Post Ouroboros

[jadelennox]

universal_hub_feed links to us, we link back to Adam...

Somerville man loses another lawsuit over stuff posted about him online

A federal judge today dismissed a lawsuit by Jonathan Monsarrat over postings in a Somerville community forum, saying the forum's moderator did nothing wrong or defamatory when he moved the entire discussion group from a server owned by Russians to one based in the US.

Section 230 is pretty great, y'all. So is the Fair Use doctrine.

Comments

[kathmandu]

Yay for a good decision!

And wow, that's been in the works a long time.

[cassandra_beach]

JonMon should have spent his money on some psychotherapy instead of lawyers fees. . .

(Hey Jonnny – sue ME, motherfucker!)

[lb_lee]

I'm liking 2021's changes so far. (Also seriously, that fucktruck still trying?!)

[ron_newman]

I've been avoiding most publicity on this up to now, but jonmon's lawyer sent me a demand letter, predecessor to this second lawsuit, on March 19 last year. That's right, a week into the pandemic.

[pru]

Ugh, I am so sorry you have still been dealing with this ...individual.

[ron_newman]

And it's not quite over, since jonmon may still move for reconsideration or appeal to the Circuit Court of Appeals. And Dan Booth will file a motion for jonmon to pay my attorney fees, which otherwise I'm still on the hook for. I'll try to keep people informed here now.

[pru]

That would be good. I know there is some active group on FB, but honestly I don't care to spend free time on that site if I can avoid it; it encourages unhealthy uses of my very sparing free time.

[ron_newman]

Yes, there's a Davis Square Facebook group, which is useful, but I liked it here better. If Dreamwidth only had a mobile app, perhaps we could have kept this going better and not lost so many people and so much traffic to Facebook.

[pru]

I think you are not wrong. we might have done better moving to reddit, even.

[ron_newman]

I like reddit in its own way, but it's quite different from LJ or DW and there isn't any reasonable way to migrate content or accounts between two things that are so dissimilar.

Here are links to the Somerville subreddit and the CambridgeMA subreddit. I'm in both, though not super-active in either.

[pru]

thanks!

weirdly, my most active local groups these days are just for buy-nothing.

[ron_newman]

And here's a Somerville subreddit thread about the lawsuit. I'm participating there, so you can likely easily figure out my Reddit handle now.

Judgment upheld on appeal

[ron_newman]

The US First Circuit Court of Appeals has affirmed the District Court's decision dismissing JonMon's lawsuit against me.