Wow: This sounds very much like a girl.
How hard was that to keep up for hours?
The law says “impersonating another actual person”. Lennay wasn’t an actual person.
And while its hard to tell, I don’t think the hoaxer had “harming, intimidating, threatening or defrauding” T’eo.
The law applies to people who impersonate “another actual person.” That’s not what this guy did. He pretended to be a fictional person. He wasn’t pretending to be Diane O’Meara (the woman in the pictures). The harm part is pretty questionable, too, but the speculation about a financial motive is pretty vague.
I noticed that. The picture was an actual person. So I’m not sure how that works.
But that very well could be the saving grace of the hoaxer. Lennay was not an actual person.
But he wasn’t impersonating her. The picture is of a woman named Diane O’Mera.
It’s not pointless. The law is about things like identity theft and impersonating government officials. It’s not supposed to outlaw internet hoaxes.
For some reason, I keep picturing (hearing?) Monty Python in drag.
The picture did not have a name on it. And the hoaxer was pretending to be that girl with a different name. If the hoaxer said her name was Debra O’Mera = still same answer?
With that, the Lennay is not an actual person argument is most likely right. You can find out if people are real, you can’t really tell if a real person on the internet is actually them or someone else.
I originally said that. But removed it because kids in school pretend to be other real kids to cuz harm, ect. It makes that illegal.
The law regarding Gov’t official is Sec. 529.
That’s what SHE said!
Te’o was told it was a picture of Lennay, who doesn’t exist (although her name will be attached to about a million fantasy football teams next season). He even received a dated picture of her holding up a note that was supposed to prove it was Lennay. He had no idea O’Meara existed.
If he’d said he was Diane O’Meara, he would have been pretending to be an actual person. She really exists. Lennay doesn’t. It’s that simple.
Yes, and there are other sections about making phony government documents and receiving money under false pretenses or pretending to be someone else in order to get financial or medical information and things like that. The law is not written to target people who give fake names online.
Whether this guy was in love or not with Teo and all those other football players he pulled this stunt on, he is still a jackass for playing with people’s emotions just because he is too sexually insecure to just come out and deal with it.
But surely, based on odds alone, a “fake” name is going to match up with someone who is real. And I don’t think knowingly will save the hoaxer from it. It’s silly. Anyways.
You’re probably right. But, I’m also not convinced it would not apply - because it sure seems like it’s supposed too (ha, what an argument, right?). The word actual is what’s throwing me off I think, but not towards your side. I’m just reading it to mean the person must be “human” (in general), as opposed to a corporation/entity.
The links won’t play for me
Not true. It’s not a given that any fake name is going to correspond to a real person. Some names are unique. Especially when the name is something distinctly ethnic like Melelengei Kekua. According to ESPN at least, even in Hawaii the name Kekua is not common. There is no real person with that name. And merely sharing a name is not enough because we’re talking about… well, you say it yourself here:
Come on. That’s exactly why the word “knowingly” is in there. It is specifically written so that if you made up a name and it turned out that name belonged to an actual person - even though you might be a liar or a dick - you wouldn’t be breaking the law because you weren’t trying to pass yourself off as that person. You’re just using a fake name, not pretending to be “another actual person.” Do you realize this is the second way in which you are arguing against the exact, plain-text meaning of the law? The law says - and I am barely paraphrasing - you cannot go online and knowingly pretend to be a real person without the consent of that person. There was no actual person here. And if there’s no real person, there is no way to get the person’s consent, so you can’t be acting without (or with, for that matter) the person’s permission. And having the same name as a real person who is not similar to the fictional character is not a knowing impersonation. If there were a real Stanford graduate named Lennay Kekua and this jerk had pretended to be her - with fake pictures, for example - that would be an impersonation. If Te’o had really met that Lennay and the hoaxer started a Twitter account and tricked Te’o into thinking she’d been in a car accident and was diagnosed with cancer, that would be impersonating a real person. Or - this is pushing it - if she had been real, died of cancer, and he’d called Te’o in December and tried to convince him that she was still alive, that would also qualify. Those examples still probably wouldn’t qualify under this law because of the harm aspect, but they obviously do not count as pretending to be a real person. There was no real person.
It’s not! This is not a law about online hoaxes. It’s a law about stalking and identity fraud. You’re assuming this law is supposed to prevent situations like this one, and it isn’t.
Then the law would say “any person” instead of “another actual person.”
OMG, I found a recording of one of the voicemails on youtube, and it sure as heck sounds like a girl. How weird
and on a related note, the girl who says her picture was used without her knowledge in this hoax sure sounds a lot like the voice on the messages, even tough the main guy is claiming he is the voice. :dubious:
I don’t know, I keep listening to the interview with the girl and comparing her voice to the voicemails, and they sound like the same person. The whole thing to so weird.
OK, so let me see if I have this straight: Te’o’s story is that he is the most gullible man in the Western Hemisphere, and that he then picked up and kept carrying his part in the farce in the hope that he could somehow wiggle out of it at some point.
I don’t know what this tells me about the standards for development of critical thinking (or creative writing) at old Notre Dame these days…
I don’t hear much of a resemblance. It’s probably about time to turn off the suspiciousness: otherwise you’re sort of suggesting O’Meara might be lying about spending hundreds of hours on the phone with Te’o even though he’s already turned over his phone records, which (if she’s lying) have her phone number all over them. And the hoaxer would then be admitting he was the one on the phone even though he wasn’t.
Like I said Marley, it’s all so weird. I hate conspiracy theories and I don’t speculate much, but they sound so much alike to me. If they aren’t, then the hoaxer does a pretty awesome imitation of a female voice, like dead on accurate.
The more details come out, I’m not sure the label ‘most gullible man’ fits any more. Other than never meeting her in person (which is odd but not uncommon) he was really given no reason disbelieve what he was dealing with. He even asked common friends about her and they said she was on the level. The ‘girl’ voice sealed it for me.
We have the benefit of hindsight to be able to say he should’ve known. We’re watching the M. Night montage of clues at the end and saying, “Well, of course he’s dead!” None of which was obvious to most people while it was happening.
bolding mine.
I still contend there was an actual person and the hoaxer was pretending to be the pictured girl. I’m applying knowingly to the the real girl in the picture, so yea, it wouldn’t apply to the fake name. Only that he knowingly impersonated that real persona, the picture (real person) / name combo (fake). To me, it’s just impersonating an actual human without the person’s consent. I do agree there has to be a real person involved somewhere. Or rather, you can’t impersonate Chevron or Homer Simpson (“mmmm, erotic cakes”).
I’ve found nothing to back it up, of course. It’s a new law and no caselaw on it. There’s one law review article written about it and it does suggest this scenario would fall under the law (the article uses the Lori Drew creating the “Josh Evans” persona). But law review articles don’t mean anything, especially uncited ones.
It would be easy to cite a link to show what “actual person” means (of course, that’s probably my job). Surely that should be a common term used in other laws. Although we are just arguing which real person trumps the other…the picture or the name or either.