EFF Suit Blasts Web Prankster for Abusing DMCA

Michael Crook is a New York criminal justice student who this summer posed as a young woman in several adult-themed Craigslist ads, exchanged e-mails with several men who responded, and then posted the men’s addresses, employers on his Web site, “craigslist-perverts.com.” (The site has been taken down). Crook is considered a copycat of Jason Fortuny, who similarly this year posed as a woman on Craigslist then posted the responses online, to the great irritation of privacy advocates. But Crook took Fortuny’s “activism” a step further, even contacting one of the respondent’s wives and several of his work colleagues.

Crook dubs himself a “champion of copyright and DMCA” issues on his site, but now he’s got another title: Defendant.

Maverick Comes Around on GooTube Deal

Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks and noted tech blogger, has been in the news recently for crying “What were they thinking” about Google’s $1.65 billion acquisition of the Web video site YouTube. When the deal became public on Oct. 9, Cuban contended it would open Google up to a massive amount of legal vulnerability:

“Google Lawyers will be a busy, busy bunch. I don’t think you can sue Google into oblivion, but as others have mentioned, if Google gets nailed one single time for copyright violation, there are going to be more shareholder lawsuits than Doans has pills to go with the pile on copyright suits that follow.”

But by Monday, Cuban’s view of “GooTube’s” strategy seemed to have evolved.