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The Courts The Internet Censorship Network United States Your Rights Online

Dozens of Suspicious Court Cases Aim At Getting Web Pages Taken Down Or Deindexed (washingtonpost.com) 146

Posted by BeauHD from the online-censorship dept.
schwit1 quotes a report written by Eugene Volokh via Washington Post: There are about 25 court cases throughout the country that have a suspicious profile:
  • All involve allegedly self-represented plaintiffs, yet they have similar snippets of legalese that suggest a common organization behind them. (A few others, having a slightly different profile, involve actual lawyers.)
  • All the ostensible defendants ostensibly agreed to injunctions being issued against them, which often leads to a very quick court order (in some cases, less than a week).
  • Of these 25-odd cases, 15 give the addresses of the defendants -- but a private investigator (Giles Miller of Lynx Insights and Investigations) couldn't find a single one of the ostensible defendants at the ostensible address.

Now, you might ask, what's the point of suing a fake defendant (to the extent that some of these defendants are indeed fake)? How can anyone get any real money from a fake defendant? How can anyone order a fake defendant to obey a real injunction? The answer is that Google and various other Internet platforms have a policy: They won't take down material (or, in Google's case, remove it from Google indexes) just because someone says it's defamatory. Understandable -- why would these companies want to adjudicate such factual disputes? But if they see a court order that declares that some material is defamatory, they tend to take down or deindex the material, relying on the court's decision. Yet the trouble is that these Internet platforms can't really know if the injunction was issued against the actual author of the supposed defamation -- or against a real person at all.


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Dozens of Suspicious Court Cases Aim At Getting Web Pages Taken Down Or Deindexed More

Dozens of Suspicious Court Cases Aim At Getting Web Pages Taken Down Or Deindexed

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  • Or maybe this just proves that (Score:5, Funny)

    by Black Parrot ( 19622 ) on Tuesday October 11, 2016 @08:17AM (#53054455)

    our universe is a simulation, and the just-in-time content creation algorithm is buggy.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday October 11, 2016 @08:19AM (#53054473)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Silly humans (Score:4, Interesting)

    by BigBuckHunter ( 722855 ) on Tuesday October 11, 2016 @08:21AM (#53054481)
    ~15% of all humans will willingly abuse their position, violate laws, break rules, etc, for their own benefit. Judges, cops, lawyers, BLM, fast food workers, auto workers, toll booth operators, priests, tax collectors... The group is quite arbitrary. Does anyone have suggestions on how to deal with this portion of the population that doesn't simply recreate the problem? For example, exterminating them will simply create a new ~15%.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      ~15% of all humans will willingly abuse their position, violate laws, break rules, etc, for their own benefit.

      Do you have a link to that study? I'm wondering because I would guess the value is much higher than that. But it could also be lower. So I try my best not to simply pull number out of my ass whenever commenting online.

      • Re:Silly humans (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Oswald McWeany ( 2428506 ) on Tuesday October 11, 2016 @08:45AM (#53054633)

        I'm also sure it depends on what laws are being broken and the reward for breaking it. I'm sure much less than 15% would be willing to kill a man if the reward were a circus-peanut. I'm sure much more than 15% would be willing to break the speed limit delivering a package if the reward were a $1000 bonus.

        • I think "legal" and "ethical" are being conflated here. I get the impression that the OP was talking about sociopaths acting unethically, not about people in general acting illegally (which requires evaluation of the law as well as the person breaking it).

          In other words, I think the difference between murdering someone for a peanut and speeding for $1000 is not due the difference between the penalties and rewards, but rather due to the fact that murder is unethical and speeding (considered abstractly) is no

          • Speeding is not typically a criminal activity. It has its own classification. Because it is "other than criminal" activity, it typically does not show up on a Criminal record as a crime. Murder, is a crime and a felony. Shoplifting is a minor crime, and is more akin to something that would have made a better comparison, because stealing, even something small, many (most??) people wouldn't do, even if the reward was substantial. Unless there is a riot going on nearby.

            • Speeding is not typically a criminal activity.

              That's because it depends on how and where, in the U.S., you got the ticket from (1st paragraph of United States section [wikipedia.org]). It could be a criminal activity in Arizona state [jacksonwhitelaw.com]...

            • "because stealing, even something small, many (most??) people wouldn't do"

              I'd argue if I offered the average person a million dollars to steal a pen from someone, they would do it. Or better yet, a million for something not as small like a mailbox. They may say they would buy their victim a new mailbox after they were paid, but they would be stealing (taking property that wasn't their without permission) nonetheless.

          • Legality is objective, morality subjective. People will always heed their morals (their real ones, not the fake bullshit they put up for show for the other idiots to show off what "morally integer" person they are), whether they heed laws depends on the old "reward vs risk*punishment".

      • Will try to find it. IIRC, It was released shortly after the "Stanford Prison Experiment" when everyone was cashing in on the fed funding for behavioral sciences. The crux was that 15% of humans will willingly abuse any power you give them, 15% will always do right, and 70% will go along with whatever their superiors and/or peers are doing.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by unrtst ( 777550 )

        85% of all statistics are made up. I don't know why you'd expect a link to such a well known figure, but here ya go: http://tinyurl.com/YasdzxID [tinyurl.com]

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Mashiki ( 184564 )

        Do you have a link to that study? I'm wondering because I would guess the value is much higher than that. But it could also be lower. So I try my best not to simply pull number out of my ass whenever commenting online.

        Lot of studies on it, sometimes it's higher sometimes lower. There's another rule that's used in policing and with internal theft investigators called the 30/40/30 rule when dealing with internal theft. 30% of people will steal no matter what, 40% will steal if no one is watching and they're sure they'll be able to get away with it. 30% will never steal even if they're starving. The percentages vary, usually between 5-15% again depending on the study. Most police forces/services and private security t

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Holi ( 250190 )
      Got any support for that number you seem to have pulled out of your ass.

    • Laws, oversight and openness.

      The group is a quite arbitrary list of jobs but what's BLM doing there?

      • Laws, oversight and openness.

        The group is a quite arbitrary list of jobs but what's BLM doing there?

        Any population. I simply felt that references to the Free Masons, DARE, Boy Scouts, or Lions Club would fall on young deaf ears. When you see BLM on the news, you usually are confronted with the 15% I'm talking about. When you see cops on the news, you're usually seeing the 15%. When you see debt collectors on the news, you're seeing the 15%.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by mink ( 266117 )

          With the Bundy thing earlier this year I am never sure if people are talking about Black Lives Matter or Bureau of Land Management unless the context is quite clear.

    • Homogeneity of population and disallowance of secret societies.

      Simply having no organized group with a cultural justification for treating out-groups within a nation as people which can be "morally" scammed helps a lot.

      Immoral people will still collude, but they won't get a ready made culture and structure for collusion ready at birth and taught to them while growing up.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      The only thing you can do is try to reduce the 15% to some lower proportion through early intervention (i.e. at school) and by creating a fairer society where there is less incentive to cheat and more to work within the system.

      The former can be difficult because some people don't want schools to teach morality or right and wrong, they prefer to use their own definition (often based on religion as it happens). The latter is difficult because people with power tend to oppose things that make it easier for oth

  • Fake *anonymous* defendant (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 11, 2016 @08:24AM (#53054499)

    Person 'A' posts a comment that is anonymous and damaging again a company or organization. The post is plausible or true enough to carry weight so that it cannot simply be ignored.

    Company asks a 'reputation management' company to fix it.

    'Reputation management' company sets up a fake company, which sues 'John Doe' in court.

    Anonymous 'John Doe' is quickly found, but its their fake agent, in cahoots with the reputation management company. Not the person who really posted the comment.

    Fake John Doe, admits it was his comment, admits it was defamation and agrees to withdraw it.

    Reputation Management company goes back to court, to settle the case, and get the court to issue a takedown notice.

    Google and the ISPs take down the content, because the court has ruled they must.

    --------

    This is fraud and perjury, and after several of these cases, judges became wise to it. They noticed the companies filing the lawsuits were often setup the same day and it was the same lawyers. Lawyers were sanctioned for suspected complicity.

    So now the instant company is discarded and a fake individual is put forward as the person suing. So the setup of the company is no longer obvious to the Judge.

    What's happening here is fraud and perjury and its organized, making it organized racketeering. This is for the FBI to investigate.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Whats wrong with perjury under oath?

      In the US you can do that and become president and never be charged. Not seeing what the issue with doing this is.
      The FBI probably can't find any reasonable prosecutor that would take this to court anyways.

      You may think this is sarcasm, but it is not. I am actually being serious. If the laws are not enforced on some, why would they be on others?

      • Have you watched the Clintons? "I can't recall" would be the best answer, but check with them first.

      • Heck, you can already BE president and get away with it. That was Republicans, though, so you left that out.

      • From what I understand, perjury in civil cases is rarely prosecuted. I don't know why, but it seems to me that prosecuting it would be a good idea.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Interesting. Somehow reminds of this Voodoo practice: build a puppet representing your enemy and torture the shit out of it (typically with the help of needles).

      Only that in this modern world, this stunt seems to actually *work*. Disgusting.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by bigpat ( 158134 )

      What's happening here is fraud and perjury and its organized, making it organized racketeering. This is for the FBI to investigate.

      And it really undermines the rule of law to have some lawyers conspiring to fundamentally defraud the courts in a systematic way. They are harming third parties right to free speech, probably without those individuals even being aware.

  • So it seems that companies are suing fake defendants on the pretext that these defendants are behind critical comments on third party websites. This is in order to get the comments removed from websites.

    A summary is supposed to cover a broad overview. Not give the details without context.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      Think of advanced money laundering.
      A company get sued in one nation with gov cash flow limits. No way to get cash out the country. Even extended family buying a 10th home, expensive fake education claims don't work anymore.
      So create a totally fake law suit.
      The boss to pay out huge amounts to another legally advanced safe nation due to damages. Stolen design issues, wasted product run, a contract.
      Huge amounts of cash was lost in an open court case in another happy nation with actual rule of law. E

  • Don't they trust their own tools?

    Wouldn't they just need to Google the name to find out?

  • Surely it is the responsibility of a court would make sure that the parties involved in a lawsuit actually exist?

    One court in TFA did so - apparently none of the others bothered. If one cannot hold the court responsible, then surely a criminal complaint against the person who filed the suit (against a non-existent defendant) is justified?

    • Against the judges involved... the author of the article (and the readers) may do it (several cases might be needed to avoid retaliation...)

    • Surely it is the responsibility of a court would make sure that the parties involved in a lawsuit actually exist?

      Civil courts exist to resolve disputes, not to determine facts and sentence offenders.

      In this case, the court is presented with a dispute that has been resolved except for the minor detail of deindexing some "defamatory" content---because neither party can perform this action themselves. So the court issues an order to have it done.

      While this situation implicitly involves perjury somewhere along the line, the court can still avoid the problem by involving the content host in the proceedings.

      In the future, t

  • Maryland : Unauthorized Practice of Law [justia.com]: Md. Bus. Occ. & Prof. Code 10-601 to 10-606
    Fines and penalties [justia.com] of up to $5000 and 5 years in prison per instance.

    Not to mention making intentional misrepresentations to a court (e.g., that a putative defendant existed who didn't, or that said defendant was the author of a post when no one actually believed he was). The contempt of court penalties for that will be a great deal swifter than the company's trial for practicing law without a license. No wonder the

  • Obviously SJWs running amok (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Subject says it all. Some abitious SJWs have concocted a scheme to reshape the internet in their own image by bamboozling the legal system into doing their bidding.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Holi ( 250190 )
      I would hardly put the so called "Social Justice Warriors" in the same boat as online reputation defenders. But the fact you even use that term does make me question your intelligence.

    • Shouldn't you be in junior high school right now? Does your district not have truant officers?

  • Sounds pretty typical of their behavior.
  • These are disbarrable actions, the violate the lawyers oath of ethics (funny I know but they have one), go after the lawyers.

  • If only there was some way to look up who owns a domain, and what their street address is.

    And if that information was somehow protected for some reason, if only there were a system of... oh, let's call them "registrars", for lack of a better term... who would "host" those domains and could easily verify the ownership.

    Maybe some day Google won't have to go it alone.

    • Except that the DNS is irrelevant.

      Suppose that I put something on a review site about you that you don't like. You bring action against George over there, who says he put it on the site, he's sorry, and he'll agree to a settlement that involves a court order to remove the review. Everybody knows where to find you, me, and the review site, although in the examples apparently George frequently has a phony address, and the court doesn't know that I should be involved. It's risky for the lawyers involved,

  • FRAUD (Score:2)

    by hduff ( 570443 )

    Nice to see lawyers willing to commit fraud. I hope they get caught

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