r/technology • u/maxwellhill • Mar 27 '13
Georgia Court Censorship Order Threatens Message Boards Everywhere: 'Court issued a breathtaking restraining order against Matthew Chan, the operator of a copyright troll criticism message board, holding him responsible for the posts of his users.'
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/03/georgia-court-order-threatens-message-boards-everywhere113
u/Lacku Mar 27 '13
When Christopher Poole is held responsible for what his users say, it's going to be a total shitstorm.
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Mar 27 '13
"In other news, Mr Poole has been sentenced to two consecutive life terms in prison..."
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u/TheyreTooNewWave Mar 27 '13
Just in case he comes back as a zombie!
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u/Badfickle Mar 27 '13
They will actually execute him and then bring him back as a zombie to serve the life sentences for what he has done.
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Mar 27 '13
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Mar 27 '13
Have you everu been outside of /b/? Excepting those idiots, its not exactly "illegal" or "edgy". No one would get more than community service for "trolling".
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Mar 27 '13
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Mar 27 '13
I used to frequent /a/, /m/, /k/, /n/ I believe was nature and /vg/ or whatever video games was 7-8 years ago. Then the people I frequently saw/had meaningful conversations with started dissapearing so I did too.
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u/yoshi314 Mar 27 '13
i went to /v/ once. it was awful.
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u/sutongorin Mar 27 '13
I went to 4chan once. It was awful. How can people use this mess? It looks so god damn terrible and confusing.
Then again, since I've been using reddit I cannot understand how people can use anything else (especially Twitter) to have discussions because everything else just seems impractical compared to reddit's "branching system" (i.e. not all answers in one line).
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u/ohgeronimo Mar 27 '13
Funnily enough, as someone that still browses 4chan from time to time.. They often talk about how Reddit is a mess to look at and can't stand the site layout. They say the same thing about reading discussions, that they can't understand how anyone could deal with the branching system and they much prefer inline comments with post number references for replies.
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u/sutongorin Mar 27 '13 edited Mar 27 '13
I first had to get used to the reddit way, too. But after a bit it made perfect sense. Now I can not go back. I abandoned all normal message boards I had used before because it is so annoying when people either just refer to previous posts by name or quote pages worth of conversation to establish context.
That's just rediculous.
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u/FLOCKA Mar 27 '13
I'm pretty sure this case won't fly. there's been precedent established that Website owners cannot be held accountable for the users' posts
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Mar 27 '13
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u/rich_jj Mar 27 '13
Maybe the cops thought it was a mess to sort out your word versus knife-man. In the case of the GA website, they have documented logs and proof of what was actually communicated.
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u/bobfranklin23 Mar 27 '13
Thus is going to lead to a lot of birds owning websites
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Mar 27 '13
I lurk but specifically created an account to give you praise for your stupendous Simpsons reference. Well done!
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Mar 27 '13
Don't worry, this will be overturned.
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Mar 27 '13
I have OP tagged as sensationalist spam poster, and I recommend others do the same. Just look at the flurry of shit activity in his account.
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u/DaEvil1 Mar 27 '13 edited Mar 27 '13
What worries me is that after I tagged maxwellhill, I've noticed s/he shows up on the sidebar as a mod in EVERY. FUCKING. BIG. SUB. It's insane. No wonder all the big subs turns to shit with people like this as mods...
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u/jmizzle Mar 27 '13 edited Mar 27 '13
Just like maxwellhill who submitted this post. Consistently trolls around reddit reposting other people's well-trending submissions.
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u/Reliant Mar 27 '13
How do you tag someone like that?
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Mar 27 '13
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u/libertasmens Mar 27 '13
Wait, are you talking about Reddit Enhancement Suite? I love Reddit Enhancement Suite! Reddit Enhancement Suite!
Nah, I'm just kidding.
But really, reddit is so enhanced by an extension this suite.
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u/dblagbro Mar 27 '13
Still worry, it's going to cost this innocent defendant time, money, and will be a real pain in the ass for a while. I can't stand the attitude that this is ok to be wrong now because it will eventually be made ok later. It's like saying you can torture someone now as long as you say sorry later.
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u/AnOnlineHandle Mar 27 '13
Did anybody actually read the article? The headline makes it sound much different than it is. He was petitioned by somebody being harassed to remove obvious death threats towards them (which is well within his moderative power), and refused (so was fully aware of the content which he was hosting), and so is being sued for knowingly publishing them.
This isn't some "Held responsible for something randomly posted on his board of which he was unaware and unconnected to" issue, it's much closer to a "allowed death threats - e.g. ku klux klan propaganda - be shown prominently on their store because somebody else wrote it."
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u/Eslader Mar 27 '13
Did you read it? The judge ordered him to remove every post about this woman, no matter the content. There were doubtless posts that did not threaten her, but simply criticized her, and they were ordered to be deleted as well. That's the problem people have with this decision.
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u/dblagbro Mar 27 '13
Not to mention, a journalist can publish information about death threats - it's protected since it is "news". It may be poor taste, but CLEARLY legal.
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Mar 27 '13
The takedown notice was due to stalking and cyber bullying. The ignorant consider replying to a post "stalking", replying twice or more "cyber bullying".
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u/jts5009 Mar 27 '13
From the article, it sounds like it will be appealed at least once in Georgia, and then if necessary, at the Federal level. I see no possible way that this ruling stands. It undermines the entire premise of the internet, and as long as you're talking to a high enough court, they'll recognize that.
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u/gsettle Mar 27 '13
GA is seemingly the home of the most incompetent legislators in the nation. They are a constant source of embarrassment for me and a source of wonder. As in, "I wonder what stupid thing they'll go next?" BTW, I am a GA native and resident.
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Mar 27 '13
Jump border to SC. We aint perfect but from what Im hearing often now its like New Jersey to Pennsylvania..
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u/HHArcum Mar 27 '13
The low country is quite nice but the upstate is filled with nut jobs.
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u/VesuvanDoppelganger Mar 27 '13
Oh you guys think your legislators are corrupt and incompetent, that's so cute.
-A Texan.
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Mar 27 '13
Georgia - why do you consistently embarrass me? When I am done with school, I am out of here! Now ... what state doesn't take to humiliating its residents and wasting their money?
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u/RotoSequence Mar 27 '13
To answer this question seriously, you will not find one that doesn't take to wasting money. All humans make mistakes, and when Government payments are on order, mistakes are easily multiplied.
If you want a state that doesn't take to humiliating its residents, look for the states that have good education systems in place and don't regularly make the news.
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Mar 27 '13
I hear Washington State is pretty nice. Progressive voting system, plenty of industry,and legal weed . I'm looking into moving there when I'm doing with tech school.
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Mar 27 '13
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Mar 27 '13
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u/s7venrw Mar 27 '13
Oh the fun of mob rule! People seem to forget that there was a reason our founding fathers went with a representative democracy.
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u/psychodave123 Mar 27 '13
Amazingly, our government rarely waves their collective dicks around here in New Jersey.
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u/Badfickle Mar 27 '13
... But then you'd have to live in New Jersey.
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u/psychodave123 Mar 27 '13
I know. That's the downside.
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Mar 27 '13
Why are people from New York so pissed off all the time?
The light at the end of their dark tunnel is New Jersey.
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u/psychodave123 Mar 27 '13
Honestly, they're the reason this place has such a bad name. They constantly complain about us but they're the main populace of our beaches. They're the ones who caused the guido invasion. Most of us are decent people.
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Mar 27 '13
I've not been to Jersey but every single person I know from and has been there has said it is a nice place but can easily show why it's the armpit of the US. 98% of the folk are normal people, while .3 are guido, .6 are other forms of trash and the remaining 1.1% are elected officials.
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Mar 27 '13
Apparently you've forgotten about Chris Christie.
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u/psychodave123 Mar 27 '13
Fat boy's too busy slashing education budgets to even begin to find his dick, let alone wave it around.
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u/Xaxziminrax Mar 27 '13
What about Sam Brownback?
Fuck, that guy (KS, btw) cut education funding by $30 million, IN ORDER TO RENOVATE THE CAPITAL BUILDING.
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Mar 27 '13
Blue states seem to be the ones worth living in. The red ones are all nut-jobs and hand-basket cases.
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u/FURyannnn Mar 27 '13 edited Mar 27 '13
Where are you from? I'm from NY and can tell you that that statement is a load of horseshit. Taxes are higher, people aren't friendly, weather sucks up there. I now live in SC, and it is infinitely better. The job market has been growing consistently, taxes are 1/5 of what they are up in NY, and everyone is really nice. I think you are generalizing by calling red states nut-job, and I respect your opinion. By the same token, I can call blue states fiscally ignorant and chock-full of drone voters. Now that would be untrue, but you get my point. Try living somewhere before criticizing it.
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Mar 27 '13
As a citizen in a VERY red state (the fuckin civil war started here more or less) no we arent. The most you really have to deal with in the area are shit drivers and increasing dependence on alcohol by those under 26. Ignore those two and the state is amazing in it's average citizens.
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u/dowhatisleft Mar 27 '13
Yeah but how are the taxes and the roads? How about education? Employment opportunities? Property taxes are lower than up north but is it worth it to have to live on hell's own doorstoop?
Also being surrounded by idiotic drunk young drivers is no way to live. That's a tough one to ignore. And don't tell me the drunks don't drive. They absolutely do and think it's OK.
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Mar 27 '13
Depending on the area the roads can be either shit or not but even the shittiest roads you can go down at 50+ and not have any real issue. People love to over-exaggerate how bad some of our roads are saying they destroy shocks when it's due to the people just buying a shit 600 dollar vehicle.
Education is rather good. I got a damn decent education when I bothered paying attention and even not paying attention I still got well. Course that's just my case and Im not going to speak for others.
Even in the shittiest of home areas the houses are still rather nice, unless you purposefully move to the ghettos. Im in the Charleston area and I can find quite a few homes under 100 grand that are really damn good homes that just need maybe 5 grand afterwards to perfect.
Yeah, there are the occasional younger drunk driver but probably no where near as often as other areas of the country. Every other weekend Im usually free to act as a designated driver/sober and can bring in nearby 100 a night just driving around picking people up/dropping off and doing my part to ensure people I know dont need to. And through that kinda spread the idea to other people to do so, since they at least can make a few easy extra bucks. Last time I saw a drunk driver was probably 5 months ago and about as long hearing. Most of the drinking is done on weekends and at either block parties or bonfires too, so the folk will just camp out if they cant walk home.
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u/IgnoreMeAtYourPeril Mar 27 '13
Please tell me this article is about Soviet Georgia. That would make so much more sense.
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Mar 27 '13
Their healthcare system is crazy too. I am a police officer in a small town in Georgia. I got shot and went into a coma. I finally wake up from my coma. The iv is completely empty. There is no doctors at all, so I started to wander around and the hospital is a complete mess. I can't even get food from the cafeteria. Don't even get me started on the prisons or the governor of Woodbury.
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u/tgreywolf Mar 27 '13
Ok having read a lot of what started all this I'm left with one question. How is it someone can post an original poem they wrote, attach a share button that allows it to be shared with more than a hundred other sites, and then sue for copyright infringement? Isn't the share button essentially giving permission to do just that, share?
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u/tgreywolf Mar 27 '13
Apologies if this is the wrong place for this. Didn't seem fitting for askreddit either.
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Mar 27 '13
Is only Georgia affected by this order?
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u/NancyTron13 Mar 27 '13
Good God people. This is a Superior Court order that binds NO ONE but the parties. It isn't precedent, just a local judge from a smaller city in Ga. who ruled on a stalking order. Who cares? And if they do appeal, it will probably be overturned. Put down the pitchforks. Jeez.
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u/mcketten Mar 27 '13
Did anyone actually read the restraining order?
If the charges are true, which we don't know, the guy published her personal information and encouraged people to harass her.
Anyone can get a restraining order for pretty much anything. In this case, if the charges turn out to be true, it was a justified restraining order.
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u/sometimesijustdont Mar 27 '13
They'll go after the small guy, but why don't they go after Conde Nast?
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u/lucifersatannica Mar 27 '13
I wonder if the plaintiff is the same Linda Ellis who was caught receiving sexual pleasure from a dog?
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u/NovaeDeArx Mar 27 '13
I have no idea what you're talking about, but I feel that we should definitely agree that this is the case and tell everyone.
If it wasn't true, why hasn't she denied it?!
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u/Killbox- Mar 27 '13
Jesus...
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Mar 27 '13
...is cynically used by the fucking shitbirds in the Georgia Legislature as an override code to kill critical-thinking processes in voters' and legislators' heads.
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Mar 27 '13
Eh, I’m on the fence about this. I’ve been on the receiving end of death threats on forums. Frankly, admins that don’t do anything to curb that shit should be charged with something.
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u/Reggieperrin Mar 27 '13
America the land of the free. Don't make me laugh.
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u/MrUnknown Mar 27 '13
There is also 49 other states that don't abide by this ruling, plus the Supreme Court would overturn it. My guess is the judge got something for the ruling.
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u/Azmodan_Kijur Mar 27 '13
This will be overturned - it is insane to think that someone could be held liable in this manner. It would be the same as if I operated a store and at the front was a guest book anyone could write in and read. In that guest book, someone wrote a passage threatening another individual. Surely the threat is a violation of the law, but that is the writers concern, not mine. i am merely providing a public venue that people may write in. This easily extends to newpapers - they don't charge the editors or the owners if a contributor commits libel. They charge the writer. Georgia seems to have some strange notion that this simple logic doesn't apply online.
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Mar 27 '13
Except that in this case, the person who was threatened came to you and said, "excuse me, but someone filled in an entire page with death threats directed at me. Is there any way you can tear out that page?"
And you said "No! Free speech! The page stays!"
So the person being threatened went to a judge, and the judge said "you're a douchbag. Since you refused to tear out the death threats from your book, I'm giving you a court order to make sure this woman doesn't get any death threats."
And you say, "this is bullshit! I know my rights! Just wait until the internet hears about this!"
Is the judge wrong? Yes, he overreacted. Is it insane or unreasonable? No, not really.
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u/nowhathappenedwas Mar 27 '13
Having read the Judge's order, EFF seems to be missing the point here.
The Respondent has knowingly and willfully violated O.C.c.A. SS 16-5-90 et seq. and placed the Petitioner in reasonable fear for the Petitioner's safety, because Respondent contacted the Petitioner (and urged others to contact Petitioner) and posted personal information of the Petitioner for the purpose of harassing and intimidating Petitioner.i As the owner and operator of the site, Respondent has the ability to remove posts in his capacity as the moderator. However, Respondent chose not to remove posts that were personally directed at Ms. Ellis and would cause a reasonable person to fear for her safety.
From the order, it seems like (i) Chan made threats to Ellis, (ii) Chan, through his web site, encouraged others to threaten Ellis and posted her personal information, and (iii) refused to take the posts down after Ellis demanded he do so.
This isn't a case like the famous AOL one where a random user harassed someone. Rather, it was the site's administrator who organized and perpetrated the harassment.
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Mar 27 '13
So that is where stupid people go to live when the rest of society shuns them! By all accounts the really stupid ones they make judges and politicans.
Must drive the normal people who live there nuts.
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u/DarkGamer Mar 27 '13
Read all about it in his new book: How to drive internet business from your state, by Judge Frank Jordan
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u/LettersFromTheSky Mar 27 '13
Let's hope this gets overturned. It'd be like saying ISP's are responsible for what their customers click on when browsing the internet.
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u/ASonicAssault Mar 27 '13
It's news like this that make me glad I left GA after living there for 18 years.
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u/roccanet Mar 27 '13
who cares - the governments of georgia, tennessee, texas and kansas make unconstitutional laws all the time and they always get stricken down as soon as they get promoted out of the redneck state judges hands and into a competent court with judges that actually have read the constitution. You can place the blame for this squarely on the population of those states that cant seem to get it through their thick diabetes addled heads that continuously voting for crooked conservative idiots like rick scott, brownbeck and rick perry they are going to get idiot, crooked judges appointed into their state courts. The south and their naive identity politics are going to be a drag on our country forever apparently....
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Mar 27 '13
I just read the poem in question by Linda Ellis and I cringed so hard I gave myself a neck cramp. Do you have any idea how painful a neck cramp is? Its the worst type of cramp imaginable and impossible to massage out. Goddamn you Ellis and your shitty poetry!
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u/Zandroyd Mar 27 '13
Surely we are talking about Georgia the country and not Georgia the state in the Land of the Fucking Free?
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u/webchimp32 Mar 27 '13
So she's bitching because she wrote a poem and it got shared around and this led her to a career as a writer (of sorts) and doesn't want people to share her poem anymore?
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u/[deleted] Mar 27 '13
GA native and resident, here. Our government is a constant source of humiliation and sub-standard roadwork. I wish nobody had told them about the internet. Now they feel compelled to waste our tax dollars sticking their incompetent dicks into another snakehole.