Fake Libel Court Order Used In (Failed) Attempt To Vanish Sexual Battery Conviction
Furnished content.
People who do not have a legal reason to have content delisted are still trying to trick Google into compliance with various illegal actions. So far, we've seen bogus lawsuits filed by fake plaintiffs against fake defendants, slid by inattentive judges to secure takedown orders. We've seen people trying to limit negative search engine results by forging judge's signatures on fake orders. We've seen people assemble fake news sites to post copies of negative content solely for the purpose of targeting the original posts with fraudulent takedown orders.Eugene Volokh has dug up another interesting libel takedown order, supposedly issued by a Michigan federal court. It awards the plaintiff, Abraham Motamedi, $5,720 in legal fees and the delisting of sex offender registry-related URLs (only one of which isn't a top-level domain). From the order [PDF]:IT IS FURTHER ORDERED: that to prevent further or future harm to Plaintiff’s reputation in the community and protect his employment from the dangers of labeling him as a “sex offender”, Plaintiff is awarded a permanent injunction against Defendants … compelling these Defendants to immediately remove any and all sex offender postings of Plaintiff caused by these Defendants, including but not limited to the sex offender postings presently on the following websites:– http://www.sexoffenderrecord.com/citydirectory/ID/Meridian/Abraham_Motamedi_1353346– http://www.sexcrimedata.com/– http://ev.onlinedetective.com/– http://onlinedetective.com/– http://offendex.com/ The plaintiff also is granted a permanent injunction against further posts linking him to sexual offenses.IT IS FURTHER ORDERED: that to prevent further or future harm to Plaintiff’s reputation in the community and protect his employment from the dangers of labeling him as a “sex offender”, Plaintiff is awarded a permanent injunction against Defendants CHARLES RODERICK II, a/k/a Chuck Roderick, an individual, WEB EXPRESS, L.L.C., d/b/a “Online Detective”, an Arizona limited liability company; and, ONLINEDETECTIVE.COM, L.L.C., an Arizona Limited Liability Company compelling these Defendants to refrain from ever posting any similar sex offender posting concerning 5 Plaintiff or otherwise posting defamatory statements concerning Plaintiff on the internet. Volokh says this was submitted to Google, despite the order naming only the sites listed above. The order doesn't discuss Section 230 once, even though it skips a set of intermediaries in its haste to get to the delisting. But that's really no surprise, considering no judge ever saw a complaint, much less signed their name to this judgment.There is no Motamedi v. Oesterblad in the Eastern District of Michigan. The case number 2:13-cv-14541 (the number listed in the order) in that district corresponds to a completely different order. There is no Daniel Ro. Markus, the lawyer who, according to the order, was responsible for the case. The order submitted to Google was a forgery, like the ones discussed here (Lichterman and Aukerman), here (Arnstein), and here (Haas). Nevertheless, Abraham Motamedi insists it's a real court order. Volokh spoke to Motamedi, who claimed the order was legit (despite the case being nonexistent). This isn't necessarily an indication Motamedi crafted the completely-fake court order. It could mean some shady reputation management company did it on his behalf. But considering Motamedi never expressed any hesitance about his assertions, it's safe to assume he's well aware this isn't legitimate.Additional weirdness: the criminal conviction Motamedi is trying to make vanish was handed down in Idaho and he now apparently lives in Nevada. Where Michigan factors into all of this is a mystery, although I suppose completely fake court documents don't have to adhere to any sort of jurisdictional limits.As more evidence of forged/fake court documents is uncovered, it's crucial that that intermediaries pay close attention to any supposed court order they receive. Failing to give these documents additional scrutiny will only encourage further abuse.
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posted at: 12:00am on 17-Jun-2017
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Cable Industry Lobbyist Proclaims Cable TV Industry 'Failing' While Advocating Against Broadband Consumer Rights
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I'll forgive our dear readers if they don't have the name Matthew Polka floating in their memories right at this moment. As a refresher, he's the CEO of American Cable Association, the lobbying group that represents smaller cable and broadband providers. One would think that a group like this would be very interested in breaking up the near-monopolies held by the larger players in this industry and fostering more competition within the marketplace, except that Polka has literally said the opposite. The ACA has also been involved in battles against any sort of regulation in the broadband industry, against privacy rules with any real teeth, and against the plan to require cable companies to open service to third-party cable boxes.And in some respects on those last points, I get it. Hey, the ACA is lobbying for its member clients, not for the American people. Even as Polka has made noise about how great non-competition would be for America, everyone knew that was silly. What he says is clearly crafted to make his cable company clients as happy as possible, obviously.The cable TV business is in trouble—in fact, it is "failing" as a business due to rising programming costs and consumers switching from traditional TV subscriptions to online video streaming, according to a cable lobbyist group."As a business, it is failing," said Matthew Polka, CEO of the American Cable Association (ACA). "It is very, very difficult for a cable operator in many cases to even break even on the cable side of the business, which is why broadband is so important, giving consumers more of a choice that we can't give them on cable [TV]." Well, that's certainly different. These comments by Polka about how the cable television industry is failing differ from the doom-and-gloom sideshow too often pitched as a reason for cable companies to not do all sorts of things that would benefit customers. Instead, Polka's tone appears to be sincere on this point: the cable television industry, as we have come to know it, is in its death throes. Given cord-cutting and a new customer adoption rate that has been falling in the younger generations, it's refreshing to hear a cable lobbyist come out and admit all of this.The problem is that when you square this with the other point he made -- the importance of broadband -- a shiver bolts down the spine.That's one reason cable companies in the ACA see broadband as "their future," Polka said. A cable company executive who appeared alongside Polka on the C-SPAN show echoed those comments.Video is "certainly our worst product," said Tom Larsen, senior VP of government and public relations for cable company Mediacom. "It makes the least amount of money."Larsen and Polka both praised the FCC's new Republican leadership for taking a deregulatory approach to broadband. This, of course, refers in part to the gutting of net neutrality, the death of which is being to served to the American public by the same new leadership Polka is so happy to praise. It should be immediately clear what the ACA is hoping for when you take into account the sum of its previous stances, nearly all of which have been de facto anti-competition, as well as this newfound full focus on the broadband portion of its members' services. It expects to be able to strangle the ISP industry in the same way its anti-competitive practices helped pave the way for cable providers being unable to respond to customer demands.
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