NOT THE SHARPEST KNIVES IN THE DRAWER: @Twits
Twitter user EFCANOW - presumably a supporter of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), AKA “card check” – posted this tweet:
"Join @newtgingrich @sanuzis in signing the EFCA Freedom Not Fear petition at action.americanright... WSJ."
In response, attorneys for Newt Gingrich and Saul Anuzis, former chair of the MI Republican Party, fired off a cease-and-desist letter erroneously claiming that the tweet "falsely purports to be written by our clients," who oppose the EFCA.
For those who don’t know, Techdirt explains that “@newtgingrich is the equivalent of sending a public letter ‘Dear Newt Gingrich’ - which certainly wouldn't be an abuse of his name.” So the tweet was actually a cheeky invitation for Gingrich and Anuzis to sign the pro-EFCA petition, and was meant to generate buzz.
Citizen Media Law Project calls the lawyers out for overzealously throwing every cause of action under the sun into the C&D letter:
trademark infringement, violation of Gingrich's and Anuzis' publicity rights, false advertising, false designation of origin, tortious interference with prospective economic advantage and contractual relations, common law and computer trespass (could Twitter trespass upon its own computer?), conversion, traditional fraud and wire fraud, breach of contract (i.e., Twitter's terms of service), violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and even RICO violations.
As MediaBistro blog DailyBayNewser quite rightly points out, the proper response to the tweet – which was even shorter than the 140-character limit imposed by Twitter – should not have been a 13-page lawyer letter, but “something short and simple, like: @EFCANOW: Kiss my a**.”
Editorial Note: TPMDC snidely dismisses the brouhaha:
Anybody with even passing familiarity with Twitter knows that the message isn't purportedly written by the people named in it. It's directed at them. Hence the ampersand.
Yeah, well, anyone with a passing knowledge of punctuation knows that “@” is not an ampersand (&); it stands for “at” (as in “at the rate of,” though it has come to mean just "at" in common usage).
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