EFF Writes Brief Defending Domain Names as Pure Speech and Opposing CA Law Against Online Impersonation

Back in 2010, the California legislature passed and Gov. Jerry Brown signed a law making it illegal to impersonate individuals online.

THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA DO ENACT AS FOLLOWS:

SECTION 1. Section 528.5 is added to the Penal Code, to read:

528.5. (a) Notwithstanding any other provision of law, any person who knowingly and without consent credibly impersonates another actual person through or on an Internet Web site or by other electronic means for purposes of harming, intimidating, threatening, or defrauding another person is guilty of a public offense punishable pursuant to subdivision (d).

The law quickly became relevant to Korpi v. Collier which involved a domain registered as part of a local school board election.

Julie Collier was considering running for the school board, but ultimately decided not to. Assuming it was likely she would run, Chris Korpi registered the domain name JulieCollier.com and then redirected the domain’s visitors to the websites of Collier’s potential opponents in the election.

Collier sued. Korpi asked that the lawsuit be tossed out under California’s anti-SLAPP law, arguing that he was well within his rights under the First Amendment to register the domain name and redirect it to Collier’s potential opponents. The judge hearing the case refused to throw the case out, ruling that Korpi’s actions could potentially constitute fraud.

Korpi appealed the judge’s decision, and the EFF asked–but was ultimately denied–the appeals court to allow it to file an amicus brief defending Korpi’s right to register the domain and opposing California’s anti-online impersonation law as unconstitutionally vague.

The trial judge, however, found that Korpi had not exercised his First Amendment rights because he did not comment on any of the candidate’s qualifications. Korpi appealed the denial of his SLAPP motion, and that’s when EFF decided to weigh in, because of the important speech issues at stake.

Our amicus brief points out that the act of registering and directing a domain name is pure speech. By registering and directing the domains, Korpi claims he was saying “Hey Julie Collier supporters! Consider these candidates instead!” In contrast, Collier alleges Korpi’s message was “Julie Collier supports these candidates.” Either way, Korpi was communicating a political message. In an offline context, everyone would immediately recognize Korpi’s actions as an exercise of First Amendment rights.

EFF also argued in its brief that the state’s e-impersonation statutes are unconstitutional because they are vague, overbroad and content-based restrictions on speech that fail to meet strict scrutiny. They don’t even require that anyone have suffered any significant harm because of the impersonation. Of course, there are many important and valid uses of impersonation, and many of these uses require that the audience be at least temporarily deceived as to the speaker’s identity.

TOSBack.org

TOSBack.org is a project run by the Electronic Frontier Foundation that tracks changes in the Terms of Service of various technology companies, from cell phone companies to social networking sites and beyond.

The really cool thing is every time a TOS changes, TOSBack.org displays the old and new TOS side-by-side with all changes highlighted so it is easy to tell exactly what has changed (although figuring out what all that legalese actually means may not be quite so easy).

Uri Geller Should Have Seen This Coming

I definitely have regrets in my life and things I’d like to do over, and at the top of the list is the time when I was about 12 years old and checked out and read the entirety of Andrija Phuarich’s ridiculous biography of Uri Geller. I’d really like that week back. What’s always amazed me about Geller is not that he is a fraud but that was such a hack of a fraud — and yet, got all that media attention anyway.

Anyway, Geller’s fraud is trivially easy to expose and you can find videos on YouTube pointing out how he does all his magic tricks. That apparently pissed Geller off, so he sent a DMCA notice to take down one compilation of clips that had been posted on YouTube, asserting that the compilation contained 8 seconds of a clip from a Geller-owned video.

EFF filed suit against Geller’s in 2007, and later a Geller-owned company named Explorologist also got involved. On August 4, however, the EFF announced that not only had they settled the lawsuit with Geller and Explorologist, but as part of the settlement Explorologist agreed to license the disputed footage under a non-commercial Creative Commons license so its free to use to criticize Geller’s nonsensical claims.

Or, in other words, Geller and his company caved after the ridiculousness of their position became clear. For once, I suspect Geller really did get bent out of shape.