Jason Fortuny

Jason Fortuny is a Seattle-area freelance graphic designer and network administrator who received a degree of media attention as the result of a hoax he created on Craigslist. He described himself to a New York Times reporter as "a normal person who does insane things on the Internet".

"Craigslist Experiment"

Fortuny took the ad of another Craiglist poster, purportedly a real woman seeking a dominant partner for sex,Fact|date=September 2008 and re-posted it in the Casual Encounters section of Seattle's Craiglist personals. On September 4, 2006, he posted to the online wiki Encyclopædia Dramatica all 178 of the responses, complete with photographs and personal contact details, describing this as "the Craigslist Experiment", and encouraged others to further identify the respondents. [cite journal
url = http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/09/17/PKG6BKQQA41.DTL
author = Neva Chonin
title = Sex and the City
work = San Francisco Chronicle
date=2006-09-17
accessdate = 2007-06-17]

Although some online exposures of personal information have been seen as justified as exposing malfeasance, many commentators on the Fortuny case saw no such justification here. "The men who replied to Fortuny's posting did not appear to be doing anything illegal, so the outing has no social value other than to prove that someone could ruin lives online", said law professor Jonathan Zittrain,cite web
url = http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14791788/
author = Anick Jesdanun
title = Prankster posts sex ad replies online
publisher = AP
date=12 September 2006
accessdate = 2007-06-27] while "Wired" writer Ryan Singel described Fortuny as "sociopathic". [cite web
url = http://blog.wired.com/27BStroke6/index.blog?entry_id=1553329
author = Ryan Singel
title = Craigslist
work = Threat Level
publisher=Wired
date=2006-09-08
accessdate = 2006-09-12]

The Electronic Frontier Foundation indicated that Fortuny may be liable under Washington State Law, and that this would depend on whether the information he disclosed was of legitimate public concern.Fact|date=September 2008 Kurt Opsahl, the EFF's staff attorney, said "As far as I know, they (the respondents) are not public figures, so it would be challenging to show that this was something of public concern."

In April 2008, it came to light that Fortuny was sued by a "John Doe" plaintiff who was exposed by his project. According to Fortuny, two people lost their jobs as a result of his Craigslist Experiment and another "has filed an invasion-of-privacy lawsuit against Fortuny in an Illinois court."cite web
url=http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/magazine/03trolls-t.html?ex=1375329600&en=b5085d50ee5c65e5&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
title=The Trolls Among Us |work=The New York Times |publisher=The New York Times Company
accessdate=2008-08-01
last=Schwartz|first=Mattathias]

Fake Lori Drew blog

Fortuny also claimed, in an interview with New York Times reporter Mattathias Schwarz, that he played a previously unknown role in the controversy after the suicide of Megan Meier. He created a blog called "Megan Had It Coming" which made crude attacks on the dead girl and her family, while posing as Lori Drew. Although Drew denied authorship, many people remained uncertain about her denials. The county sheriff's department tried but failed to identify the blog's real author. Schwarz, who watched Fortuny log into the blog and make a post there, describes Fortuny's motivation as "to question the public’s hunger for remorse and to challenge the enforceability of cyberharassment laws," adding that Fortuny is "pleased with how the Megan Had It Coming blog succeeded."

References

External links

* [http://www.waxy.org/archive/2006/09/08/sex_bait.shtml Waxy.org summary of the controversy]
* [http://blog.wired.com/27BStroke6/index.blog?entry_id=1553329 Wired blog: 27B Stroke 6]
* [http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/article.html?in_article_id=19498&in_page_id=2 Story at Metro.co.uk]
* [http://blogs.siliconvalley.com/gmsv/2006/09/perhaps_youd_be.html Good Morning Silicon Valley: Perhaps you'd be interested in a "casual encounter" with my attorney?]