Another Early Xmas Gift: Patrick Ross Is Bankrupt

Patrick Ross, who defamed and was successfully sued by Canadian Cynic, has declared personal bankruptcy (scroll to bottom).  Since notice of personal bankruptcy only remains on your credit record for six years, it will now be up to the Internet to ensure that the unrepentant Mr. Ross remains penniless after that time period is up.  Thanks to Connie and Mark and the folks at FreeD for their efforts in this regard.  Now, and forever, whenever someone googles Mr. Ross's name, the facts of his case, and the facts regarding his credit history, will be the first thing anyone sees.  Which is ironic because that's the same method Patrick Ross used to spread his defamation around the Net.  Have a pleasant holiday, Patrick Ross.  Living in your parents basement is probably bad enough at 31.  By your 40th its really going to suck.

How To Defame People Online

Dawg has a nice update on the CC vs. Patrick Ross defamation case. In the comments, Marky Mark asks:

1. If a bear shits in the woods and nobody is around....i.e., what is the relevance of the obscurity/traffic of the blog that publishes the defamatory material? There is a difference between something appearing in a large daily newspaper or high traffic website and something technically available to all on the Internet but on a site that has insignificant traffic. Can a reputation be harmed in the community in those circumstances?

To me this gets the situation upside down.

Or, to put it another way, if I wanted to damage a person by defaming them on-line, I wouldn't worry too much about the amount of traffic I attracted to my blog or whatever I was using as the vehicle for my attack. Rather, I would worry about where the stuff I wrote about that person ranked in a Google search. As someone whose real-life job occasionally involves sniffing around the net trying to discover whether a particular (usually IT-based) company is a respectable enough business partner for my employer, I can tell you that if you apply for any position above burger-flipper someone in HR is going to run your name through google, see what you're up to on Facebook, and etc. If the first ten google entries about you all claim that you're a pedophile (for example), your resume will be moved to the bottom of the pile. Nobody is going to waste time testing the truth of these claims, and nobody is going to tell you why you didn't get a follow-up call. You just won't get one.

This, by the way, also works as an argument for working to remove Hate Speech from the Net. Here's what you get when you search for information re the oft-made claim that Anne Frank's diary was a hoax. The loons rule the top of the search results. Through sheer determination, they have swamped any saner discussion of the matter. But note that these sites do not themselves have to be particularly high volume to make the top of the list.

The Cynic Triumphant

Congratulations to CC for screwing $85,000 out of blogger and major-league dickhead Patrick Ross for defamation. Dawg has the details. One question that has arisen, though--does Ross have enough money to make the legal action worthwhile? If I remember, PR worked in the Alberta oil-patch and owned a house--or at least I remember being invited to the party at his house once the judge ordered it turned over to CC. Its all a bit fuzzy, but there is definitely supposed to be a party somewhere. On CC, obviously.