There’s been an interesting story developing over the past month at Digg. Apparently it all started with this Digg posting: My $2000 camcorder was stolen and I know who took it. Help get it back! The posting was made by a man named Phil who is claiming that his camcorder was stolen by a woman named Amanda, who was apparently his former roommate. Apparently, after Phil lost his camcorder he found it being sold on a couple of auction sites by users whose names mysteriously matched Amanda’s screen name(s).
The Good and the Bad: In a lot of ways I think what Phil did was the best course of action to him. I am really in favor of public shaming for thieves, cheats, and other sorts of scumbags. On the other hand, Phil decided to post up Amanda’s email address and home phone number with his Digg.com post. The email address isn’t a big deal, but the phone number is. My attitude is basically, the Internet is Vegas: “What happens in Internet stays in Internet.” Taking things from the Internet to real life without mutual agreement is about as close as it comes to a cardinal sin of internet etiquette.
So a few days ago I saw this post: Warning! Felony for submitting a Digg story. As it turns out, the guy has apparently been charged with violating some podunk law in Michigan. A followup story was posted today on the website of some sensationalist local TV station: Man faces cyber-bullying felonies. You can’t make this stuff up.
Amanda Brunzell, 23, said she is living in fear because of the actions of a man.
It is not his threats that got him in trouble, but the fact that he got others to do the harassing and the high-tech way he accomplished it.
It is a case that shows the power of the Internet and tests the waters of a relatively new law.
The former roommate Phillip Hullquist, who lived with Brunzell while she was working in Texas, claimed she stole his video camera.
It was not until after Brunzell moved back to Michigan that the former roommate, named Phillip, claimed she stole the camcorder.
He was so upset he put a video on YouTube and a post on another site, inciting supporters to get his camera back. The response was massive cyber-bullying.
The man now faces two felonies and Brunzell is afraid to sleep. The World Wide Web has become her personal prison.
Hullquist splashed his claims online and riled up Digg.com users to get his camera back. He gave out Brunzell’s home phone number and e-mail addresses.
She has received dozens of chat requests and hundreds of e-mails, some threatening her life.
Kentwood Chief of Police Richard Mattice and his detectives are investigating the case.
The World Wide Web has become her personal prison. Boo-Hoo! She got instant messaged by a few of the trolls over at Digg and then immediately a plan hatched in her head: Instead of instantly blocking them, and preventing further messages by blocking unknown users and sending mail from unknown people into her spambox, she’d decide to wreak vengeance on this guy, trying to ruin his life by going to the police and playing up the victimized woman angle. Even more absurdly, the Michigan police seem to be playing along with her, having charged the original poster with two felonies for merely posting the woman’s phone number and email address.
Let’s be clear, Phil was in clear violation of Article 1, Section 1 of the Internet Conventions Convention of .COM, but this manipulative hag took things beyond the next level by turning a simple situation of internet asshattery into a legal one that could lead to jail time for the guy. Michigan, too, is to blame, for having on books a completely asinine and unenforceable law which basically states, “If you do anything online that causes someone else to possibly behave in a way that could be construed as harassing, you can be held responsible for their actions.”
The thing that worries me with this whole story is the possibility that Amanda might win. I have very little interest in this spat, but I see a victory for Amanda in this case as a blow against the heart of the Internet. There is no way the Internet could exist if every thin-skinned, vengeful harridan could bring lawyers around and sue anyone who might be responsible when some internet troll makes a death threat. Grow a pair and realize that the rhetorical style of the whole damn Internet is inflated to extremes. Telling someone to go die is a casual hello. If one person can be held responsible for the actions of other people, why stop with Phil? Why not sue Kevin Rose and the rest of the people behind Digg for publishing Phil’s story with Amanda’s contact information? Heck, why not sue AOL for delivering the harassing messages to her, and every company running a wire between her and Phil? Go for the big fish, Amanda, Phil is small fries.
It’s not like Phil is some Charles Manson authoritarian pseudo-cult leader personality manipulating a bunch of drugged up women. Digg users may be drugged up, but the ones who were stupid enough to go about harassing Amanda were acting under their own free will. In the past I’ve had to deal with imbeciles who aren’t capable of making this sort of distinction, that Person A isn’t Person B and doesn’t send out mind control rays to Person B … Unfortunately, the lawmakers in Michigan seem to be the same sort of dolts.
In conclusion, both of these nitwits need to have their internet privileges permanently revoked. Amanda needs to die, and the state of Michigan needs to fall off the face of the earth.
