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Levi Johnston's Lawyers Threaten Twitter, Despite No Legal Basis
from the the-law?-what's-that? dept
Last week, Conan O'Brien had William Shatner stop by and read what was believed (at the time) to be twitter messages by Levi Johnston, the former boyfriend to Sarah Palin's daughter Bristol (and father of Bristol's child). O'Brien has done this before, having Shatner read out Sarah Palin's twitter messages, as spoken word poetry. It's an amusing gimmick. The only problem this time around was that the tweets weren't actually by Johnston, but an impostor. O'Brien quickly apologized. Fair enough.
However, what caught my attention was that Johnston's lawyers didn't just threaten O'Brien, but they threatened Twitter itself:
However, what caught my attention was that Johnston's lawyers didn't just threaten O'Brien, but they threatened Twitter itself:
"My client, Levi Johnston, is being impersonated on your media (Twitter) and this is leading to libel and slanderous statements being attributed to him. ... We want you to put an immediate end to this illegal activity. ... You are being used as a medium to promote this illegality and we want immediate action. ... You are now on notice and must take steps to put an end to what is clearly against the law and against your policy. ... We want to know what steps you will be taking to correct what is clearly a problem which is escalating."Now, you can understand why they were upset, and Twitter is usually pretty good at responding to such requests and disabling the accounts (sometimes even going too far). However, the claim that Twitter is now "on notice and must take steps" to end the account is simply not true. Twitter, as the service provider, is protected against such claims and has no specific obligation under the law to change things, no matter how much "notice" his lawyers give. You would think that Johnston's lawyers would understand that -- and that they would be aware of earlier attempts, like the one by Tony La Russa to blame Twitter for an impostor, in which La Russa was forced to learn why Twitter is not liable.
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Don't sue the Shat!
The worst part about this whole affair is that it CONTINUES to keep Palin et al. in the news. The world will be better when this particular episode in US history scabs over.
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Why in the world would you think that?
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http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=140377
I would say that twitter is showing to be very poor at handling obvious situations.
Come on Mike, don't always take the side of new media just to take their side. It makes you look like a shill.
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Re:
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A YEAR? Who are they kidding?
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Keep the Change
Of course they understand!
Their client approaches them and say's, "these people are making me feel uncomfortable, do something about it, we need to change the situation."
Mr BigShot Lawyer say's, " sure we can make it real uncomfortable for them, use real big words and wave a big legal stick at them all."
Mr Levi Client now feels more comfortable and now also feels like a big shot, though its costing him a small fortune.
Does Mr. BigShot Lawyer know they have no chance in hell of winning such a case?
Most probably, but what's that got to do with it?
They respond to a clients wishes and charge accordingly.
Sometime's they neglect to inform the client of his chances and collect the fees. But the client get's what he paid for and is satisfied. Why? Because the problem went away.
In many instances a lawyer will say to his client, " I don't think we can win, but we can cause them lot's of grief". Client say's, " hell yes, make the Bas#*r%$ suffer!"
So, who's the real TWIT here?
Want real change, keep it!
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Re: Keep the Change
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Re: Re: Keep the Change
@ Not So Fast - Kevin
Nice one, you just blew a major hole in some ones ego and cost some one a nice chunk of change. Me likes your thinking.
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Re: Re: Re: Keep the Change
Copyright in the Internet Age Blog
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Not so Fast
"Stratton Oakmont v. Prodigy, 1995 -- Stratton Oakmont is an investment banking group based in New York. One one of Prodigy's bulletin boards, MoneyTalk, someone anonymously posted a mesage saying that Stratton engaged in criminal fraud. Stratton Oakmont sued Prodigy claiming that Prodigy was a "publisher" of the MoneyTalk bulletin board and thus was liable for its content. Prodigy said it was only a passive conduit for material posted on its bulletin boards, but the problem was that it used automatic editorial filters for obscene words, and therefore acted as a publisher. The New York federal court said that since Prodigy exercised some editorial control, it was liable as a publisher of the defamatory statements."
http://www.runet.edu/~wkovarik/class/law/1.5libel.html
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ISP
However, Twitter is not an ISP! "An ISP (Internet Service Provider) is a company that collects a monthly or yearly fee in exchange for providing the subscriber with Internet access." (wisegeek definition). Twitter does not provide access to the internet, it merely is a web based business that provides a service. This is a huge difference and prevents Twitter from having the legal protections afforded to ISPs like AOL and Comcast.
Copyright in the Internet Age Blog
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Re: ISP
Fortunately, the Communications Decency Act's safe harbor provisions (section 230) do not apply only to ISPs:
"No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider."
Twitter is quite clearly an interactive computer service, so they're in good shape legally.
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Re: Re: ISP
Section 230 explicitly exempts from its coverage criminal law, communications privacy law, and "intellectual property claims." So unless Levi also has one of these claims, Twitter should be fine.
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Baby Rape
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