GillianSeed79
Member
Not sure if posted yet, but The Washington Post has published a new article with the latest development in Quinn's criminal harassment case she brought against Eron Gjoni. Gjoni is the ex who authored the screed that led to the terrible stain on society that is Gamer Gate. Gjoni was going to be arraigned on criminal harassment charges on Feb. 24, but Quinn decided the legal case would probably only make things worse. It's pretty sad stuff, but at least it looks like her work with Twitter, Google and Crash Override probably will do more to curb online harassment, so all hope is not lost. The Post also has a new video interview with her.
www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-int...t-mobs-vs-the-law-the-internet-mobs-have-won/
The basic gist of the story is that the legal system has completely failed those like Quinn when it comes to online harassment and that law enforcement, sadly, doesn't give two fucks about victims like her.
There's a lot of good stuff in the article, and it's worth a read. She's basically still fighting against online harassment, but has concluded the legal system won't help her.
www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-int...t-mobs-vs-the-law-the-internet-mobs-have-won/
The basic gist of the story is that the legal system has completely failed those like Quinn when it comes to online harassment and that law enforcement, sadly, doesn't give two fucks about victims like her.
“What we’re seeing now is the law’s limits,” Citron said. “Mobs have little fear of the law, and unfortunately, Zoe is the victim of that.”
“Is there any way to back out?” Quinn emailed assistant District Attorney Mary Nguyen on Jan. 15. “He did another post yesterday and now stuff like this is popping up. . . . ”
She attached a screenshot from the Reddit topic thread “GGFreeForAll”: “If Eron goes to jail,” the post reads, “I will hunt Zoe Quinn down and rape her.”
On Feb. 10, Quinn officially decided not to pursue criminal harassment charges against Gjoni, concluding that the abuse was more likely to stop if she didn’t fight it in court.
“It’s exhausting, and the whole point of this is to try to reclaim my humanity and stop having to be a ‘good victim’ for the court system,” Quinn said. “So I decided to be an absolutely terrible victim by speaking up” about the legal process.
There is one party that hasn’t tired of that process, however — and that is Gamergate. Gjoni is still challenging Quinn’s initial restraining order, which she voluntarily vacated last August, in an attempt to establish new legal precedent around the use of restraining orders against online incitement or harassment. He has already raised $29,000 from his supporters, and persuaded constitutional scholars like Eugene Volokh to file amicus briefs on the case.
“It’s an outrageous violation of the First Amendment,” said Volokh, whose legal blog, The Volokh Conspiracy, is published on The Post’s website. “Fifty years ago, in Brandenburg v. Ohio, we asked if speech that encourages crime could be punished. The Supreme Court said no. There is no legal remedy for [Quinn], because that’s how the First Amendment works.”
Asked if perhaps the world had changed since 1969, when Brandenburg was tried, Volokh acknowledged that while the world may have changed, the Supreme Court “has not been inclined.” Quinn, for one, will not be a test case.
“It doesn’t feel like a battle worth fighting,” she said.
There's a lot of good stuff in the article, and it's worth a read. She's basically still fighting against online harassment, but has concluded the legal system won't help her.
Quinn herself had been forced, on multiple occasions, to explain “Twitter” and “doxing” and “online mobs” to judges and officers unfamiliar with any of those concepts. Despite new cyberstalking and harassment legislation in many states and growing public awareness of these problems, the legal system remains unwilling, or unable, to resolve all but the most straightforward of them...In late September 2014, a judge granted her a year-long restraining order, which — as Gjoni points out — has a lower evidentiary standard than is typically required in other sorts of civil cases. Much of it was boilerplate, barring Gjoni from contacting Quinn or walking within 150 yards of her. But the judge, apparently perplexed by the subject of the “online mob” — court transcripts show that, at one point, he asked Quinn what exactly that was — also wrote in a special clause, prohibiting Gjoni from publishing further information about her.