It’s an unlikely relationship, but Twitter and sports have gotten along quite nicely over the past few months. We all know about Shaq tweeting, and perhaps you even heard about the players tweeting during halftime of games. And if you watch ESPN or read ESPN the Magazine, you’ll find it littered with dozens of references to the service. At first, these references were made in jest, but now they’re mostly serious. But the Twitter/sports relationship runs the risk of souring after a lawsuit was publicized today.
Tony La Russa, the manager of the St. Louis Cardinals Major League Baseball franchise is suing Twitter claiming that someone is pretending to be him on the site. Of course, he could have just asked the service to take that fake account down — something which it does fairly regularly — but instead, the suit filed last month in the Superior Court of California in San Francisco seeks “unspecified damages.” Twitter has since taken down the fake account.
The suit is specifically for “trademark infringement, trademark dilution and misappropriation of name and likeness,” according to MLB.com. It also said the tweets were “derogatory and demeaning.” ESPN has some other details including that La Russa’s lawyers apparently included screenshots of these fake tweets which included, “Hey there! Tony La Russa is using Twitter.” No such tweet exists on Twitter Search, but perhaps Twitter has purged the results. Some of the tweets in question also apparently talk about a couple of Cardinals players who have passed away in recent years, which angered La Russa.
Impersonation continues to be an issue on the web in general. Aerosmith lead singer Steven Tyler recently tried to sue a group of anonymous bloggers for pretending to be him — of course, since they were anonymous, they couldn’t be tracked down and thus, didn’t show up for court. But Twitter is particularly hot right now and so a lot of people are taking advantage of it to make fake accounts for famous people. This is something that made Kanye West mad as hell a few weeks ago.
His picture makes him look like he means business. Serious business.
The Internet is serious business.
Serious businesses have a serious business model. La Russa has a law degree, so I suspect he isn’t afraid of flexing legal muscle.
Any publicity is good publicity…
This makes me think. Perhaps I should sell Yahoo! because I just saw someone using my name on their email address: MrGroove@Yahoo.com ?
errr.. SUE not SELL
And this is only the beginning…every hot property becomes a target.
You’re right, he should have asked twitter first…and then sue if they didn’t complain. I guess he has enough money for a lawsuit because I don’t think the judge will award him anything…
Does Twitter offer any Security? any re-course to have there name cleared. Hot property or not Identity theft is a crime……The Twitter people should have not started something like this if they where not willing to take the heat.
Yes. Twitter offers somewhat better Security than many other Internet and Web Fads and Gimcracks.
They have a clearly stated policy forbidding users to impersonate anyone else, and they respond very promptly to requests by people (and companies) who discover that they are being impersonated and request that it be stopped. It seldom takes more than one or two days for the offending account to be investigated and turned off. They realized early in their development that there might be issues with impersonation, which is not quite the same thing as identity theft.
They set up procedures and policies to protect themselves, their community of users, and the people who might be impersonated. That’s as much as any reasonable person should expect.
Really, “should not have started something like this” … do you know how silly that sounds?
i think i know where that new twitter funding is going.
why should one just ask to have it taken down? any damage that can be caused by such impersation could be done and just removing the account won’t fix anything.
Before reading, I thought that he’d be suing Twitter because the other team’s runner on third was reading his catcher’s signs and twittering the batter. Nope, not there yet.
That’d be a much more interesting suit though.
@runneronthird: low curve ball
@batter: thanks!
We should all sue Twitter for limiting our freedom of speech!! What’s the story with 140 characters?
Ever wondered how would history happen if Twitter went from the online world to the offline world??? Answer here:
http://www.yout...h?v=s7oqUfe5pug
We want 500 characters Twitter!
One of those old media newspapers did this… on April fools day. They retweeted historical events and condensed their back articles into 140 characters… it didn’t change how history happened… but it was good for a laugh. As have been your posts in TC comments. ^_^
I live in Missouri and there’s 99% Cardinals fans here. I am not a sports fan, but I have seen games.
Based on what I have seen and heard about Tony LaRussa, he’s a MAJOR ALCOHOLIC dick and this lawsuit did more damage to him that any silly txt messages could possibly have done. Or the true statement I made about him being a lush who has no friends.
What was the subscribership of the fake account?
I’m really not sure what people get out of impersonating celebrities on Twitter. It’s pretty childish if you ask me.
A lot of people don’t like La Russa and it’s because of reasons like this. He always gets pissed at the umps and the media for stupid stuff. He needs to get over it.
LaRussa asked and couldn’t get Twitter to answer his concerns, so he filed a suit…they woke up and pulled it. Seems he got action the only way he could. His suit will be pulled also. Think what you might, but sometimes it takes a squeaky wheel.
Tony La Russa is an idiot. How exactly is Twitter supposed to be able to ensure that someone signing up is really the person in question?
Hi potential tweeters – join Twitter – and oh – you have to provide a valid credit card in your name and that has to match the name you provide when you sign up. We won’t charge you anything but we need it so idiots like Tony L. don’t sue us.
Oh and because you may figure a way to scam that method, we’ll be sending you a certified letter, that you have to sign and have notarized, with thumbprint and photo attached before we actually activate the account.
But now that we have to go that route so the idiots of the world like Tony La Russa can’t just respectfully contact us like a human being when disputing the actions of 3rd parties we otherwise have no other control over, we’re going to begin billing you for the use of your account in 30 days.
No worries though, because we are now going to have to maintain a staff of 20 attorneys to do battle with idiots like Tony La Russa, your fee will only be $200 a month.
What’s next? Suing Yahoo because you don’t like the content of an email you received?
If I make a telephone call, impersonate La Russa, and do some harm, you don’t sue the telephone company. Or maybe he would.
I hope the judge throws it out for the frivolous suit it is and makes La Russa responsible for all costs.
This nonsense is another example of why companies like Twitter, Yahoo, Google, should get out of the United States and base themselves in countries where swollen-head celebrities can’t bring frivolous lawsuits.
i agree wid mircea’s comment.in networld dhs wasnt new dht opend celebrity’s name’s fake a/c.twiter isnt new social connecting group sight dht they have fake a/c.
What an idiot!
If he wants to earn the title “biggest moron in the Twitter world” then he’s well on his way now.
People who are bashing LaRussa need to keep in mind, he did start off by asking Twitter to take down the fake account. They ignored him. He sued.
Simple 1-2-3, and in the case of Twitter, not necessarily a bad thing – lets them know they need to pay attention to major complaints.
Besides, if the fake account was talking about the players who died on the Cardinals during his tenure (Darryl Kile and Josh Hancock), that’s really gonna piss him off and make him serious about getting the account removed by any means necessary.
Well, I’ve heard both versions. The first story I heard was that he did not ask Twitter to take the account down. He sued first and then they took it down.
I don’t know where the truth is on this point.
You have to wonder how much of this suit is about the impersonation of Tony (easily remedied as MG points out) as much as it is about MLB protecting their image and trademark. They are notorious for being bullies when it comes to anything online not under their thumb.
There may be a bigger story here underneath all this.
speaking of “getting along nicely”: http://championist.com/
Does Tony even have a case? R there any Lawfins out there (pardon my south park joke)?
How can twitter be sued? They were not using his name and likeness, someone else was – i would expect the people who setup the account to be held liable. What am i missing here?
ROFL!!! The reason you couldn’t find this tweet, fake or otherwise, in Twitter Search:
“Hey there! Tony La Russa is using Twitter.”
is NOT because Twitter purged the results. You can not find it, because it *never* existed in the first place.
“Hey there! USERNAME is using Twitter,” is the greeting you get at the top of a user’s Twitter home page when it’s not logged in!
http://img.skit...wkxd2ene3xk.jpg
Check it out. Sign off of Twitter, the website, and look at your own homepage.
ROFL!!! The reason you couldn’t find this tweet, fake or otherwise, in Twitter Search:
“Hey there! Tony La Russa is using Twitter.”
is NOT because Twitter purged the results. You can not find it, because it *never* existed in the first place.
“Hey there! USERNAME is using Twitter,” is the greeting you get at the top of a user’s Twitter home page when it’s not logged in!
http://img.skit...wkxd2ene3xk.jpg
Check it out. Sign off of Twitter, the website, and look at your own homepage.
BTW I love your blog!
Guess I’m not immune from goofing myself. Here’s my correct Twitter link:
http://www.twit...r.com/MacSmiley
Twitter needs to learn about customer service. If someone calls them and asks them to look into trademark infringement they should act on it. They shuln’t have to get sued to act!
Don’t come after Twitter,Twitter dis nothing wrong, so go after the fool that made account. I the one the committed the crime
“Tony La Russa is an idiot.” – SOUNDS LIKE IT
“a lush who has no friends” – GUTSY
“the title “biggest moron..” – LOVE IT
“I hope the judge throws it out” – ME TO
“La Russa responsible for all costs” – YES PLEASE
“go after the fool that made account” NOW THERES A SENSIBLE IDEA
I’m not American and had never heard of Toni what’s his name before this article, perhaps twitter should invoice Mr who the hell are ya for the publicity/advertising he’s getting.
Ric http://twitter.com/rictownsend
twitter me this twitter me that. Twitter will do just fine and grow into a cool biz for the USA market. Outside of that Twitter is dead. I see clones taking up the slack.
What a jerk! You don’t sue Twitter you idiot! You sue the person pretending to be you. Guess whatever wisenhimer decided to play dressup doesn’t have enough money to suit him.
Just wait ’til he sees this. He’ll sue TechCrunch next.
He couldn’t possibly be suing over the “NotTonyLaRussa” account, could he? It has been deleted recently. (Google Cache)
Sure, the tweets in the cache are in poor taste, but “not tony la russa” makes it pretty clear that, you know, it’s not Tony La Russa.
It may also be possible that twitter went ahead and deleted any account they could find that contained his name.
Either way, Tony, you’re A) a public figure who’s B) been convicted of a DUI. Get thicker skin.
Hm. The complaint itself clearly and repeatedly references the account “TonyLaRussa”, but the screenshots included are otherwise exactly the same as the cached NotTonyLaRussa page, right down to the dates of the tweets. No idea what that means. Maybe twitter renamed the account to “Not…” first, and ultimately deleted it?
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he’s an attorney…this is like a sport to him