Ed Shamgochian at Sounds is on a roll. He has unearthed a second lawsuit involving the AFM. This one’s a real stinker:
In November 2006, Tom Lee and the AFM filed a federal lawsuit against
an anonymous blogger ("John Doe") for a satirical posting at The AFM in
Trouble. The posting showed a fake letter from Tom Lee endorsing Mary
Landolfi for President of Local 802. Tom Lee's suit alleged trademark
infringement for use of the AFM seal, and defamation. (To learn more
about defamation on the internet, read Allegro's May 2008 article by
Harvey Mars, Esq.)
Because the blogger posted anonymously, Tom Lee and the AFM's lawyers
got a court order to require Google to reveal the blogger's identity.
(Google owns Blogger, the free blog publishing service used by The AFM
in Trouble.) Google provided an IP address (a number which identifies a
computer on the Internet) and an email address—but not the name and
address of John Doe.
The IP address was owned by Comcast, an internet service provider, so
it looked like John Doe was a Comcast subscriber. Tom Lee went back to
court and got a court order to require Comcast to divulge the name and
address of John Doe. However, Comcast had purged its records, and could
not tell which of their subscribers was John Doe.
But Tom Lee still had the email address: nopercap@yahoo.com. (That
address is currently undeliverable.) So, Tom went back to court a third
time, to get an order requiring Yahoo to unmask John Doe. And here, in
June 2006, the court records fall silent.
The International Executive Board (IEB) was first informed in March
2007 about an "election campaign issue...involving a questionable
letter of endorsement that had surfaced on the internet." This suggests
that the IEB was not particularly "clued in" to this lawsuit, which had
been filed over three months (and two IEB meetings) earlier. In
addition, the lawsuit is not merely an "election campaign issue" at
all. Tom Lee's complaint seeks to "punish Defendant and set an example."
Though we do not know if Tom Lee was successful in unmasking John Doe,
we are sure that if he wasn't the plaintiff, Tom Lee would regard his
own lawsuit as frivolous. (We will let readers decide for themselves
how similar the AFM seal is to the ostrich seal at The AFM in Trouble,
and whether they think the posting defames Tom Lee.)
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