Stupid Legal Threats: You Can't Write About Me Because of Your Blog's Name
popehat.com
popehat.com
Also, the author seems a bit disingenuous.
>The web site in question is Retraction Watch. I recently discussed other foolish threats made against them, and discussed their mission: offering a "window on the scientific process" by which scientific articles are criticized, retracted, or modified."
The full statement is "Tracking retractions as a window into the scientific process". This is a 2200+ word post, seems unlikely those three words had to be clipped in the interest of brevity.
>He's acted like an angry blustering oaf who is pathologically intolerant of criticism. Ask yourself — how much do you trust the work of a scientist who threatens to sue for true reports of peer review of his work? Would you feel comfortable ingesting a drug developed by a chemist who threatens criminal charges against someone who reports — truly and accurately — that other scientists have raised questions about his conclusions? Would you hire a consultant who makes foolish public legal threats without first acquiring any grasp whatsoever of the applicable law? Would you invest in a pharmaceutical company whose Chief Scientific Officer utters civil and criminal threats against reports of scientific dissent?
That seems unnecessarily nasty.
He seems quite concerned with the Streisand Effect. Maybe there's a bit of link bait going on here? If he can convince the good doctor to threaten suit against him, maybe he can be the benefactor instead of Retraction Watch. </tinfoil-hat>
[Edit: If nothing else, heated/opinionated discussion makes for interesting reading.]
Being unnecessarily nasty to and making fun of people who make misguided legal threats is par for the course for popehat. It's fun to read, but in my opinion not really laudable.
What? I personally think all defamation laws are bs, but regardless, what is wrong with publishing mugshots?
Indeed, suppose you were arrested with cause, but for some minor crime. Same question.
So simply put, the trade-off here in the United States is that speech is counteracted by more speech. Rather little is done in secret here. Again, I have lived where the trade-offs are different, and I think that this is a generally desirable trade-off, and that United States defamation law strikes a good balance, with the defence of truth being very dispositive in defamation cases.
AFTER EDIT: Contrary to what is suggested by HN participant lutusp in another subthread here, there is no "false light" problem in the case the complaining doctor is complaining about. I am a lawyer, and I wouldn't dream of relying on Wikipedia for legal advice or even lay summaries of the law on most subjects.
Over the years this picture has provided many, including me, with repeated minor amusement. If I featured in a similar mugshot and it afforded someone else with amusement, well turnabout is fair play.
There is no such mugshot of me, but I would not think it a big deal if there was. And I doubt that Bill Gates worries himself about the fact that that is out there.
By contrast if my right to free speech could be shut down just because Bill Gates does not like that particular picture, then what other speech could he shut down because he, or some other influential person, disliked it? I heartily agree that free speech is often abused. But when you open the door to shutting down speech, there is a short road from there to a loss of democracy. That would scare me.
Consider this well. The USA is messy, but has been a democracy for hundreds of years and few are concerned that it is about to become a dictatorship. By contrast Brazilian democracy is younger than me, and it is by no means certain that I won't survive long enough to see another military dictatorship there.
That mugshot now becomes a severe problem for you, risking your employment, and even your life.
And when an possible employer enter your name in google the name rapist and the mugshot appears, and when you are in an airport you wait for an hour and probably lose the next flight typically until a bored airport policeman finds that, mmh, not, probably not the same people... maybe we could keep him/her another 20 minutes?
Welcome tho the world of plastic surgery...
And don't pretend this is about free speech. You have no right to be in possession of these photos or at least you shouldn't have.
You have a right to free speech, but I'd argue that bill Gates ought to have a right to privacy that would prevent the police from releasing his mugshot in the first place.
To take a more serious example, I have Showdead enabled on HN so I see all the posts on the new page that are auto-flagged. The other day I saw one from a site I didn't recognize relating to photographs of the Boston bombing suspects (this was before the second one had been caught). It had been flagged but I was curious about the ongoing story so I went to the URL. well, it turned out to be the morgue photo of the older brother, on a blog that specializes in, well, morgue photos. I've worked in a hospital including a stint in a mortuary so I'm not mentally scarred by seeing a dead body, even a badly damaged one, but I do question to what extent freedom of speech should allow commercial exploitation of this sort.
There is no such mugshot of me, but I would not think it a big deal if there was.
Sure, because in Bill Gates' mugshot, you can tell he's not terribly worried about how this is going to affect his life, and I wouldn't be either for some kinds of offenses. But suppose you were unfortunate enough to be an alcoholic or got caught up in some sticky situation. If you were falsely accused of a sex crime or something your professional life might suddenly come to a crashing halt.
Does this still seem like nothing's wrong here?
"US drops case against ricin letter suspect Paul Curtis" http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-22273355
1. People being arrested in error.
2. Mugshots being published.
3. People requesting mugshots be taken down.
4a. Mugshots disappearing from site A but reappearing on site B. Rinse, wash, repeat.
4b. An "administration fee" being charged for the service of taking down mugshot. See 4a.
There are crimes which are considered so heinous that even being publicly accused can carry a very substantial social stigma. Consider the recent exceptionally public allegations against a prominent Silicon Valley insider of rape by another SV insider.
In other cases, the increasing use of background checks, not limited to criminal convictions but including searches of social media, news, and the general Internet, means that such false allegations might appear.
Again: take the case of individuals who were falsely accused of being the Boston Marathon bombers, including a missing college student and a high school student fingered by the New York Post (which "stands by its reporting" for whatever the hell that means). Or today's story that a man arrested in connection with ricin-laced letters being sent to congressmen and the President being released.
If that still doesn't work, picture this: you wake up tomorrow to find the police at your door. Why? An ex-girlfriend, or ex-boyfriend, or co-worker, or child at the charity you volunteer with, or some total stranger, has just made up completely random shit about you. Or your image is similar to that of someone photographed doing something Really Really Bad. Or your Twitter / Facebook / HN account has been hacked and is spewing bile or terrorist threats.
It all sounds very abstract until it isn't.
There's a reason why the authors of the US Constitution insisted on due process.
>If that still doesn't work, picture this: you wake up tomorrow to find the police at your door. Why? An ex-girlfriend, or ex-boyfriend, or co-worker, or child at the charity you volunteer with, or some total stranger, has just made up completely random shit about you. Or your image is similar to that of someone photographed doing something Really Really Bad. Or your Twitter / Facebook / HN account has been hacked and is spewing bile or terrorist threats.
How would a defamation law prevent this exactly?
I didn't say it would. The original question was "what is wrong with publishing mugshots".
I wonder what the author would have done if the initial email had been a plead, especially if only to make the article say something like "NOT A RETRACTION" in the title.
If it had been me I would have responded much more kindly to a plead than to a threat.
Would that it were so. In the U.S., where these events took place, there is a legal principle called "false light", in which truthful remarks can still lead to a judgment against a defendant on the ground that the truths were selected in such a way as to cast the plaintiff in a false light.
"Truth is always an absolute defense against a defamation suit in the United States."
-Your favorite source (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_defamation_law)
It's more accurate to say that the plaintiff has to substantiate malicious intent in court. Whether there is actual malice is more a matter of philosophy than law. Since the standard in civil court is preponderance, making that showing isn't as difficult as it might be in a criminal court.
Then there's the issue of whether the plaintiff is, or can be portrayed as, a public figure -- that changes everything.
I think the researcher mixed up who is connected to what site; but over all he is right: his paper has not been retracted (yet and possibly won't be).
Should he sue or threaten to sue about it ? Probably not; at least not until he can show damages.
Threatening the Streisand effect is pure trolling - If you defend yourself you're guilty ?
If that had happened, I doubt there would be many saying, "Well, they never accused me of being a rapist, so I guess it's OK."
If I run a blog called "Murderer Watch: Keeping an Eye on Murderers and Things" and I post "Bob Jones is 34 and lives in Atlanta, GA," that can't be totally okay just because those are all factual statements, right?