Has Christine Landed Yet - Justine Sacco fired - Cyber Law
Using APA format, write a 1-3 page paper discussing Christine’s potential legal claims, if any, against GoGeaux, Beth, William and Twitter. If you think Christine should pursue additional defendants, feel free to discuss those claims as well. Also, discuss Twitter’s potential legal claims, if any, against William and Sarah.
Abstract
Christine Jacko (Justine Sacco) was Chief Public Relations Officer for Poodle, one of the 50 largest companies in the United States. In addition, she regularly gave motivational talks as a side business, so her name has achieved secondary meaning for her speaking services. Christine maintained a personal Twitter account @christinejacko9. Moments before boarding a long (and Internet-less) flight to Cape Town, South Africa, she posted the following tweet to Twitter:
Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!
GoGeaux provides Wi-Fi services on airplanes. It purchased a “promoted tweet” from Twitter, which allowed GoGeaux to prominently display the following tweet (as an ad) in conjunction with other tweets shown for a Twitter search for the keywords #HasChristineLandedYet and #ChristineJacko:
Next time you tweet something stupid before you take off, make sure your flight has @GoGeaux! #ChristineJacko #HasChristineLandedYet
Beth a Tweeter User posted a tweet:
You can help fight AIDS in Africa by visiting christinejacko.com #HasChristineLandedYet
While Christine was still in the air, Beth received an email from a marketing company asking her if she would be willing to sell the christinejacko.com domain name. Beth replied: “Not right now but maybe later if the price is right.”
Introduction
According to (Teska, 2014), Christine suffered a lot after telling the AIDS joke. "I had a great career and I loved my job and it was taken away from me and there was a lot of glory in that," Christine told Ronson, author of The Psychopath Test and The Men Who Stare at Goats.
" They took my name and photo and created this Justine Sacco who isn't me and branded this individual as a racist. I 'm afraid it would be my new reality if I were in a car accident tomorrow and lost my memory and came back and googled myself." Sacco Said (Teska, 2014).
(Teska,2014) added more from Jacco’s interview stating that “One career was destroyed. For what was it: just a certain social media drama? I think that, as humans, our natural disposition is to plod until we get old and stop. Yet we have built a stage for constant artificial high drama with the social media. A new person emerges every day as a beautiful hero or a sickening villain. It's all very sweeping and not the way we are as people actually. During times like this, what rush had overwhelmed us? What got us out of this?” said Jacco.
From that we can tell that Justine Jacko suffered a lot for her Tweet Post and am going to discuss Christine’s’ potential legal claims, if any, against GoGeaux, Beth, William and Twitter.
(Goldman, 2014) discussed an gave different claims basing on different laws, I found it very useful and I will share some them which I agree with and have a strong case.
Christine v. Beth
Beth registered the christinejacko.com domain name, where she displayed a button that would direct donations to AID(S)Africa, a charity fighting AIDS in Africa (a non-profit organization with which Beth has no other connection). Beth posted a tweet:
Trademark infringement
Use in Commerce. Beth's use of the domain name christinejacko.com supported an independent third-party charity. Beth provided no programs of her own through the brand of Christine Jacko; she simply led interested people to the charity. It has some similarities to the Lamparello v. Falwell, 420 F.3d 309 (4th Cir. 2005), where the court was vexed by the use of commercial matters for a gripe site. If the use in commerce factor covers all activity governed by the Commerce Clause, then Beth made a use in commerce. The Lamparello v. Falwell, the court also noted that commercial ties could imply a commercial usage, so linking to a non-profit could also contribute to deciding that Beth made a use in commerce.
As supported by Beth, as part of the domain name, Christine Jacko posted a tweet promoting the website, and the tweet references. This tweet could constitute separate a use in commerce.
Publicity Rights.
If Beth 's tweet is an ad, it may trigger a violation of publicity rights. The website, using the name in the domain name, may also be a breach of publicity rights because it is regarded as a commercial operation (for the purposes of the law on publicity rights, which would vary from the commerciality of trademark law).
ACPA (Trademark).
The Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA), 15 U.S.C. § 1125(d). Under the ACPA, a trademark owner may bring proceedings against a domain name registrant who: intends to profit from the trademark in bad faith. Beth registered and used a domain name identical to a distinctive trademark for the Christine Jacko mark which had gotten a secondary significance. My personal view Beth had a bad faith intent to profit though perhaps the support as an independent charity doesn't count for that. She did respond equivocally to an offer to purchase the domain name, however. Some courts might consider her equivocal response as an intention to profit from bad faith.
ACPA (Personal Name).
15 USC § 8131 shall apply to anyone who registers the name of another living person as a domain name with a specific intention to profit.by selling the domain name.
UDRP. According to the ICANN, all registrars are required to follow the Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy (UDRP). Under the policy, most types of domain-name disputes based on trademarks must be resolved by agreement, court action or arbitration before a registrar cancels, suspends or transfers a domain name.
Maybe Christine will get Beth's domain name via a UDRP. Beth had also registered a domain name identical to a trademark of Christine. It is not clear though whether Beth had legitimate interests in the domain name. Her website published on Christine 's views on AIDS in Africa.
Beth's domain name registration and website does not have the bad faith clause, even if the UDRP treats more practices as bad faith than the ACPA. As with the ACPA, panelists from UDRP could count Beth 's error in reselling a domain name against Beth. Otherwise we've got no evidence of Beth 's bad faith.
Christine v. GoGeaux
Protectable trademark rights.
The name “Christine Jacko” had developed secondary meaning for speaking services, so she has protectable rights as supported by (Goldman,2014). Federal law protects both registered and unregistered trademarks.
Use in Commerce.
The use of the name in ad copy constitutes the use of the GoGeaux trademark. This is explicitly covered by the statutory definition of "use in commerce." The triggering of keywords also constitutes a commercial use per Network Automation. To be legally used in trade, a service mark must be used in advertisements or in the selling of the services and the services must be made
Nominative fair use
Nominative fair use is a legal doctrine which provides an affirmative protection against trademark infringement as described in the Ninth Circuit of the United States, whereby a person may use the trademark of another person as a reference to describe or compare the other product with his own.
Christine may claim that GoGeaux used more than enough of its trademark. For example, it didn't need to use the hashtag # Christine Jacko in the ad copy; the keyword triggering and the hashtag # HasChristineLandedYet would have been enough to create the desired connection.
Publicy Rights.
Buying the name as a keyword trigger, without more, may not be a publicity rights violation (Habush v. Cannon). (Goldman,2014) states that Using someone’s name in ad copy without their permission is a prototypicalpublicity rights violation. There may be First Amendment limits to the claim, but the publicityrights claim is a potentially potent one.
Christine v. William
Defamation
If he had "malice" William can still commit defamation. If he simply made up that she has been a racist for years, he may have the necessary malice to lose the protection of the First Amendment. His connection to the article he overclaimed may help to show that William knew his statement was wrong.
Copyright
Once she registers the work, Christine will easily be able to create a prima facie case of copyright infringement against William. Photographs "Selfie" will apply for copyright protection. Photographs usually qualify as original works of authorship. Christine, a selfie taker, owns the copyright. If Christine has not made a timely registration, then she will not be able to receive statutory damages or fees from lawyers. She could however get actual (probably nominal) damages and an injunction.
Revenge Porn Claims
William made a public disclosure, which is a good claim for Civil Code 1708.85 in California law. A private cause of action lies against a person who intentionally distributes by any means a photograph, film, videotape, recording, or any other reproduction of another, without the other’s consent, if (1) the person knew that the other person had a reasonable expectation that the material would remain private, [and] (2) the distributed material exposes an intimate body part of the other person”
Christine v. Twitter.
Trademark
Contributory infringement for GoGeaux’s ad. Twitter may be responsible contributory for buying and running an infringing ad from GoGeaux. Twitter lacked the requisite expertise (after all, it never obtained a trademark-based advertisement notice) and could qualify as an innocent publisher in 1114(2)
Christine v. Sarah
Sarah encouraged Poodle to terminate Christine. A variety of tortures could apply, such as contract interference.
Christine V. Biddle
Cyber Bullying
After returning to the work force, Biddle wrote a Valleywag post: "Sacco, who apparently spent the last month hiding in Ethiopia after infuriating our species with an idiotic AIDS joke, is now a marketing and promotion director at Hot or Not."
Conclusion
I think that this fate would have been different had an anonymous tip not contributed to the offending tweet by a writer called Sam Biddle. Biddle then became the publisher of Valleywag, the tech-industry blog for Gawker Media. He retweeted it to his 15,000 followers and finally posted it on Valleywag, accompanied by the headline, "And Now, a Funny Holiday Joke from the P.R. Boss of IAC.' (Ronson, 2015).
We are depending on the shame of imposing gender, race, class and more norms. Shame is part and parcel of how we put people in their place. Public bullying on Twitter is definitely a pressing concern. But it intersects with long-established online and off-line daily pressures, which include exclusion, marginalization, and outright violence, and those pressures have different effects on different individuals. Any talk about an out of control Internet outrage machine that ignores that context is part of the problem. (Blanchfield, 2015).
References:
Teska, J. (2014). Justine Sacco Says She "Really Suffered" After Tweeting AIDS Joke. Retrieved 20 August 2020, from https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jtes/justine-sacco-says-she-really-suffered-after-tweeting-aids-j#.epPbglROq
Goldman, E. (2014). Internet Law (Law 793). Retrieved 20 August 2020, from https://www.ericgoldman.org/Courses/cyberlaw/2014internetlawfinalexamsampleanswer.pdf
Ronson, J. (2015). How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life. Retrieved 20 August 2020, from https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-tweet-ruined-justine-saccos-life.html
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