The Viral Effect

Why you might not want to post personal photos on a blog or website.

'"From: Mike Jandreau
Date: February 2, 2007 11:04:24 AM
To: Gawker.com
Subject: http://tinyurl.com/2ftcg6 violation of my privacy.

Hello,

As a retaliation for enforcing company policies, one of our users, has been slandering me across various message boards and blogs.

Now, I find that an unauthorized photograph of myself is posted on "consumerist.com", violating my personal privacy.

I have had 81 death threats since last night, and 6 individuals have shown up at our corporate offices, looking to speak with me. All 6 of those individuals were asked to leave the premsises. [sic]

My photograph is located on: http://tinyurl.com/2ftcg6

I immediately request that this website and photograph be removed, as it is a violation of my privacy.
Under Federal Law, you must comply with this request."

Gawker Legal's response?

'The extent of the adverse reaction engendered by this situation is admittedly surprisingly extreme, and unfortunate. However, the existence of this image is simply not the cause of any harrassment of Mr Jandreau.

If anything, his name is the thing that enables people to research and find out more information about him (all of which is publicly available on his own sites) and thereby contact him. His name was made public on several other sites before we published it, so we disclosed no private fact.

As I have stated, all we are doing is reporting on a newsworthy story. Because we are online, it is admittedly true that we could choose to comply with your demands out of our own discretion, but I am curious as to what you would be doing now if this article had run in a print publication? Why would you consider this any differently?

We are a publication, and we ran a story with fair use of an image. Why do you expect us to throw over the principles of journalism because a subject doesn't like our story? It is simply not the case that our story, or the existence of the image on the site, is any way is responsible for anything that happens to Mr Jandreau.

This story has been reported very widely now across the web, so why is it our site that is to blame for people showing up at Lycos' door? Anyone can find out what Mike looks like by looking on his own site, his name is in the public domain.'

Ha.

Full story here.