Somehow Lycos took time off from deleting customer’s emails to send off more photo removal requests, and now they’ve got their general counsel involved.
Look, if you want the photo removed, here’s how it goes down.
1. Apologize to Whitney
2. Restore her deleted emails
3. Photo gets removed
4. Profit!!!
Actually, step 4 is going to be hard for Lycos, but, theoretically, the option is available.
Legal missives, inside.
from: [redacted]@lycos-inc.com
Date: February 2, 2007 1:04:23 PM EST
To: [redacted]@gawker.com
Subject: Lycos Legal Complaint and Request for RemovalDear Sir or Madame:
I am following up on an issue that I believe has already been brought to your attention, but has yet to receive a response from you. On your website, http://consumerist.com/, one of your users has posted personal information and a photo of a Lycos customer service employee, Michael Jandreau. Since that posting, Michael has received over 50 threatening emails, many of which have contained death threats. In addition, at least 6 individuals have come to our office looking for Michael. Although the text of the blog itself contains numerous false, defamatory, and libelous statements regarding both Lycos and Mr. Jandreau, Lycos is not concerned with censoring this individual’s speech. However, it is very concerned with the posting of personal information and photo of our employee. This goes well beyond what is necessary to voice a complaint about actions of customer service, and unquestionably rises to the level of harassment in violation of your Terms of Use. As such, Lycos requests that Gawker immediately remove Mr. Jandreau’s photo and any personal information concerning Mr. Jandreau from this website. Especially in light of the death threats received, and the potential liability of Gawker if it ignores this request despite knowledge of such threats, I would hope that Gawker would comply promptly with this request.
Thank you and regards,
Mark O. Blais
Deputy General Counsel
Lycos, Inc.
Hello,
My complaint with this has nothing to do with “her”, it has to do with my personal photo being displaying on YOUR website, without any permission, written or implied.
This is against Privacy laws.
You’re free to post whatever stories you’d like, and have your visitors comment all they want, that does not bother me in the slightest. I simply want my photo to be removed from your website, as it’s unauthorized, and jeopardizing my personal safety.
Please comply with this simple request.
Mike Jandreau
Customer Service Manager
Lycos, Inc
Ms. Darbyshire:
I am responding on behalf of Mr. Jandreau and Lycos, and am attaching the text of an email I just sent to your legal email address that renews Mr. Jandreau’s request. As the below text points out, Lycos is not asking that any of the content or substance posted on this website be removed, even though certain of the material on there is in fact erroneous. Lycos respects internet users’, including its own users’, right to voice their opinions, criticisms and concerns without censorship (except where they violate a third party’s rights, of course). However, Lycos believes that the posting of Mr. Jandreau’s photo is out of bounds, violates his privacy rights, and violates your own Terms of Use as rising to the level harassment. If the posting of someone’s photo, which really has no relevance at all to the matter at hand, isn’t harassment, then this term in your Terms of Use is essentially meaningless. Given the photo’s complete lack of relevance or bearing on the applicable issue, there can be only one reason for its display — to harass. Moreover, that death threats are now being levied against Mr. Jandreau and individuals are now showing up at Lycos (thereby disrupting Lycos’s business), the justification to take this photo down is beyond question. Your continued display of this photo, or any personal information for that matter, having no relevance other than for purposes of harassment potentially opens Gawker to liability, especially if something were to happen to Mr. Jandreau. Taking down the photo is a very limited and reasonable request, and does not in any way impede the free speech of your users. Please act responsibly and take this photo down asap. Thank you.
Mark O. Blais
Deputy General Counsel
Lycos, Inc
— BEN POPKEN
Note: Whitney’s original blog entry down to CPU overload, here’s a Google cache.
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When Lycos says: “Lycos believes that the posting of Mr. Jandreau’s photo is out of bounds, violates his privacy rights” does that mean that when they publish pictures of celebrities taken by paparazzi that they are violating privacy rights themselves?
That is quite the double standard they are promoting.
INTERNET POWER ACTIVATED
Kornkob – If it’s about this guy being a jerk, fine – he’s a jerk. His tone was pretty crappy in those email exchanges and well worthy of being mocked.
It’s not just about that, though – this is also about the company’s crappy-ass policies, like 30-day email deletion and the hostage email fee. That’s a separate issue from this guy being a cockslap.
The thing is, those two issues are being conflated here. Effectively, Consumerist is saying “We’ll mock the rep for being a jerk until the company fixes their broke-ass policy.”
That doesn’t sit well with me. Mock the guy for being a jerk until he apologizes, or call the company douchebags until they retrieve the email, but those two are separate goals imho. Don’t leave the guy hanging until the company he works for capitulates.
They’re using Paypal as their payment system, she should lodge a scam complaint with them just for GP.
dwarf74: “cockslap”
Officially my new favorite word of the day.
Mock the guy for being a jerk until he apologizes, or call the company douchebags until they retrieve the email, but those two are separate goals imho. Don’t leave the guy hanging until the company he works for capitulates.
Good point.
Mock. With picture.
The dude committed the common sin of blowhards on the net: acted all bad-ass hiding behind his keyboard.
Soon as the veil is lifted, he gets all namby-pamby because Consumerist got meany-pants on him. Aww, poor baby.
Never say anything online you wouldn’t say to someone’s face, should be the Golden Rule on the tubes…
Who is Mark Blais? You would expect a “Deputy General Counsel” to at least have a Martindale-Hubble listing (a directory that ranks the quality of attorneys), but there’s nothing. Also, the Massachusetts Bar states that Blais passed the bar less than 5 years ago. Makes you wonder about the quality of Lycos’ legal team.
“Mark claims the only reason to post the photo is for harassment. That’s just clearly false.”
I tend to agree. Most of the stories on Consumerist are accompanied by a photo. It’s reasonable to assume that the story about Michael would have a picture of Michael.
Although if we use Blais’ logic the only reason Michael would post a picture of himself on moviesnobs.net is so that people would harass him. So if he is being harassed, he really did ask for it, didn’t he? QED.
This is classic… don’t address the problem, address the fallout. If you apologize for being a douchebag, recover her stuff, all of this goes away. Instead, you fire up the legal machine, try to scare someone, and just look like a fool for it.
Didn’t they learn this lesson in grade school? If you get caught lying, just apologize and stop digging a deeper hole for yourself.
Also, the Massachusetts Bar states that Blais passed the bar less than 5 years ago
All that tells you is when he passed the Massachusetts bar. If you search further, you can see that he used to practice in Ohio and was admitted in 1999 there. That’s enough experience to become a partner in a law firm.
And Martindale-Hubbel doesn’t tell you anything about the “quality” of the attorneys listed there. It’s not a ranking site – it’s just a database. And my nonscientific survey (i.e., looking up a bunch of companies I’ve personally dealt with), in-house attorneys very often are not listed there. It doesn’t mean anything.
Jesus, can we let this go? He’s a real lawyer. He works for Lycos. God.
Why is Lycos legal involved? The picture came off of dude’s personal website. The poor customer service should be what they are concerned about…the use of his picture is none of Lycos’ business.
For that matter…who knew Lycos was still around? I mean…this is the same company that screwed over NASCAR driver Johnny Benson a few years back by paying him in “stock”, but deciding not to instead…
In addition…if Lycos wants to play hardball…does this constitute violating Ben’s privacy rights?
http://search.lycos.com/?tab=multi&query=ben%20popken
wasylm says:
You may have every legal right to post it, but if you want to be the “good guys” here, you will just take it down.
So, if news outlets want to be “good guys,” every negative story they cover would be about the blacked out silhouettes of John and Jane Doe?
Here’s how I assign blame:
* Lycos, and whoever made this policy, are to blame for offering bad service.
* Mike is to blame for being rude in his implementation of this policy.
* Whoever is sending him death threats is definitely going way overboard and doing something terribly wrong here.
Of those, Mike is probably doing the least wrong. However, I don’t see anything wrong with how the Consumerist is handling this.
You think they should hold back their coverage just because some idiots are sending threatening emails? If they did that, anybody with a negative story about them would claim they were receiving death threats. I’m sure they’d all love it if news outlets were nice to them. But, hey, that’s what you get for being a jerk. Mike could have at least tried to sound apologetic when he told her that her emails were gone. I would think that would be part of his job description…
Hmm, Karma is a bitch isn’t it?
Not that I am doing the threats, but I think he will be thinking twice before being an asshat again.
And being pissed at the consumerist is laughable. I mean when are these people going to grow up and realize how the internet works?
I agree with those who say that the legal issue is weak and flailing, and wanted to add only that I suspect that people are disinclined to take bad press on the internet seriously because they reason that what’s done there can be undone so easily, so they think it should be undone easily, as they wish. If your picture’s in the print newspaper and you’ve gotten some bad press for whatever reason, it can’t be undone. The paper’s journalistic integrity depends on how they handle the irrevocable nature of the medium. The staff here has been very fair about printing corrections and retractions as needed, but erasing evidence of dickish behavior by someone in customer service, at the request of an interested party, is not how to be taken seriously as a consumer blog qua journal of opinion. The involvement of Lycos’s counsel strikes me as boilerplate damage control. They’re right on the case, yessir. But it doesn’t change any of what happened that was reported in the original post.
Wonder Twin Powers Activate!
Form of an Ass Clown!
Shape of a LART!
Forgive me for channeling my mother, but you’d think that “General Counsel Dan” would wear a tie and comb his hair for his official photograph! Take some pride in your appearance, man.
…many of which have contained death threats.
Sweet! When all else fails, The Consumerist can impose the death penalty. I’ll point this out to the customer service person the next time I’m embroiled in a dispute.
Johann says:
“So, if news outlets want to be “good guys,” every negative story they cover would be about the blacked out silhouettes of John and Jane Doe?”
My point isn’t that he shouldn’t be outed as an asshole in a public setting. He’s clearly an asshole, I think we can all agree there. My point IS that his being an asshole is completely separate from any issue that you might have with Lycos or their policies. The fact is that this person let their e-mail idle for 30 days, and was subject to Lycos’ policy of deletion. If you want to attack their policy, fine. But the fact that this guy was an asshole about enforcing their policy has almost nothing to do with consumer rights.
Now, Lycos’ response to their asshole security admin does; they should have at least apologized, and in defending him they are just adding fuel to the flames. But if The Consumerist wasted time with every asshole that any company ever employed, we’d be sifting through a lot of assholes.
Honestly, I don’t consider this newsworthy to begin with, I don’t consider the fact that this guy was an asshole in an e-mail to be enough reason to post his name and photo on a popular blog (it’s just begging for harassment whether you actively encourage it or not), and I don’t think that the person who reported this story even has a case. Their policy, however lame, seems pretty cut-and-dried to me. Focusing on this guy’s inappropriate behavior is just a scapegoat.
What if every story about Cingular or Verizon account cancellations also included a picture and name of every tech-support member who the account holder spoke to? Legally it would probably be ok, but do we really care about the personal details, or do we care about the crappy policies they are upholding? You’re shooting the messenger, and I don’t believe the messenger deserves it, even if he happens to be an asshole about delivering his message.
Brian:
OK, I think I understand. I can say “Mike Landrau is a whiny little douchebag”, but I’m not protected from saying “Mike Landrau had sex with his dog last week”, unless it’s true, right?
I was always under the impression that slander involved name-calling and insults in a public forum (like a commercial website) and libel was when you spread misinformation about what a person does (ie “Mike has sex with dogs”). Isn’t there a difference? Or am I confused?
Generally speaking: Libel and Slander are both forms of defamation. One is spoken word (slander), the other is written (libel). Discovery of a more detailed and precise definition of the terminology is an exercise left to the student. : )
Cockslap— excellent descriptor.
But I think you’re wrong. In the comments of the original article I got the distinct impression that the ‘delete after 30 days’ was not regarded as a significant issue. Yes, it’s suboptimal but not really a big deal. TOS made this clear and Lycos, as any company can and most do, can choose to implement it as written.
The biggest issue and the issue that keeps this story alive is the rampant douchebaggery of this cockslap, who has now dragged Lycos’ company tool (I mean, deputy general counsel) into the mix with implications of legal action stupid psuedo-legal arguments.
Ultimately this story would have died on the vine had Lycos simply apologized from the outset instead of acting like world class cockslaps (thanks again for that descriptor) at the Public Masturbation Olympics.
Biggest surprise to me is that Lycos is still in business. Or did I just wake up in 1998 again?
What makes this significant is that Jandreau is the head of customer support. His email claims that he’s the last word on the policy. In effect, his word is Lycos policy, and you cannot separate the man and the man’s actions from the policy.
Since Jandreau is the last word on policy, apparently being antagonistic is Lycos’ official policy. Until he apologizes, I see nothing wrong with showing that Lycos’ head of customer support is a jerk, and that his policy is to antagonize distraught users.
Further, this is a situation where an ‘eye for an eye’ does not cause undue harm to anyone. (Angry emails cannot be considered ‘harmful’ in this situation–especially since Lycos sent the first.) If Jandreau wants to stem the flood of angry email, he ought to apologize. Otherwise, he deserves the bile-ridden inbox he’s currently slogging through.
There’s quite a lot of douchebaggery in the world, and if a few douchebags were called out on a more regular basis, perhaps they’d keep it to themselves instead of inflicting it on others. Making an example out of Jandreau is a good thing, and he deserves it.
I’m sure people have agreed that it is fair-use to post his picture, this is why:
1. He shares his website link, therefore inviting anyone to go to his website.
2. Your computer requests information from the website, and the website agrees and gives you the information.
3. You see the picture because the website allowed you to download it to your computer’s cache.
The photo is now on your computer with permission, there is no terms of usage that you had to agree to before receiving the picture, so therefore no strings attached, you can do whatever you want with it.