PSA: davidkevin has crossed the line

[unixronin]

As reported by technoshaman and others, a nasty little troll named davidkevin has managed to get beckyzoole's journal suspended, supposedly for copyright violation.

The nature of her "copyright violation"?  She quoted trolling comments that he sought out HER community to post in, then later deleted, in her replies to those comments ... something that EVERYONE ON LIVEJOURNAL does.  If beckyzoole is a copyright violator, then EVERY LIVEJOURNAL USER WHO HAS EVER USED THE QUOTE FEATURE (or, of course, quoted from a post or comment by hand) is a copyright violator.  The very existence of the "Quote" button is incontrovertible evidence that LiveJournal intends and wants people to do this.

The truth of the matter, of course, is that beckyzoole is not in any way, shape or form a copyright violator, and davidkevin is a nasty, trolling little cyberstalker who is intentionally abusing LiveJournal's abuse procedure to harass her (among other people he stalks and harasses).

If you object to this kind of harassment and think this claim of "copyright violation" is as absurd as I do, please spread this news far and wide, and complain to LiveJournal about davidkevin's abusive behavior.  It's time he got a taste of his own medicine.  If anyone's journal should get suspended over this, it's his.

(Incidentally, you may also want to know that part of what he was trolling with this time was he claimed to have found a search engine that would allow him to read other users' friends-locked posts, but would not reveal what it was.  As evidence for his claim, he apparently posted an excerpt from a locked post by a user whom beckyzoole knows, and who is known to not have him friended.  LiveJournal denies that this is possible.)

(Yes, I did intentionally nudge my playlist by way of commentary.)

Comments

[elegantelbow.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't be at all surprised if there is a way to view locked posts. There's a php script out there called ljimages.php (you can host it on any server running php), which will pick the 10 (or so) most recently posted images, and let you view them. It also makes the images links back to the original posts.

Of course, some of these images will be NWS. What is most surprising is that some of these images will lead back to locked posts.

I imagine there are a lot of users who rely on locked posts, and expect that a locked post means that no one else can see those links.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

There was also, of course, the big furor over Frienditto a while back.

[bbwoof.livejournal.com]

There is new information about this issue in beckyzoole's temporary account, becky_zoole. Go and friend her if you haven't already.

And thank you for your support! You said most of the things that I have been wanting to say, except that you said them more politely than I would have.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Done. Would you like me to delete this comment now?

[bbwoof.livejournal.com]

Please don't delete.

davidkevin's favorite shit-stirring tactic is to make some outrageous statement in a comment and then delete the comment. This generally transmits the badness to the recipient via email notification, and prevents the world at large from seeing what an annoying little man he really is. This leaves him free to say anything he wants to, without fear of being demonstrated to be a manipulative little shit an insignificant little man desperately drawing attention to himself.

Please note that the current tempest-in-a-teapot results from beckyzoole's reposting his deleted comments. He claims this as a copyright violation.

I would prefer not to even appear to be using that tactic. I posted it; let the world see it.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

As you wish. I just didn't know if you wanted the new journal name exposed.

Exposed? Hell, bring it on! Sunlight is the best disinfectant.

[becky-zoole.livejournal.com]

See, I would never screen all comments to my journal and only unscreen the ones that are supportive of me.
I would never regularly post then delete nasty little comments so nobody but the recipient knows how rude I am.
I would never complain to LJ Abuse that someone has violated my copyright when they quote my 1-line comment in which I pule about how dare they try to comment to one of my posts.
I would never contact a woman's boyfriend to ask him to make her apologize to me, instead of having the gumption to speak with her directly.
Me, I got nothing to hide.

I welcome davidkevin, and nilajean too, to read my journal and to friend it if they so choose.

I will cheerfully give them the opportunity to demonstrate their mature, rational, friendly behavior.

Re: Exposed? Hell, bring it on! Sunlight is the best disinfectant.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Go you! :)

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Have we got an effective place to lodge protests? I didn't find one.

[becky-zoole.livejournal.com]

As evidence for his claim, he apparently posted an excerpt from a locked post by a user whom beckyzoole knows, and who is known to not have him friended. LiveJournal denies that this is possible.

There are four possibilities:

1. Someone on the user's flist emailed the contents of the post to davidkevin; and he made up the story about discovering a search engine that could see through LJ Friends-Lock.

2. He found a search engine that had cached the post before the user locked it. (She had it unlocked for an hour or so after originally posting it.)

3. He found a search engine that was able to access the post via the login and password of someone on the user's flist (as Frienditto is worried to do; although they claim to have guarded against this).

4. He really did find a search engine that can see through the LJ Friends-Lock.

All four possibilities are a disturbing, to some extent or another. The fact that he refuses to say how he apparently hacked the Friends-lock is also disturbing, because it tends to give weight to option 1, and that's just squicky.

[jmkelly.livejournal.com]

I'm following this from some distance with a lot of puzzlement. Why don't davidkevin and his detractors just ignore each other? Flamewars were a waste of time back in the Usenet days too; I would think we'd have learned something by now.

They're local to each other

[cymrullewes.livejournal.com]

I think that's the reason, they are local to each other and know each other off-line and there is a threat of physical violence from someone's supporters against the other.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Because davidkevin gets his self-validation out of sniping at people to try to make himself look good and them look bad, and you can't just leave him alone, he will actively track you down to troll you and harass you. The man has serious problems.

[olafthunderfoot.livejournal.com]

small world, i notice that him and i have a comon friend!

[mazianni.livejournal.com]

IANAL, but as I understand it, in the US, copyright comes into existence as soon as original writing is created in a fixed form. For example, there is a legal precedence for contents of RAM to be fixed form. However, fair use permits the quotation of copyrighted works for the purposes of criticism.

Text posted to Usenet, or a blog, by an author is not immediately public domain, unless the author explicitly states the text is public domain.

So, based on my understanding, becky_zoole would be within fair use rights to quote davidkevin for the purposes of commenting or criticizing. A judge probably wouldn't consider it copyright infringement unless there was clear evidence that the copyrighted material was misused in such a fashion as to damage the commercial value of it. Or some such.

Sounds like LJ over-reacted.

http://fairuse.stanford.edu/Copyright_and_Fair_Use_Overview/chapter0/0-a.html#1

[ilcylic.livejournal.com]

Hunh, that guy sure gets around. I recall him being an irritating fuckbag in libertarianism, too.

-Ogre

[bbwoof.livejournal.com]

The annoying little man is now patting himself on the back (http://www.livejournal.com/users/davidkevin/202767.html) for his accomplishment, and telling his sycophants how foolish we are for complaining about it.

He's going to be surprised when beckyzoole becomes active again tomorrow morning. While he's basking in the imaginary glory of a "victory" over her, she's been working with the LJ Abuse team to resolve the conflict.

[beckyzoole.livejournal.com]

I'm back!

I didn't tell you at the time, but this post was extremely heart-warming. I was so mad I could spit nails, but really couldn't do so with dignity... but I cheered when you spit them for me!

Still, see the comment I made in the wee hours last night at becky_zoole. Let's conserve our energy and make sure that complaints to LJ Abuse are actionable, not just reports that somebody is annoying. I want to see the troll get what he deserves!

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Heard, understood and acknowledged. :)