{"id":336386,"date":"2010-02-18T16:39:55","date_gmt":"2010-02-18T21:39:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/techdirt.com\/articles\/20100218\/0302378222.shtml"},"modified":"2010-02-18T16:39:55","modified_gmt":"2010-02-18T21:39:55","slug":"its-probably-not-a-good-idea-to-ask-people-to-spam-the-judge-hearing-your-case-with-support-emails","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/336386","title":{"rendered":"It&#8217;s Probably Not A Good Idea To Ask People To Spam The Judge Hearing Your Case With Support Emails"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Generally speaking, if you&#8217;re on trial for something, it&#8217;s probably <i>not<\/i> a good idea to piss off the judge.  Informercial king Kevin Trudeau has been battling the FTC concerning his pitches for a diet book, which the FTC felt were deceiving.  The court case itself has had a series of twists and turns, but as the latest case moved forward, Trudeau posted the judge&#8217;s email address to his website, and announced it on his radio show, and asked people to email the judge in his support.  Apparently, quite a few people did so &#8212; and the judge was not amused, <a href=\"http:\/\/consumerist.com\/2010\/02\/infomercial-pest-kevin-trudeau-jailed-for-30-days-for-urging-followers-to-annoy-judge.html\" >sentencing him to 30 days in jail<\/a>.  As Consumerist notes, the types of people who buy the sorts of things Trudeau is selling might not be the most rationally-minded people, and apparently a few took it upon themselves to not just email the judge their support of Trudeau, but to send vaguely threatening messages as well.<\/p>\n<p>Still, there is an open question as to whether or not this is actually illegal.  Eric Robinson points out that it&#8217;s common enough for those on trial to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.citmedialaw.org\/blog\/2010\/informercial-king-gets-30-day-sentence-email-barrage?utm_source=feedburner&#038;utm_medium=feed&#038;utm_campaign=Feed%3A%20CitizenMediaLawProject%20%28Citizen%20Media%20Law%20Project%29\" >have friends contact a judge<\/a>, sometimes even via email.  Of course, those sorts of setups are usually more limited to a specific group of selected friends, rather than broadcast to the public at large.  Either way &#8212; whether legal or not &#8212; it does seem like a generally smart tip to remember: don&#8217;t piss off a judge  in charge of dealing with your case, and urging a hoard of followers to email that judge is pretty certain to piss him off.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/techdirt.com\/articles\/20100218\/0302378222.shtml\">Permalink<\/a> | <a href=\"http:\/\/techdirt.com\/articles\/20100218\/0302378222.shtml#comments\">Comments<\/a> | <a href=\"http:\/\/techdirt.com\/article.php?sid=20100218\/0302378222&#038;op=sharethis\">Email This Story<\/a><br \/>\n <br clear=\"both\" style=\"clear: both;\"\/><br \/>\n<br clear=\"both\" style=\"clear: both;\"\/><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/ads.pheedo.com\/click.phdo?s=e1b828011270a1ee62a3ce235afb9eb9&#038;p=1\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" style=\"border: 0;\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/ads.pheedo.com\/img.phdo?s=e1b828011270a1ee62a3ce235afb9eb9&#038;p=1\"\/><\/a><br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" height=\"0\" width=\"0\" border=\"0\" style=\"display:none\" src=\"http:\/\/a.rfihub.com\/eus.gif?eui=2225\"\/><\/p>\n<div class=\"feedflare\">\n<a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.techdirt.com\/~ff\/techdirt\/feed?a=SNin4Y72xeY:FFNPDnfRSls:D7DqB2pKExk\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/techdirt\/feed?i=SNin4Y72xeY:FFNPDnfRSls:D7DqB2pKExk\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.techdirt.com\/~ff\/techdirt\/feed?a=SNin4Y72xeY:FFNPDnfRSls:c-S6u7MTCTE\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/techdirt\/feed?d=c-S6u7MTCTE\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/techdirt\/feed\/~4\/SNin4Y72xeY\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Generally speaking, if you&#8217;re on trial for something, it&#8217;s probably not a good idea to piss off the judge. Informercial king Kevin Trudeau has been battling the FTC concerning his pitches for a diet book, which the FTC felt were deceiving. The court case itself has had a series of twists and turns, but as [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-336386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=336386"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336386\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=336386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=336386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=336386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}