humor: November 2007 Archives

Earlier this year I blogged about an incident involving a mobile phone with a lewd and lascivious 'moan tone' ringtone going off in the Ipswich Magistrates Court.  It seems that at least one Judge in the United States has a different attitude to ringing mobile phones, orgasmic or otherwise.

Judge Robert M. Restaino has been removed from office by the New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct, because of an incident which would be funny if not for the egregious abuse of authority involved.  Quoting from the press release:

In a determination dated November 13, 2007, the Commission found that Judge Restaino engaged "an egregious and unprecedented abuse of judicial power" in March 2005 by committing 46 defendants into police custody after no one took responsibility for a ringing cell phone in the courtroom.

As found by the Commission, Judge Restaino, who was presiding in a domestic violence part, acted "without any semblance of a lawful basis," "out of pique and frustration." After questioning each defendant individually about the ringing phone, he reinstated bail or set additional bail for a total of 46 defendants, who were taken into custody and moved to holding cells. The 14 defendants who were unable to post bail were transported to the County Jail. Those defendants remained in custody for seven hours, until the judge released them after learning that the press was inquiring into his actions.

Stating that the judge's conduct "transcended poor judgment," the Commission found "no mitigating circumstances" for the judge's "shocking" behavior. The Commission concluded that the judge behaved like "a petty tyrant" whose behavior constituted "a gross deviation from the proper role of a judge."

The Sydney Morning Herald has an article on this event.

'ReputationDefender' offer a service to, amongst other things, 'find out everything that's being said about you online and get rid of the content you don't like.'

Pity that it's a scam.

'Powered by Search & Destroy', their service 'scour[s] the internet to dig up every possible piece of information about you, and then we present it to you in an interactive monthly report,' and '[n]ext we DESTROY. You can select the content from your report that you don't like. This is where we go to work for you.  Our trained and expert online reputation specialists use an array of techniques developed in-house to correct and/or completely remove the selected unwanted content from the web.'  (Emphasis added)

Their services are based on a false premise - that it's possible for them to 'destroy' content posted on third-party websites. Their website is deliberately vague on how they supposedly do this, but it's not at all clear to me how they can 'destroy' other people's content without criminal computer crime being involved.

It's possible that their 'destroy' service really just consists of sending out nastygrams threatening to sue the pants of everyone saying anything that their clients 'don't like.'  In which case, their marketing-speak contains a stack of likely contraventions of s 52, 53, and 55A of the Trade Practices Act 1974 (Cth).

A novel interpretation of s 60 might mean that their nastygram campaigns, in and of themselves, contravene the TPA.  If the service they supply their customers consists of using 'undue harassment or coercion' against third parties, I think this is quite arguably 'in connection with the supply or possible supply of goods or services to a consumer', in contravention of s 60.  The section doesn't say the 'undue harassment or coercion' has to be used against the customer.  A bit of a stretch, granted, but hey, I said it was a novel interpretation.

Articles such as this one tend to suggest that rather than 'destroying' content that their clients want to disappear, they setup new sites containing more positive information, and use SEO techniques to ensure that the 'positive' material appears in search results before the 'negative' material.  Still, this isn't 'destroying' the negative content in any way, shape or form.

The marketing for their services are based on another false premise - that you can or should be able to 'get rid of the content you don't like' on the Internet. I notice that on their FAQ they claim to respect the First Amendment, and so they don't go after the media or the government.  They seem to have forgotten that the First Amendment applies to everybody in America - not just organizations with money and lawyers.  Everybody else -- including but not limited to me -- is presumably fair game.

People have a right to engage in lawful speech on the Internet without organisations such as ReputationDefender threatening to sue them for saying things that their clients 'don't like'.

Their marketing to parents -- eg 'Don't let the internet ruin your child's reputation' -- seems to be little more than scaremongering.  They're relying on parents' fear and ignorance about the Internet to promote an expensive (US $29.95 per "destroy") for-profit service that can't legally do what it claims to do.

Then again, I probably shouldn't criticise them.  If they decide this posting harms their reputation, they'll probably just 'destroy' it.

In the Today Tonight v The Chaser saga that I blogged about previously, Channel 7 obtained an interim injunction to prevent the broadcast of The Chaser's footage filmed on Channel 7's premises.

In that judgment (Seven Network (Operations) Pty Ltd v Australian Broadcasting Corporation [2007] NSWSC 1289), Barrett J says:

[14] It has been conceded by Channel 7 that there was a plan to put to air tomorrow a program about today's incident in which the Chaser team visited the Channel 7 premises. Channel 7 would, in that program, use footage taken by Channel 7 itself when the Chaser team were at the premises. I was concerned about that aspect and communicated that concern to counsel for Channel 7 who, during a short adjournment, obtained instructions to offer to court an undertaking by Channel 7, the plaintiff, to continue to take immediate steps to do what it can to withdraw the 15 second promotional broadcast for a story on the incident and also that, until determination of these proceedings, Channel 7 will not broadcast that story.
...
[18] Upon the plaintiff by its counsel giving to the court the usual undertaking as to damages and an undertaking to continue to take immediate steps to do what it can to withdraw the 15 second promotional broadcast for a story on the incident the subject of these proceedings and that until determination of these proceedings it will not broadcast that story, I order that the defendants and each of them, whether by themselves, their servants or agents or otherwise, be restrained up to and including 15 November 2007 from making a copy of (except as permitted by these orders), communicating to the public or causing to be seen in public (a) the film or any part of it taken by the defendants or any of them or at the direction of any of them at the premises of the plaintiff at about 2.15 pm today and (b) any film which includes any part of that film.

I'm reliably informed by one of my 'known associates', and a news story seems to confirm, that Channel 7 did in fact broadcast the story that they undertook not to broadcast.  The Daily Telegraph have video of the story that was aired online.

I wonder if the ABC will apply to have Channel 7 held in contempt?

News.com.au reports on an interesting copyright twist in the recent catfight between Channel 7 and The Chaser over footage that The Chaser filmed in 7's studios in Sydney after apparently sneaking in uninvited.  Apparently 7 believes that sending camera crews onto private property, uninvited, ambushing people, filming them, and broadcasting the footage is morally objectionable.  I guess they'll be cancelling Today Tonight forthwith, in that case.  Pot, kettle, black.

Anyhow, although the judgment doesn't mention copyright issues -- Seven Network (Operations) Pty Ltd v Australian Broadcasting Corporation [2007] NSWSC 1289 -- the news.com.au report says that:

In an expensive bid to stop the skit via a Supreme Court injunction, Seven's lawyer Dauid Sibtain stated Coren's involvement as a "performer" meant the ABC would be breaking copyright laws if they reproduced her image without her employer's consent.

I don't know whether the news report is somewhat garbled, or whether 7's understanding of copyright is somewhat garbled.  Perhaps they think Ms Coren qualifies as an 'artistic work', the communication to the public of which would infringe the copyright that subsists in Coren?

The Sydney Morning Herald and other outlets are reporting that the Sydney man who made a 'bootleg' recording of the Simpsons movie with his mobile phone, uploaded it to the Internet, and was subsequently charged with two criminal offences for so doing, has pled guilty and been fined $1000.

It's a bit of a joke really -- not because his punishment was so low, but because it shows up all the claims that the government was making about the copyright infringement notice scheme as a low-cost, low-hassle alternative to the 'traditional' methods of charging people and bringing them before a court.

This guy was fined $1000.  If, instead of being charged with two copyright offences, he was given two infringement notices, he would have had to pay 12 penalty units for each one, with a penalty unit being worth $110, for a total of $2640.

That's right -- this villainous scourge of the motion picture industry, whose Crimes Against Hollywood were so great so as to cause the Attorney-General to weigh in, saying how good Australia's copyright laws were, and how seriously we take these issues, went to court the 'traditional' way and paid less than half of what he would have paid if he'd been given infringement notices.

This really gives the lie to the government claims that the fines associated with infringement notices would be less than if people took the matter to court.

It won't be long before MIPI, AFACT, and their ilk start bleating about Australia being a 'banana republic'.  Again.

The people at news.com.au should pay a little bit more attention when they're recycling old photographs...  On their front page today, they use a picture of Oscar the cat in connection with a story on the DNA-sequencing of an unrelated cat: