Rex Ballard wrote:
> On Apr 5, 3:43 pm, Cyberiade.it Anonymous Remailer
> <anonym...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> Astroturfing on behalf of private commercial entities was recently made
>> illegal in the United States. What are the penalties for corporations
>> like Microsoft which pay or 'conjure' Wintrolls like Ezekiel and DFS to
>> attack open source corporations, organizations and individuals? Can we
>> start a class-action lawsuit against them, raking in billions of dollars
>> in damages and distributing this amongst Linux and OSS organizations?
>
> Probably not. One of the problems is that usenet groups are
> unmoderated, and as a result, topic related content would not be
> considered a violation.
I would definitely not stretch my neck out for asstroturfers like that!
Historically prosecutions have not looked at the charter of the newsgroup
to decide if a violation has been made or look at emotive issues as
to whether a post is enjoyable or not etc.
It looks outside that box to see if a persistent asstroturfer made
defamatory, inaccurate and repeated assertions that are lies, marketing
lies and other forms of lies and more lies to sell their own products
or blacken competitor's products for either personal economic gain
or economic gain of the companies that fund the asstroturfing.
Basically, the line between false and deceptive advertising
standards have been crossed to pose as innocent looking internet posts to
trick the readership with materially false information.
At that point there is a case to answer.
That covers 99% of the asstroturfing trolls here.
Good luck to them when their careers and contracts
gets put through the shredder and they are forced to pick
up the tabs their employers will become keen to not pick up.
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