dismissing the charges after a "settlement" was reached, with no money exchanging hands either way. Hopefully, others quickly realize that suing Twitter for the actions of its users is a dead end, but I get the feeling this is not the last of these sorts of lawsuits.

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La Russa & The AP Claims Twitter Settled Lawsuit... Twitter Sets The Record Straight

Mike Masnick — Mon, 8 Jun 2009 07:55:00 PDT

Last week, St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa sued Twitter over a fake account made in his name. La Russa had no case. Multiple lawyers chimed in, and I've yet to hear from any who thought he had even a remote chance to win this case. However, the AP reported that Twitter settled, deleted the account and agreed to donate an undisclosed sum to a La Russa-backed charity. This seemed like a really bad idea, because it would just encourage others who had fake accounts opened up to sue. Hell, if someone were really sneaky, they could get a friend to open up a fake account, and then go and sue Twitter to get some settlement money. Giving in to bullies with no legal basis can come back to haunt you.

But... Twitter is claiming the story is not true. It does say that it deleted the account, but that's because of the terms of service violation -- not because of any settlement. Instead:

Reports this week that Twitter has settled a law suit and officially agreed to pay legal fees for an impersonation complaint that was taken care of by our support staff in accordance with our Terms are erroneous. Twitter has not settled, nor do we plan to settle or pay.

With due respect to the man and his notable work, Mr. La Russa's lawsuit was an unnecessary waste of judicial resources bordering on frivolous. Twitter's Terms of Service are fair and we believe will be upheld in a court that will ultimately dismiss Mr. La Russa's lawsuit.

Now that is a lot more like it. In the meantime, it's worth noting that La Russa still doesn't seem to recognize the case still has no chance:

"There is a law against improperly using a person's name without authorization and it wasn't authorized."

I'm curious (a) which law he's talking about specifically and (b) how this was "improper use." The account was clearly a parody (and said so in the bio). There was no implied endorsement of anything or other misuse of La Russa's name. And, even if La Russa's statement was true, the liability would certainly be on whoever created the account -- not Twitter. While the details of what actually happened still aren't clear... I'm guessing that after Twitter deleted the account, La Russa simply assumed they "settled." Most likely, his lawyers will drop the lawsuit, but it would be interesting to see if Twitter pushes to keep the lawsuit in place in order to try to get a favorable ruling and use it to prevent other, similar, frivolous lawsuits.

Oh, and in the meantime, isn't the Associated Press supposed to fact check things like "Tony La Russa and Twitter have reached a settlement in his lawsuit against the social networking site" and "Twitter has agreed to pay legal fees and make a donation to his Animal Rescue Foundation" both of which appear not to be true? The AP keeps telling us that only its "professional" journalists get things right -- whereas those "amateur" bloggers out there screw up the news all the time. Or did the AP figure that it could get away with not fact checking, since it could just threaten to sue any blogger who quoted its erroneous report?

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Tony La Russa Sues Twitter Over Fake Profile

Mike Masnick — Wed, 3 Jun 2009 14:27:41 PDT

Video Savant has sent in the news that St. Louis Cardinals' manager Tony La Russa is suing Twitter, claiming that the company is guilty of trademark infringement, cybersquatting and misappropriation of likeness and name, because someone set up a fake Tony La Russa profile. He claims that he tried to contact the service and was unable to get them to take down the fake profile (which seems odd, since the company has apparently been pretty good about taking down fake accounts upon request). However, when he was unable to do that, he filed the lawsuit. Either way, it's difficult to see the lawsuit going very far. While (tragically) there is no section 230 or DMCA-type safe harbors for trademark, common sense should make it clear that it's not Twitter that's the liable party here (if there's any liability), but whoever created the account. Even then, it's difficult to see this getting very far. The use wasn't "in commerce" which should preclude most trademark claims, and the nature of the fake La Russa tweets suggests that anyone who read them would likely realize that it was a parody of the real La Russa. Still, there was a similar issue recently with Kanye West getting angry over fake users on Twitter -- but it hardly seems like something worth suing about. If the person is so famous, then it's not hard for them to (as West did) point out that the profile is fake, and it shouldn't much matter any more.

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E911 Tax Money - When It's Not Going To Boots, It Just Goes

Derek Kerton — Tue, 26 May 2009 15:40:00 PDT

Your U.S.A. cellular phone bill, since the early 1990s, has had a fee levied on it by governments for E911 services. The fee differed from state to state, and was ostensibly to fund the upgrade of 911 call centers. The public safety call centers were to be readied to receive location information from cell phones, and to use that information to instruct emergency crews. The cellular carriers were required to collect this tax for the government, but were also separately required to design, create, and deploy the (much more expensive) systems that can determine where the caller is. The government basically required the carriers to fund a public safety system (which you may or may not agree with). One thing with which none of us could agree was that the E911 taxes on our phone bills were promptly squandered by governments, for years, on just about everything except 911 call center upgrades. Money was mis-spent on ballpoint pens, conference attendance, dry cleaning, and boots.

Most of that is history; much of the US is now ugraded. (Please don't rely on E911, as it only works when you have a good cell signal, battery power, and a few other things. Don't use it as a crutch or as a "safety device"!) So what do you think will happen to those monthly taxes that were collected for so many years? Time to cancel them, right? Not so fast, says the State of Hawaii, which gets 66 cents of E911 fees from every monthly bill. This article in the Honolulu Advertiser shows how various government agencies are trying to get their hands on the "windfall." A few examples of this include: the Honolulu PD wants a new dispatch system for $20m, the Board that manages the fund wants their mandate extended to spend on other tech like VoIP location, the State hired a new Executive Director of the E911 fund for $294,421/yr, the legislature is taking $16M from the fund to help balance the budget, and some are trying to build new cell towers with the money. The article predicts future raids on the funds, and given what we've seen nationwide, we would agree.

What is it about this country that we can't just call a tax a tax. We seem to have an addiction to tucking and hiding fees into a wide range of services, where over time the fees have little to do with the services. Dear government: If you're going to tax me, please just do it up front, talk to me honestly, and say it's a tax. I want to feel you reaching into my pocket, instead of having you just skim the till behind my back.

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