Has the Hollywood bar already forgotten about the Streisand effect?

by Paul Alan Levy

Neil Meyer, an entertainment lawyer based in Beverly Hills, recently sent an oddly frivolous cease-and-desist letter to Lipstick Alley, an occasional client of ours that runs a message board devoted to discussions about athletes and other celebrities, with a particular focus on issues of interest to African-American women.  He complained about a few postings commenting on a report about an actor named Chris Evans, apparently based on a report in a Hollywood gossip blog.  Meyer’s letter accused Lipstick Alley of “publishing” these rumors, and threatened suit to hold it liable for defamation and right of publicity violations.  And, like throwing red meat to the lions, at the same time that he was threatening suit, Meyer claimed that his threat was completely confidential and that Lipstick Alley was “specifically prohibited” from publishing or even describing the substance of his demand letter.  Readers of this blog are familiar with the folly of that sort of claim.

In a letter sent to Meyer today, I pointed out his apparent ignorance of section 230, which protects Lipstick Alley from being sued over content that its users post, as well as certain other errors in the letter (such as referring to his client using both male and female pronouns).  Given that the “Streisand effect” was named for a silly lawsuit by a Hollywood personality, you would think lawyers who practice in that community would know better.

Comments

[Kent Allard]

Is it at all ironic that Chris Evans' most recent character portrayal is Captain America, the champion of the freedoms granted in our country? For shame

[Ken]

Paul:

I was initially confused looking at your link to the cache of the "report," because it looked at first to me like it was a site blogger, not a guest user. But I take it from what you say in your letter that at that blog guest users can do blog entries like that. I guess I'm more used to a forum format, where it's more clear the item is a thread started by a user and not a post written by a site-owner for comment.

But I doubt Mr. Meyer was thinking of that distinction.

Ken

[Ken]

Someone might want to suggest that Mr. Meyer Google, for instance, Charles Carreon.

[Aaron deOliveira]

Page 1 Paragraph 6 "without limitation, her common law rights"

That typo seems to say that this is a boiler plate letter that the firm has sent out before. In changing everything for Mr. Evans, they seemed to have missed this pronoun.