456 replies to this topic

[nofrills100]

brandondwright, on Wed Nov 17, 2010 1:06 AM, said:

I do believe that if Al was receiving any headaches over this, the thread would have been shut down eons ago.

Unless you can provide me a link to your story, I call BS. A guy who sold 1000's of guitars is not going to go through the painful and expensive legal process just to have the whining of a single troll silenced. Besides, if the guy's reputation was so great, then why didn't other people figure out that the guy was full of it? I mean, we were able to figure out the Ohiotoy/the.golden.ax debacle earlier in this thread with ease.

yeah totally!

[Cebus Capucinis]

Quote

the next thing you know the site admin gets a summons to appear in court on charges of libel or defamation for not policing the forums

This simply doesn't happen. See below.

OldAtarian, on Tue Nov 16, 2010 5:46 PM, said:

It doesn't matter whether they get prosecuted or not, it's the inconvenience of it all. Most admins prefer to head these things off before they become a problem.Making unproven allegations against someone in a public forum has legal consequences and since the internet is considered a form of media like a newspaper or magazine and not a utility like some would have it, the admins have to be careful what they allow to be posted as the "publisher" of the material.

No, it isn't, and no, they don't.

http://www.law.corne...30----000-.html

within United States code:

"[n]o provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider"

This is a part of the Communications Decency Act of 1996.

Nevermind the fact that practically every single website has an independent agreement that you electronically sign when you sign up for the site stating specifically that you are responsible for your own generated content and not the site itself. These agreements have held up in courtrooms for exactly what you're imagining to happen -- libel and defamation suits. They don't work for copyright claims, but they do work whenever a whiny dipsydoodle thinks that they've been "flamed" too hard. An individual could sue the person making the claims, sure, which has its own set of circumstances that have to be proven, and generally the "internet-flame" cases go absolutely nowhere, but bringing suit against an administrator of a website because another user posted defamatory content is definitely not going to go anywhere fast.

To be frank, anyone bringing a suit against an admin or owner of a site for content generated by other users not only is going to get a judgment in favor of the site with prejudice against the plaintiff (meaning in this case the plaintiff will be paying the site owner's legal fees for the whole 15 seconds it was in a courtroom), but it is incredibly likely that said plaintiff will be receiving a countersuit within 24 hours for bringing forth a frivolous suit with the tables turned, as an admin can claim that the suit is legitimate defamation. That one won't get thrown out of court in 15 seconds, either...

[wood_jl]

I'm surprised that anybody (other than an actual bad trader who has something to lose by this thread) would have the stones to sound alarm bells, and threaten a thread such as this, which provides a VALUABLE service to honest traders. People who have been ripped off have little recourse. Threads like this may provide an ounce of prevention for subsequent victims, and potentially thwart the market for preying-upon of honest people by scammers, thereby significantly discouraging them while encouraging honesty. I applaud the admin for providing it.

Why would you even say anything to potentially scare them into taking it down? I don't get it. What could be possibly gained, besides rejoice amongst dishonest traders, and a gain in rip-off transactions? Seriously?

I think Cebus did a nice job with the previous post.

Besides, other forums do the same thing.....

http://www.nintendoa...&threadid=40780

.....so thanks for trying to scare the admin to taking down the one here.

Edited by wood_jl, Wed Nov 17, 2010 11:15 AM.

[Chris Leach]

Does this look like it works>???





Do I need this response when asking for a refund?

Quote

Before you accuse people of fraud you need to be thorough about troubleshooting. What a waste of my time and energy

I tested this unit with several different batteries and I had a local AA member (jboy) test this unit as well...we both confirm...dead lighting

Can someone tell me this is how these work?

And why I shouldnt get my shipping costs back as well?

[Kiwi]

Quote

Before you accuse people of fraud you need to be thorough about troubleshooting. What a waste of my time and energy

Posting a thread about your problem isn't a waste of time. You have to wait for the answer. There's a lot of good people with good information on these forums.

From the information on this site: http://members.fortu...idlevine/ga.htm

From your image, it seems that brightness should be turned up. There's a brightness knob on bottom of the unit. If it doesn't brighten up, wait about 20 minutes. The screen seems to built on the old technology, which it has transformer that up-step voltage to feed the light. I know it's sounds funny, but I've been trying to fix my Game Gear, but that's what going on with the lighting. I really hope who built these thing don't use surface mount capacitors, which the Game Gear suffers from, from age.

Sorry to reply with troubleshooting information.

[OldAtarian]

Cebus Capucinis, on Wed Nov 17, 2010 10:14 AM, said:

Quote

the next thing you know the site admin gets a summons to appear in court on charges of libel or defamation for not policing the forums

This simply doesn't happen. See below.

OldAtarian, on Tue Nov 16, 2010 5:46 PM, said:

It doesn't matter whether they get prosecuted or not, it's the inconvenience of it all. Most admins prefer to head these things off before they become a problem.Making unproven allegations against someone in a public forum has legal consequences and since the internet is considered a form of media like a newspaper or magazine and not a utility like some would have it, the admins have to be careful what they allow to be posted as the "publisher" of the material.

No, it isn't, and no, they don't.

http://www.law.corne...30----000-.html

within United States code:

"[n]o provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider"

This is a part of the Communications Decency Act of 1996.

Nevermind the fact that practically every single website has an independent agreement that you electronically sign when you sign up for the site stating specifically that you are responsible for your own generated content and not the site itself. These agreements have held up in courtrooms for exactly what you're imagining to happen -- libel and defamation suits. They don't work for copyright claims, but they do work whenever a whiny dipsydoodle thinks that they've been "flamed" too hard. An individual could sue the person making the claims, sure, which has its own set of circumstances that have to be proven, and generally the "internet-flame" cases go absolutely nowhere, but bringing suit against an administrator of a website because another user posted defamatory content is definitely not going to go anywhere fast.

To be frank, anyone bringing a suit against an admin or owner of a site for content generated by other users not only is going to get a judgment in favor of the site with prejudice against the plaintiff (meaning in this case the plaintiff will be paying the site owner's legal fees for the whole 15 seconds it was in a courtroom), but it is incredibly likely that said plaintiff will be receiving a countersuit within 24 hours for bringing forth a frivolous suit with the tables turned, as an admin can claim that the suit is legitimate defamation. That one won't get thrown out of court in 15 seconds, either...

NOTHING in what you just linked applies to someone libeling someone else on an internet forum. The only protection that applies according to that is if an owner of a site DOES censor someone else's comments to prevent someone else from taking offense, then they are protected from being sued for free speech violations by the poster of the offensive comment NOT if the owner of a site does nothing and allows the targeted person to be offended.

If I posted a repulsive thread targeting people of color or of a certain religion and Al deleted it, then I have no cause to sue and neither does anyone else because the law you linked to protects him. If he allowed it to stand unedited, then he could be just as if a newspaper allowed a similar editorial or opinion piece to appear in it's pages. If I made a post disparaging blacks anywhere and it was left up the NAACP lawyers would be all over it.

Edited by OldAtarian, Sat Dec 4, 2010 10:37 AM.

[Cebus Capucinis]

OldAtarian, on Sat Dec 4, 2010 10:33 AM, said:

NOTHING in what you just linked applies to someone libeling someone else on an internet forum.

I'll make it a little clearer for you, since you're thinking there's secondary context of a blanket statement within the second clauses of the Communications Decency Act:

CDA

Read Section I of that IPBulletin post from the Intellectual Property Practice Group.

Of most importance is the bold face text stating: "Website administrators have immunity from liability in lawsuits based on information posted by a website visitor."

Statement 230 ( c )(1) is an independent clause within the United States code as a whole and is not subject to contextual interpretation within the code as a whole, as you seem to be doing here.

Content produced from a third party is not considered "publication" by an admin in the same vein as a newspaper or a magazine, which is exactly what you are claiming. You are correct in interpreting the second measure of that code, in that Free Speech claims cannot be held against an admin for censure, but you're failing to grasp that the independent clause in the beginning is intended as an over-arcing definition of "publishing content". It doesn't matter if an admin chooses to censure something or not, because they are granted immunity from libel suits in both directions due to clause I and clause II combined. Clause II only defines immunity in the event of censure, Clause I defines immunity as a whole.

The whole point of Clause I is to state as follows in layman's terms: "If the admin didn't produce the content in the first place, the admin isn't responsible for any libel claim brought forth by said content". As I said in the first post in no uncertain terms, you can sue the producer of the content, yes, but you CANNOT sue the admin for content produced by a third party.

You've gone back and changed what you defined by stating "a person suing another person", which is not what you stated in the initial statement. Go back and read it again if you have to. You stated specifically that an ADMIN could receive a summons, which is patently incorrect unless the 3 definitions of "content provider and publisher" are met under the CDA, which in the case of a "bad trader post", are clearly NOT met.

So actually, no, EVERYTHING I posted in that claim is relevant, since it's the applicable section of United States code that deals SPECIFICALLY with exactly what you are talking about, unless you're going to try to switch the terms up on me again. The only thing a website administrator may be legally required to do is provide information to identify the content provider in order for suit to be brought against the proper party.

Quote

If I made a post disparaging blacks anywhere and it was left up the NAACP lawyers would be all over it.

Yes, and they have every right to sue YOU, but no right whatsoever to sue the admin of whatever website you posted it on, since they were not, in fact, the content publisher. It's a rather simple concept to grasp.

[OldAtarian]

$11 million dollar judgement against website for libel and slander

Read

That's not a judgment against the individual who wrote the story, it's a judgment against the website owner for publishing it.

Edited by OldAtarian, Sat Dec 4, 2010 12:46 PM.

[poobah]

OldAtarian, on Sat Dec 4, 2010 12:43 PM, said:

$11 million dollar judgement against website for libel and slander

Read

That's not a judgment against the individual who wrote the story, it's a judgment against the website owner for publishing it.

They didn't respond to the suit, and therefore lost.
Had they responded, it likely would have been dismissed.

[Rik]

This is one of the reasons i would never sell online, too many bad things can happen.This sort of thing works both ways.The seller and buyer can both be guilty of bad things.Leave justified negative feedback at Ebay for instance even after trying to resolve amicably, and you still can get a negative feedback by a pissed off seller/buyer, just to get even with you for doing so. I've seen the headaches of selling online, no thanks, i've got enough stress from daily life.

[nofrills100]

poobah, on Sat Dec 4, 2010 1:33 PM, said:

OldAtarian, on Sat Dec 4, 2010 12:43 PM, said:

$11 million dollar judgement against website for libel and slander

Read

That's not a judgment against the individual who wrote the story, it's a judgment against the website owner for publishing it.

They didn't respond to the suit, and therefore lost.
Had they responded, it likely would have been dismissed.

Yes.
Also, this case seems somewhat different to the set up here.
The guy was being sued for something that the website he owned, infact the editorial running the website he owned, actually published themselves - as opposed to something a member of the public posted on his website.
In this instance the initial claim, by Oldatarian, that Al could be sued for defamatory posting by a member of the public on his website is something else, which as I understand, he would not be liable for.

[Cebus Capucinis]

Also, just as a more hilarious FYI to that frivolous case posted, Sarah Jones actually sued the WRONG website in the first place. (Yes, I was really hoping that case would be posted..... )

http://www.techdirt....025610848.shtml

The judgment was only made because the defendant did not respond.

Or wait! Was there even a judgment in the first place at all?

Of note in that article are two points:

Quote

Assuming there's no truth to the rumors, it sounded like a straightforward libel case -- though from all the reporting, it's not clear if the site owners themselves wrote the content, or if it was written by a user -- in which case the site might have Section 230 protections (potentially depending on how involved they were in encouraging such content).

EXACTLY what I stated -- twice even.

Quote

Amusingly, the folks at TheDirt.com are amusingly asking if they should sue for libel right back, considering all the press coverage claiming (falsely) that they had libeled Ms. Jones. Oh, and as for TheDirty.com, it's also asking the AP for an apology for falsely reporting that it had lost the lawsuit when it hadn't even been served. Quite a dirty mess.

So the 'judgment' was reputedly falsely reported in the first place as it was!

Sounds to me like the defense had a rock-solid case, seeing as how the plaintiff sued entirely the wrong company in the first place.

I love this bit:

Quote

Separately, I have to imagine that Jones' lawyer, Eric Deters, now regrets his statement to the AP:
"If they would have just taken it down, this all would have been over," Deters said. "They just kind of mocked the whole court system."
Might have helped if you sued the right company.

Sounds like a rockstar attorney there. Especially given the fact that due to Section 230 ( c ) (1), if they were not the original publisher of said content and it was produced by a website visitor or third party, it wouldn't matter if they took it down or not, because website admins are granted protection against libel lawsuit for content visitors post in the first place. Nevermind the fact that if the libel suit weren't fraught with these problems, and it was brought against the proper party, the defendant can potentially prove that the statements are factual (in any given case, not this one in particular), therefore defeating the entire point of a libel suit, since factual statements are not libelous. So if you want to sue someone for libel, there's quite a few hurdles you have to jump over before the case is given credence.

A case that isn't bogged down with such things as falsely reported judgments and suits against the wrong party (those sort of things tend to cause the case to lose credibility) would be here:

Committee for Civil Rights v. Craigslist

In this case, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals is hearing a complaint by the Committee for Civil Rights against Craigslist. They are attempting to appeal an earlier judgment made -- the judgment in that case stating that Craigslist is not liable for damages or libel suit due to Section 203 ( c ) (1) protection granted to administrators of websites against content produced by third parties. Of note in the final pages is the decision the appellate court comes to -- in 2008 -- that states exactly the same: section 203 ( c ) (1) defines a content publisher under United States code, and by that definition, an administrator of a website is not responsible for content produced by visitors or third parties.

For further reading:
Zeran v. America Online
Weinstein Co v. America Online
Green v. America Online
Batzel v. Smith
UCS v. Lycos

Of particular note here is UCS v. Lycos -- in this case, UCS attempted to sue Lycos for information forum users posted on their Raging Bull forum criticizing decisions the company made. The case was dismissed due to Section 203 ( c ) (1) protections granted to Lycos as an administrator of content and not a publisher of content.

That sounds almost exactly like what you were initially claiming:

Quote

Making unproven allegations against someone in a public forum has legal consequences and since the internet is considered a form of media like a newspaper or magazine and not a utility like some would have it, the admins have to be careful what they allow to be posted as the "publisher" of the material.

Which I addressed in the initial response.

You then proceeded to say:

Quote

NOTHING in what you just linked applies to someone libeling someone else on an internet forum.

All that case law I just cited (spanning almost every single circuit court in the United States) sure seems to disagree with you.

[wood_jl]

I still don't get why this useful bad trader thread is "under attack."

Questions still remaining to be answered:

(1) Why was this brought up at all, in the first place?

(2) What is hoped to have possibly been gained?

Do these not seem like relevant questions? No answer for them?

[4Ks]

wood_jl, on Sun Dec 5, 2010 12:41 PM, said:

I still don't get why this useful bad trader thread is "under attack."

Questions still remaining to be answered:

(1) Why was this brought up at all, in the first place?

(2) What is hoped to have possibly been gained?

Do these not seem like relevant questions? No answer for them?

This thread bursts into flame every once in a while, but it'll cool down eventually.

[Chris Leach]

Kiwi, on Fri Nov 26, 2010 8:06 PM, said:

Quote

Before you accuse people of fraud you need to be thorough about troubleshooting. What a waste of my time and energy

Posting a thread about your problem isn't a waste of time. You have to wait for the answer. There's a lot of good people with good information on these forums.

From the information on this site: http://members.fortu...idlevine/ga.htm

From your image, it seems that brightness should be turned up. There's a brightness knob on bottom of the unit. If it doesn't brighten up, wait about 20 minutes. The screen seems to built on the old technology, which it has transformer that up-step voltage to feed the light. I know it's sounds funny, but I've been trying to fix my Game Gear, but that's what going on with the lighting. I really hope who built these thing don't use surface mount capacitors, which the Game Gear suffers from, from age.

Sorry to reply with troubleshooting information.

There were two lights on the left side of the screen. One lit up..the other would not no matter how long I had it on....The seller agreed to a return.....things went and things are now gone....Life moves forward. I will note the seller send me a video of the item actually having both light lit up? Wierd...........

Didnt mean to start the flaming....

[Jimmy Yakapucci]

Cebus Capucinis, on Sat Dec 4, 2010 10:54 AM, said:

OldAtarian, on Sat Dec 4, 2010 10:33 AM, said:

If I made a post disparaging blacks anywhere and it was left up the NAACP lawyers would be all over it.

Yes, and they have every right to sue YOU, but no right whatsoever to sue the admin of whatever website you posted it on, since they were not, in fact, the content publisher. It's a rather simple concept to grasp.

Not to totally derail this topic, but what grounds would the NAACP have to sue anybody on in that regard? If that were the case, they would need a full-time staff just to keep up with the posts made in the Rants and Raves section of any city's craigslist.

JY

[djpubba]

You don't need grounds to sue someone. Just money. You only need grounds to get into court.

[jesusc]

GarretCRW.

I bought a broken Sega CD and Genesis off of him December 14 for $30. As of this morning, I've not received anything.
Last monday I sent him a PM asking if and when he mailed the stuff out. I got no answer.
I then bumped his sale thread with an inquiry to the general public if anyone else had issues receiving their stuff.
Last thursday, I sent another PM asking him to let me know what's up. Still no reply.
I've been checking his profile and he's been online many times since I sent the PMs, so I'm pretty sure it's not a case of "I haven't been around, sorry."

[BDW]

jesusc, on Mon Jan 17, 2011 7:53 AM, said:

GarretCRW.

I bought a broken Sega CD and Genesis off of him December 14 for $30. As of this morning, I've not received anything.
Last monday I sent him a PM asking if and when he mailed the stuff out. I got no answer.
I then bumped his sale thread with an inquiry to the general public if anyone else had issues receiving their stuff.
Last thursday, I sent another PM asking him to let me know what's up. Still no reply.
I've been checking his profile and he's been online many times since I sent the PMs, so I'm pretty sure it's not a case of "I haven't been around, sorry."

I bought several items from him on December 27, and I haven't received a package yet. I'm not pleased either.

[Defender II]

I tried to work it out with nyatarifanatic. He promised he had changed his ways and was going to make it right, but he hasn't!
And now he has gone even farther!
He just listed one of the items on eBay that I already paid him for!!!!!!


nyatarifanatic on ebay is at it again. Avoid all his auctions unless you want to lose your money like we did.

james orr
594 east 88th street
brooklyn ny 11236

James or Jimmy Orr
BrooklynAtari
NYAtarifan
nyatarifanatic@aol.com
james.orr@aol.com

See also My previous post,and jacobus post.

Edited by Defender II, Thu Feb 10, 2011 9:52 PM.

[the.golden.ax]

gophilipgo on Atari Age has scammed me. After he got both his NES/7800 conversion, paid with Gift Pay paypal and both delivered. He has filed a charge back through his credit card reversing out my payment, claiming non-delivery. Will amend as appropriate if resolved.

420606479101969010386864822391

420606479101969010386927637047


AX

[4Ks]

the.golden.ax, on Wed Apr 13, 2011 9:41 AM, said:

gophilipgo on Atari Age has scammed me. After he got both his NES/7800 conversion, paid with Gift Pay paypal and both delivered. He has filed a charge back through his credit card reversing out my payment, claiming non-delivery. Will amend as appropriate if resolved.

420606479101969010386864822391

420606479101969010386927637047


AX

Man, no offense, but you REALLY need to research your buyers/sellers better before you do business with them. It's awful to watch you get scammed over and over again like this.

[the.golden.ax]

4Ks, on Thu Apr 14, 2011 1:01 PM, said:

the.golden.ax, on Wed Apr 13, 2011 9:41 AM, said:

gophilipgo on Atari Age has scammed me. After he got both his NES/7800 conversion, paid with Gift Pay paypal and both delivered. He has filed a charge back through his credit card reversing out my payment, claiming non-delivery. Will amend as appropriate if resolved.

420606479101969010386864822391

420606479101969010386927637047


AX

Man, no offense, but you REALLY need to research your buyers/sellers better before you do business with them. It's awful to watch you get scammed over and over again like this.

To trusting I guess. Why would anyone think a new user that gift paid would pull this?

AX

[Buck]

Ouch. Thanks for the heads up. Best of luck to ya.

[fibrewire]

I wonder if one can report dishonest chargebacks to collections - that ding on his credit will be a constant reminder not to be an ass-hat