SitePoint.com

mattymcg · Nov 10, 2008, 19:36

Notice: This is a discussion thread for comments about the SitePoint article, Fake User Profiles: Free Speech or Defamation?.
__________

Quote:

fairly cheeky suggestions about the nature of the reverend’s “first time.”

Cheeky indeed!

An interesting topic and a great summary of this issue Chris.

Nov 10, 2008, 22:53

Gatewood is right on the money. Social media website owners and the e-marketing firms that shill on them should also take heed.

Aimhigh · Nov 11, 2008, 05:40

Thanks Mattymcg for sharing this very informative and interesting ariticle of Chris. We know that there are many fake user online so this law is need to be implemented.

dvduval · Nov 11, 2008, 07:47

It is certainly our policy that a user account will be closed if they are impersonating someone else. It's fine to be anonymous, but we don't tolerate impersonation. I'm glad to see this issue getting some attention.

spikeZ · Nov 11, 2008, 08:27

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sarah Palin

Gatewood is right on the money. Social media website owners and the e-marketing firms that shill on them should also take heed.

lol, took me a minute but got there in the end!

But what happens if you do indeed have Bruce Willis in your friends list?!

glenngould · Nov 11, 2008, 08:56

Oh, Sitepoint staff please let me know if I have to change my username now

r937 · Nov 11, 2008, 09:14

Quote:

Originally Posted by glenngould

Oh, Sitepoint staff please let me know if I have to change my username now

i don't think anyone is going to seriously believe that glenn gould has been resurrected after being dead for over a quarter of a century

oh, you were kidding, right?

bals28mjk · Nov 11, 2008, 09:47

Quote:

Oh, Sitepoint staff please let me know if I have to change my username now

Why the hell were you leading us all on?

This is a good law to have. People put a fake myspace page up of me a few years ago and I was PISSED. They did it out of love and was meant as an innocent joke, still I like my privacy. I'm in the 1% of my age group who refuses to use social networking services.

Nov 11, 2008, 16:45

Great article, Chris! I'm seeing more and more fake sites pop up all the time and I was curious about what the legal considerations are.

sg707 · Nov 12, 2008, 09:02

It should definitely be illegal to impersonate someone. Of course, this depends on how credibility of your profile is. Still, if impersonation cause someone to lose a job, getting a job based on this then get ready for Law Suits! hm.. but I wonder who you can sue to, is the owner of the site or the member? and how would you locate the member? hm...interesting topic.

albunix · Nov 12, 2008, 09:38

Quote:

Originally Posted by sg707

It should definitely be illegal to impersonate someone. Of course, this depends on how credibility of your profile is. Still, if impersonation cause someone to lose a job, getting a job based on this then get ready for Law Suits! hm.. but I wonder who you can sue to, is the owner of the site or the member? and how would you locate the member? hm...interesting topic.

I concur fully. Should be as illegal as impersonating communication with a bank or any other large scale financial entity. What makes it hard to verify is that communication does not build on already established trust such as the one that Banks use. E.g when approaching a bank to open an account already trusted mechanisms such as Social Security, driver's license etc will be used as tools that the bank account should be build upon. With online tools, 0 such building blocks exist, and identify is scarcely defined as user side preference.

Green Moon · Nov 12, 2008, 14:20

That was a very good article. In some cases, it will be pretty clear whether a fake profile is a parody or not, but in many other cases the fake profile will not be so outrageously false that a average viewer would be able to tell for certain that it is fake. To be on the safe side, social networks should avoid trying to make that distinction and should automatically remove any profile that is challenged by the person who it claims to be for.

MatthewHSE · Nov 12, 2008, 16:31

I wonder what town in Illinois has a "president." I've lived in Illinois for 27 years and never heard of a "president" of a town or city.

Tyssen · Nov 12, 2008, 18:15

Quote:

She also filed a lawsuit against two of the students and their parents, with allegations of defamation, libel, and negligent supervision.

Going after the parents is just being vindictive. It's absurd to think that anyone can monitor their teenager's internet usage all of the time.

chiefupstart · Nov 14, 2008, 14:49

@Tyssen

I respectfully disagree. Her response wasn't vindictive. As far as I know, it was her only legal recourse against those directly responsible for the libel. We live in an age where any half-wit kid can do some potentially irreparable damage to one's career path. This isn't "ha ha" fun-n-games at this level.
While parents cannot really monitor all internet activity of their kids, I don't think that's even relevant. As a parent, you're legally responsible for a lot of your kids' behavior. It's just a risk one takes when having children - I know how it is.

siteguru · Nov 17, 2008, 08:48

Quote:

Originally Posted by chiefupstart

While parents cannot really monitor all internet activity of their kids, I don't think that's even relevant. As a parent, you're legally responsible for a lot of your kids' behavior. It's just a risk one takes when having children - I know how it is.

QFT.

I think one of the problems with the so-called "civilised" world is the compensation culture, and that parents seem to looking for ways out of abdicating their responsibilities.

webguy28 · Dec 21, 2008, 16:11

I think you are all missing the point. the assistant principle is obviously very mean to the students she needs to find a profession she enjoys so she wont want to be rude. We all have had a few ******* teachers in our day!!! lol

felgall · Dec 21, 2008, 17:16

The advise at the end - to always take down any contentious material when it is brought to your attention is a reasonable response in most cases and will hopefully have the desired effect of keeping you out from being in the middle of a court case. That you might be able to take action against whoever posted the material to your site to recover costs isn't of as much benefit as being able to avoid incurring those costs in the first place. There should of course be conditions in the Terms of Service that you get posters to agree to in the first place that gives you the right to take that action without their having any comeback against you for you having done so.

The situation is significantly different for web sites to what it is for telephone services, ISPs etc who simply provide a means of communication without controlling how that communication facility is used (although there is still a pending court case here in Australis where an ISP is being sued by music and video companies for having failed to disable internet access of customers who they claim are carrying out illegal music and video files where the ISP has refused to do so because there is no proof of any illegal activity). An ISP provides internet access and monitors the amount of access that is used but not what content is accessed (to perform such monitoring would open them up to all sorts of privacy issues). With a web page containing questionable content the page itself is proof that the page contains questionable content.

The only really worrying thing that the article mentions is that in the USA freedom of speech is protected to such an extent that it is up to the person about whom the questionable comments have been made to prove that the statements are false rather than the other way around. The presumption of guilty until proved to be innocent was far more commonly used around the world a few hundred years ago but these days civilised countries generally work the other way around which gives this exception to that rule in the USA the appearance of a somewhat antiquated law in need of revision to follow more of a nineteenth century viewpoint rather than the current seventeenth century one. That is somewhat beyond the scope of the article though and just makes me thankful that I live in one of the more modern countries where innocence is presumed in such cases until guilt is proven.

Black Max · Dec 21, 2008, 22:16

Webguy, your suggestion is as ridiculous as it is, I hope, tongue-in-cheek. The issue has nothing to do with the assistant principal being a "b#stard." It has everything to do with being slandered in a public forum. It would be the same as if I slapped posters up around your workplace labeling you a child molester. By doing so, I would have defamed your character and opened myself up to criminal and civil charges.

Interestingly, Chris, your article never really addresses the issue of fake user profiles. It is a tremendously complex issue, fraught with legal ramifications both of the privacy of the user (why should I be required to identify myself on the Internet?) and defamatory content (why should I be allowed to anonymously besmirch another person's character?). I don't know the answer, and I don't think there's a lawyer or jurist out there who can honestly say they do, either.

You also touch on the idea that because a person is a "public figure," he or she can be tarred pretty much at will. (Ref: Obama '08, when his enemies called him everything but a human being without fear of retaliation.) I don't know how far to limit that "freedom," and I would never wish to give up my right to satirize and insult politicians and celebrities, but it seems that I can call Britney Spears a "f####ng wh#re" and write long fantastical screeds about her intimate relations with farm animals without fear of reprisal. To my mind, that is going over the top.

Good job in introducing the issues, Chris. I would like to see this followed up in more depth.

rexxfield.com · May 1, 2009, 23:16

Chris, thank you for posting the article it has some excellent points on both technical and ethical issues. One important point that is conspicuous by its absence in your posting is the safe harbor afforded to blog administrators by section 230(c) of the communications decency act. This act effectively gives blog owners (which are defined within the act as ISPs) carte blanche discretion as to what they will leave published or what they'll remove.

The paragraphs that refer to this discretion is headed "Protection for 'Good Samaritan' blocking and screening of offensive material". This clause allows the administrator to (a) Remove the offensive or libelous material or, (b) Leave it displayed in full view for the world to see. Either way the blog owner is safe from litigation from the person that has been libeled, or from the author who might claim his or her First Amendment rights have been infringed.

The heading of this part of the Law is ironic. Congress would do well to rename the heading all of the clause to "protection for Good Samaritans, and Hypocritical Pharisees". The reason being that if an ISP chooses option (b) when it is clear that an innocent victim has been libeled, then they are certainly not acting as a Good Samaritan.

This is a unique situation, the owners of any other durable medium such as newspapers, magazines, and periodicals etc. would be very much at risk all of a libel suit if they did not retract, and remove the libelous information.

The above-mentioned act is a little over 10 years old, many believe it was obsolete very soon thereafter. There are many rabid free-speech advocates who believe that all speech should be privileged. However, once they have walked the same fiery trial that innocent victims of libel have walked, they will understand why free speech is not, and should not be absolute.

If anyone is interested I have written a short essay on the absurdity of this congressional act. It is available by following the link titled "when free speech is costly" on the Rexxfield website.

Jul 17, 2009, 12:20

Someone posted a fake Facebook profile in my name. He used a photo of mine and my name, neither of which he has my permission to do. It is up there to harass and nothing more...to make fun or attempt to humiliate me. He got the photo from work, he created the profile in the workplace.

If Facebook or the company doesn't force him to take it down, then the repercussions will include me grabbing him by the throat and throwing him up against the wall until he chokes out!

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Nov 10, 2008, 22:53	#2
Sarah Palin SitePoint Community Guest Posts: n/a	Gatewood is right on the money. Social media website owners and the e-marketing firms that shill on them should also take heed.

Nov 11, 2008, 05:40	#3
Aimhigh SitePoint Zealot Join Date: Jul 2008 Posts: 162	Thanks Mattymcg for sharing this very informative and interesting ariticle of Chris. We know that there are many fake user online so this law is need to be implemented.

Nov 11, 2008, 07:47	#4
dvduval phpLD Fanatic Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Atlanta Posts: 3,259	It is certainly our policy that a user account will be closed if they are impersonating someone else. It's fine to be anonymous, but we don't tolerate impersonation. I'm glad to see this issue getting some attention.

Nov 11, 2008, 08:56	#6
glenngould SitePoint Wizard Join Date: Nov 2005 Posts: 1,405	Oh, Sitepoint staff please let me know if I have to change my username now

Nov 11, 2008, 16:45	#9
Carrie SitePoint Community Guest Posts: n/a	Great article, Chris! I'm seeing more and more fake sites pop up all the time and I was curious about what the legal considerations are.

Nov 12, 2008, 09:02	#10
sg707 SitePoint Guru Join Date: Apr 2007 Posts: 860	It should definitely be illegal to impersonate someone. Of course, this depends on how credibility of your profile is. Still, if impersonation cause someone to lose a job, getting a job based on this then get ready for Law Suits! hm.. but I wonder who you can sue to, is the owner of the site or the member? and how would you locate the member? hm...interesting topic.

Nov 12, 2008, 14:20	#12
Green Moon SitePoint Addict Join Date: Jun 2008 Posts: 236	That was a very good article. In some cases, it will be pretty clear whether a fake profile is a parody or not, but in many other cases the fake profile will not be so outrageously false that a average viewer would be able to tell for certain that it is fake. To be on the safe side, social networks should avoid trying to make that distinction and should automatically remove any profile that is challenged by the person who it claims to be for.

Nov 12, 2008, 16:31	#13
MatthewHSE SitePoint Enthusiast Join Date: Aug 2004 Location: Central Illinois Posts: 56	I wonder what town in Illinois has a "president." I've lived in Illinois for 27 years and never heard of a "president" of a town or city.

Nov 14, 2008, 14:49	#15
chiefupstart SitePoint Member Join Date: Apr 2007 Location: Portland, OR Posts: 14	@Tyssen I respectfully disagree. Her response wasn't vindictive. As far as I know, it was her only legal recourse against those directly responsible for the libel. We live in an age where any half-wit kid can do some potentially irreparable damage to one's career path. This isn't "ha ha" fun-n-games at this level. While parents cannot really monitor all internet activity of their kids, I don't think that's even relevant. As a parent, you're legally responsible for a lot of your kids' behavior. It's just a risk one takes when having children - I know how it is.

Dec 21, 2008, 16:11	#17
webguy28 SitePoint Member Join Date: Nov 2008 Posts: 0	I think you are all missing the point. the assistant principle is obviously very mean to the students she needs to find a profession she enjoys so she wont want to be rude. We all have had a few ******* teachers in our day!!! lol

Dec 21, 2008, 17:16	#18
felgall SitePoint Mentor Join Date: Sep 2005 Location: Sydney, NSW, Australia Posts: 9,624	The advise at the end - to always take down any contentious material when it is brought to your attention is a reasonable response in most cases and will hopefully have the desired effect of keeping you out from being in the middle of a court case. That you might be able to take action against whoever posted the material to your site to recover costs isn't of as much benefit as being able to avoid incurring those costs in the first place. There should of course be conditions in the Terms of Service that you get posters to agree to in the first place that gives you the right to take that action without their having any comeback against you for you having done so. The situation is significantly different for web sites to what it is for telephone services, ISPs etc who simply provide a means of communication without controlling how that communication facility is used (although there is still a pending court case here in Australis where an ISP is being sued by music and video companies for having failed to disable internet access of customers who they claim are carrying out illegal music and video files where the ISP has refused to do so because there is no proof of any illegal activity). An ISP provides internet access and monitors the amount of access that is used but not what content is accessed (to perform such monitoring would open them up to all sorts of privacy issues). With a web page containing questionable content the page itself is proof that the page contains questionable content. The only really worrying thing that the article mentions is that in the USA freedom of speech is protected to such an extent that it is up to the person about whom the questionable comments have been made to prove that the statements are false rather than the other way around. The presumption of guilty until proved to be innocent was far more commonly used around the world a few hundred years ago but these days civilised countries generally work the other way around which gives this exception to that rule in the USA the appearance of a somewhat antiquated law in need of revision to follow more of a nineteenth century viewpoint rather than the current seventeenth century one. That is somewhat beyond the scope of the article though and just makes me thankful that I live in one of the more modern countries where innocence is presumed in such cases until guilt is proven.

Dec 21, 2008, 22:16	#19
Black Max Lackey to Felines Join Date: Apr 2007 Posts: 1,351	Webguy, your suggestion is as ridiculous as it is, I hope, tongue-in-cheek. The issue has nothing to do with the assistant principal being a "b#stard." It has everything to do with being slandered in a public forum. It would be the same as if I slapped posters up around your workplace labeling you a child molester. By doing so, I would have defamed your character and opened myself up to criminal and civil charges. Interestingly, Chris, your article never really addresses the issue of fake user profiles. It is a tremendously complex issue, fraught with legal ramifications both of the privacy of the user (why should I be required to identify myself on the Internet?) and defamatory content (why should I be allowed to anonymously besmirch another person's character?). I don't know the answer, and I don't think there's a lawyer or jurist out there who can honestly say they do, either. You also touch on the idea that because a person is a "public figure," he or she can be tarred pretty much at will. (Ref: Obama '08, when his enemies called him everything but a human being without fear of retaliation.) I don't know how far to limit that "freedom," and I would never wish to give up my right to satirize and insult politicians and celebrities, but it seems that I can call Britney Spears a "f####ng wh#re" and write long fantastical screeds about her intimate relations with farm animals without fear of reprisal. To my mind, that is going over the top. Good job in introducing the issues, Chris. I would like to see this followed up in more depth.

May 1, 2009, 23:16	#20
rexxfield.com SitePoint Member Join Date: May 2009 Location: Omaha NE Posts: 2	Chris, thank you for posting the article it has some excellent points on both technical and ethical issues. One important point that is conspicuous by its absence in your posting is the safe harbor afforded to blog administrators by section 230(c) of the communications decency act. This act effectively gives blog owners (which are defined within the act as ISPs) carte blanche discretion as to what they will leave published or what they'll remove. The paragraphs that refer to this discretion is headed "Protection for 'Good Samaritan' blocking and screening of offensive material". This clause allows the administrator to (a) Remove the offensive or libelous material or, (b) Leave it displayed in full view for the world to see. Either way the blog owner is safe from litigation from the person that has been libeled, or from the author who might claim his or her First Amendment rights have been infringed. The heading of this part of the Law is ironic. Congress would do well to rename the heading all of the clause to "protection for Good Samaritans, and Hypocritical Pharisees". The reason being that if an ISP chooses option (b) when it is clear that an innocent victim has been libeled, then they are certainly not acting as a Good Samaritan. This is a unique situation, the owners of any other durable medium such as newspapers, magazines, and periodicals etc. would be very much at risk all of a libel suit if they did not retract, and remove the libelous information. The above-mentioned act is a little over 10 years old, many believe it was obsolete very soon thereafter. There are many rabid free-speech advocates who believe that all speech should be privileged. However, once they have walked the same fiery trial that innocent victims of libel have walked, they will understand why free speech is not, and should not be absolute. If anyone is interested I have written a short essay on the absurdity of this congressional act. It is available by following the link titled "when free speech is costly" on the Rexxfield website.

Jul 17, 2009, 12:20	#21
Rick SitePoint Community Guest Posts: n/a	Someone posted a fake Facebook profile in my name. He used a photo of mine and my name, neither of which he has my permission to do. It is up there to harass and nothing more...to make fun or attempt to humiliate me. He got the photo from work, he created the profile in the workplace. If Facebook or the company doesn't force him to take it down, then the repercussions will include me grabbing him by the throat and throwing him up against the wall until he chokes out!