Update on the AutoAdmit case
We read:
""Women named Jill and Hillary should be raped."
Those are the words of "AK-47" -- a poster to the college-admissions web forum AutoAdmit.com. AK-47 was one of a handful of students heaping misogynist scorn on women attending the nations' top law schools in 2007, in posts so vile they spurred a national debate on the limits of online anonymity, and an unprecedented federal lawsuit aimed at unmasking and punishing the posters.
Now lawyers for two female Yale Law School students have ascertained AK-47's real identity, along with the identities of other AutoAdmit posters, who all now face the likely publication of their names in court records -- potentially marking a death sentence for the comment trolls' budding legal careers even before the case has gone to trial.
The AutoAdmit controversy began even before one of the women, identified in court documents as "Jane Doe I," started classes in the fall of 2005, the lawsuit alleges. Doe I was alerted in the summer to an AutoAdmit comment thread entitled "Stupid Bitch to Attend Law School." The thread included messages such as, "I think I will sodomize her. Repeatedly" and a reply claiming "she has herpes." The second woman, Jane Doe II, was similarly attacked beginning in January 2007.
Both women tried in vain to persuade the administrators of the AutoAdmit.com site to remove the threads, according to the lawsuit. But then the story of the cyber-harassment hit the front page of The Washington Post, and the law school trolls became fodder for cable news shows. Soon after, the female law students, with help from Stanford and Yale law professors, filed the federal lawsuit in June 2007 seeking hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages.
The Jane Doe plaintiffs contend that the postings about them became etched into the first page of search engine results on their names, costing them prestigious jobs, infecting their relationships with friends and family, and even forcing one to stop going to the gym for fear of stalkers.
Source
I am glad that some of the abusive scum have been exposed. Libel has never been covered by free speech. And the scum are budding lawyers! It figures, I guess. Great that their legal careers will now be stymied. Burger flipping is all that they are ethically fit for.
My previous post on the case was on March 14
4 comments:
Freedom, like clean fresh water, is essential to our way of life. But too much uncontrolled water can be very destructive, as can too much uncontrolled freedom. Human nature being what it is, when you give some people access to anything without limits, they will abuse it.
The morons who posted this stuff were simply taking advantage of the fact that they had (or believed they had) "unlimited" freedom to say and do anything they wanted, no matter the consequences. The fact that they also believed they could do it anonymously only incouraged them more. I hope a court shows them how wrong they were.
I must take issue with your comment 'Burger flipping is all that they are ethically fit for.' While burger flipping is a low paying , low prestige job it is not inherently unethical.
The people in question have demonstrated that they have no ethics. They may not even be aware of the concept.
It would have been more appropriate to say 'Being a Mafia leg-breaker is all that they are ethically fit for.'
While burgerflipping is not unethical, it is one of the few jobs that doesn't require ethics.
Therefore it is one of the few jobs (apparently lawyer is another...) for which this scum is suitable.
It may however be better if it went into politics. Lack of ethics isn't just an advantage there, it's a prerequisite.
If you don't want your burger spit on you'll understand that even Burger Flipping requires ethics.
Post a Comment