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Teri Buhl Followup: “Libel…no wait, copyright!” (updated with two more theories)

When Tim Cush­ing at TechDirt wrote about Teri Buhl’s “unpub­lish­able tweets” and her attempts to bully Gideon with law­suit threats, then me with veiled threats of a libel law­suit, Buhl left a comment:

Screen Shot 2013 02 05 at 5 24 45 PM

(“Jurno”?)

Then she asked Jim Rome­nesko to post her response to the TechDirt article:

I can say silly things some times and I’d like to apol­o­gized for my knee jerk reac­tion to Gideon.

Of course I can’t sue him/her because I don’t even know the person’s real name.

You see, threat­en­ing Gideon is not wrong because there is no basis for a law­suit, nor is it wrong because threat­en­ing a law­suit is a thug­gish thing to do; threat­en­ing Gideon is wrong because she doesn’t know who he is. (If she knew his real name, she could threaten him, sue him, maybe even pub­lish his pri­vate journal.)

Buhl implies that the tweets I repub­lished were from a pro­tected account, claim­ing, “My tweets were pro­tected for a long time” but not admit­ting that the tweets between her and Gideon were public.

Screen Shot 2013 02 05 at 5 38 34 PM

In the same screed, hav­ing real­ized that her libel the­ory will go nowhere, Buhl advances a copy­right theory:

Ask­ing fel­low journos (or blog­gers) not to pub­lish my tweets is about a copy­right issue for me.

* * * * *

As far as Mark Ben­nett (the lawyer blog­ger) – I would like to sue him and see how copy­right law relat­ing to tweets and pho­tos in tweets would be tested. If can [sic] afford to do it I will.

Buhl had also vehe­mently (“sep­a­rately, she asked Tim to pro­vide my phone num­ber, and she called our cor­po­rate line mul­ti­ple times this morn­ing”) sought to com­ment with Techdirt, and then sent TechDirt the same state­ment she sent Rome­nesko. As well as the Rome­nesko statement,

[s]he also pro­vided an “off the record” state­ment, say­ing that the back­ground photo on her Twit­ter pro­file is cov­ered by copy­right, and demanded that we take down the image of her Twit­ter pro­file because “as a tech blog­ger I hop­ing you will respect copy­right laws.”

So here, for those keep­ing score at home, is a sum­mary of Teri Buhl’s the­o­ries to date:

  1. That repub­lish­ing tweets des­ig­nated “not for pub­li­ca­tion” can be the basis for a lawsuit.
  2. That she hadn’t writ­ten the tweets I repub­lished (“Mark did you fact check my twit­ter feed to make sure I tweeted what you published?”).
  3. That I libeled her.
  4. That retweet­ing “pro­tected” tweets can be the basis for a law­suit (“I think the ques­tion is if tweets are pro­tected are they public”).
  5. That repub­lish­ing her tweets vio­lates her copyright.
  6. That repub­lish­ing her back­ground photo vio­lates her copyright.
[Update 2÷9÷13: Buhl has the­o­ries #7 and #8 (in com­ments here): that (7) I didn’t use Twitter’s embed­ding to repub­lish the tweets; and (8) while the tweets were not pro­tected when they were screen-captured, they were pro­tected when they were republished:
Screen Shot 2013 02 09 at 3 52 23 PM
Mind­ful of Rule 9, I will not press the issue fur­ther if Buhl stops now and claims that she has suc­ceeded in start­ing a dis­cus­sion on the copy­righta­bil­ity of Tweets.]

Chang­ing the­o­ries is always a good indi­ca­tion that the per­son threat­en­ing a law­suit has no good rea­son to sue: if you have a rea­son to file suit, you know it.

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About The Author

Mark Bennett got his letter of marque from the Supreme Court of Texas in May 1995. He is famous for having no sense of humor when it comes to totalitarianism.

Comments

5 Responses to “Teri Buhl Followup: “Libel…no wait, copyright!” (updated with two more theories)”

  1. Ron in Houston says:
    5 February 2013 at 9:47 pm

    Mark,

    Remem­ber Dad’s advice in the pre­vi­ous post. When you sim­ply look at the total­ity of the cir­cum­stances you’re left with no other word than “crazy.” Take a few steps back, eval­u­ate things then run like hell away.

    This guy will cer­tainly not think less of you.

    Reply
  2. The Immortal He says:
    5 February 2013 at 10:10 pm

    King Mark,

    Teri Buhl will surely appre­ci­ate the video — if she can fig­ure out how to play it — even if she is not capa­ble of under­stand­ing its point.

    Reply
  3. Ric Moore says:
    6 February 2013 at 4:20 am

    Wow Mark! You really stirred the pot on this one! HA! I’ve fol­lowed the links and then found MORE links that led to other links on this story. It’s 5AM and I think I’ve found them all by now. By the time I get up, there will be even more links.

    The part that really grabs me is how she claims she really really likes you, …for a law suit that is. I bet David Let­ter­man has you on his show, after you clean her clock in court. Some peo­ple just have a wake up call com­ing, and this is clearly one of them.

    What I find dis­turb­ing is this photo of her in court.
    http://newcanaan.patch.com/articles/disturbing-story-emerges-in-new-canaan-journalist-case

    Myself, I don’t think court is a place to be crazy and look crazy. In my expe­ri­ence, judges don’t like stu­pid either, but you might get a break if you at least appear sorry. :) Ric

    Reply
  4. Maggie Bilski says:
    6 February 2013 at 8:38 am

    Bunker holes are prob­a­bly being dug in her back yard at this very moment! (I know, I know. Too soon.)

    Reply
  5. Turk says:
    7 February 2013 at 12:57 pm

    I think she’s crush­ing on you, as my kids would say…

    Reply

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