The Good NET Guide

Posts Tagged ‘statements-even’

Celebrities get impersonated on the web. They’re famous — everyone is anonymous — it happens. Most celebrities just ignore it; but some get pissed off. Kanye West got mad as hell about Twitter users pretending to be him last week. This week it’s Aerosmith lead singer Steven Tyler who is up in arms — to the point of actually taking anonymous bloggers to court.

Tyler attempted to sue a group of bloggers that he says were impersonating him, sharing private facts, making false statements even using his likeness on the web, NBC Los Angeles reports. The only problem? The whole “anonymous” thing. Seeing as no one really knows who these bloggers are, they naturally didn’t bother showing up to court. Hell, I’m quite certain they didn’t even know they were supposed to be in court. So the judge dismissed the case.

Tyler is apparently most upset about these anonymous bloggers posting some comments about his mother who passed away last year. I wasn’t able to find those, but I did find a robust web community around “Fake Steven Tyler.” There’s a popular one in the Rock Band Forums, a group on Facebook (also based around his Rock Band avatar), there’s even a Wikipedia page and an odd YouTube video (embedded below).

Twitter took down the fake Kanye West accounts at his request, but it’s hard to see what Tyler or a court could do in this case. A good first step would be to figure out who you’re actually suing though.

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South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster gets served his final humiliation: a federal judge, U.S. District Judge Weston Houck, blocked him from prosecuting Craigslist management, at least until he’s made a final decision on the case. From the order: “Until the Court rules on the merits of craigslist’s claims, Defendants and their attorneys and staffs shall refrain from initiating or pursuing any prosecution against craigslist or its officers and employees in relation to content posted by third parties on craigslist’s website.”

The consent order granting the restraining order is embedded below.

McMaster started the war earlier this month by threatening criminal prosecution against Craigslist and Craigslist management for allowing pornographic images and ads for prostitution on the South Carolina Craigslist site. Craigslist took extraordinary steps to comply with McMaster’s demands, despite the fact that legal experts questioned if McMaster even had a case.

Craigslist stood firm and filed suit against McMaster in federal court. McMaster, now facing charges of his own, declared victory and ran away.

This final humiliation just makes it clear that no one on the planet with a shred of common sense seems to side with McMaster. The man is running for governor of South Carolina and is using Craigslist to make headlines. The evidence of his douchery is overwhelming:

• His office has never prosecuted a prostitution case in his seven years in office.
• McMaster ignored sites with far more prostitution listings to go after the higher profile Craigslist.
• The EFF says “Attorney General Henry McMaster has no case”
• Local South Carolina press ripped him apart.
• Techdirt calls McMaster a liar
• 80% of our readers would rather lose South Carolina than Craigslist
• South Carolina residents seem to agree.

I’d say we’re done here, although I still think Craigslist should permanently shut down the South Carolina site and ban South Carolina IP addresses just out of spite. But the good guys won one today, which is increasingly infrequent. Time to celebrate.

Update: In other South Carolina news, they found that missing 555 pound teenager. Sigh.

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