Directory:Akahele/Ron Livingston battles phantom defendant

Over the past few days, we've become aware of actor Ron Livingston's agency <a title="Courthouse News Service" href="http://www.courthousenews.com/2009/12/08/Ron_Livingston_Sues_Over_Gay_Rumors.htm" target="_blank">taking legal action</a> to protect his biography on Wikipedia and his personality on Facebook from the malicious efforts of a pseudonymous attacker seeking to defame (or, if not defame, then at least irritate) Livingston by saying he is in a gay relationship with casting director Lee Dennison.

The thing is, Livingston is not gay.

And "Lee Dennison" doesn't exist.

Interestingly, the community at Wikipedia Review has done most of the <a title="WikipediaReview.com thread on Ron Livingston" href="http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=27677" target="_blank">detective work</a> for lawyer <a title="Chad Fitzgerald, lawyer" href="http://www.kwikalaw.com/cfitzgerald" target="_blank">Chad Fitzgerald</a>, whether he knew about it or not. It appears that the accused "John Doe" is actually one Mark Binmore, if even that is a real name.

Attorney Ben Sheffner has also <a title="Copyrights & Campaigns, Ben Sheffner" href="http://copyrightsandcampaigns.blogspot.com/2009/12/why-you-cant-trust-legal-analysis-that.html" target="_blank">commented</a> on the <a title="Coupleguys, Inc. v John Doe" href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/23812308/Complaint-in-Coupleguys-Inc-v-John-Doe" target="_blank">legal brief</a> and the related common tragedy of events like this -- both the mainstream and the gossip media typically botch the details of any legal case involving the Internet. Why is that? Why do Internet issues having anything to deal with privacy and defamation seem so difficult to accurately report in the media? Maybe it's because most reporters have a mistaken understanding that on the Internet people are good, they don't lie, they say who they are, and they don't spread falsehoods deliberately. Well, wake up. Thanks to <a title="Section 230 of Communications Decency Act" href="http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/47/230.html" target="_blank">Section 230</a>, I'm beginning to think that generally speaking, on the Internet the opposite is actually true.

People are bad. They lie. They don't say who they are. And they spread falsehoods deliberately.