This whole idea is creepy as hell - someone from threadless just says it's "serious" and refuses to give any details as to who these people are or why they want to suddenly play net-nanny. In the meantime, here's a handful of cash for whoever decides to play big brother. It's a bad thing to start, and a bad thing to encourage.
Sorry dudes, we were told by the police that we cannot release any information as to _why_ we want to track these guys down. They said that in situations in the past, people have been sued for defamation.
I really really really wish I could tell you what is going on. For now, you will have to rely on the internet rumormill:
Yes, we could have. However time is of the essence here, and we took all of the recommendations you see directly from the Chicago Police Department. They recommended a direct cash incentive would be the quickest and easiest way to find both of these guys.
This sentiment seems a little silly to me - there's no implicit right to anonymity in RL, especially if you go around pissing people off by stealing from them.
No, there's no legal right to anonymity for these things. But he just said "bad thing to start, bad thing to encourage."
Here, let's try a thought exercise. "I got hit on by this guy at a bar the other night. Let's make it public that he's gay and obviously scum ('cause he hit on me). I'll give $100 for whoever can tell me his name and where to go to tell his neighbors, $50 for the person who told them, and $25 for each of the next people to tell them."
See why it might be a bad idea to encourage this as a general solution to this type of problem?
Don't get me wrong -- it really sucks that Threadless got robbed, and these guys (assuming they were the thieves) deserve to be found and punished.
But as we discover new means of vigilante justice, it's worth remembering that vigilante justice has a cost in fairness, accuracy and rule of law.
In this case I see both violations of False Light and Appropriation being possible, if these guys didn't do anything, and didn't agree to be involved in this stunt.
Personally I like the idea of vigilantism, but these things are better left to law enforcement and the legal system. They are in place for a reason, after all.
You know that that Wikipedia article doesn't even have the word "anonymity" in it, right?
There's no general privacy law in the U.S. There's some minor right to write anonymously, extrapolated from the First Amendment, but absolutely no right to be anonymous in general, and in fact the First Amendment goes the other way: Threadless has the right to publish those photos and to make any truthful statements about them whatsoever. In many cases Threadless can even make untruthful statements about the photos and still be perfectly legal.
Maybe I'm misreading Wikipedia, but it looks like False Light and Approbation violations would require (respectively) the dissemination of false information or some intent to gain financially.
However, it's probably true that these laws will be tested in unexpected ways as everyone gains the power to communicate with "the public".
I had just finished reading "This is not a game" about crowdsourcing crime solving using ARG techniques. It was a decent read. When i heard that something terrible had happened to the threadless tech dept. It seemed like a great way to possibly find the alleged crooks.
Luckily the dudes who remain at threadless were quick on the execution and had already appealed to the community. They are attempting to use the same method that MIT used to find the red balloons (i.e. a tiered reward for reporting info).
