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Wed, 07 Feb 2024 13:15:09 -0800
Andy from
private IP
/all
Taylor Swift's new jet tail number: N621MM
Ironically, I'm a fan of Taylor Swift. I'm sick of entitled celebrities sending
frivolous cease and desist letters to technical innovators who push the
envelope.
In this scenario, Taylor Swift did a C&D to a guy who tracks her jet. There is
absolutely no basis to her claim, which is that tracking her jet is "stalking."
The data on her jet are publicly available-- it's the law. All this guy is
doing is aggregating publicly available data and filtering for Taylor Swift.
Separately, I found her new jet in five minutes of searching:
https://registry.faa.gov/AircraftInquiry/Search/NNumberResult?nNumberTxt=621MM
Her dad manages the company that owns the jet:
https://reports.adviserinfo.sec.gov/reports/individual/individual_722124.pdf
Regardless of how you feel about privacy, what more does anyone need for proof
that TS's lawyers sending C&D letters are a total joke?
Wed, 07 Feb 2024 13:35:33 -0800
zerosugar
from private IP
/all
kek! maybe she is afraid somebody will bomb her jet. her stalker was creepy and
a former or current law student. his name is david crowe.
https://www.complex.com/music/a/brad-callas/taylor-swifts-alleged-stalker-arrested-outside-home
here is his fb: https://www.facebook.com/yourdavecrowe?mibextid=LQQJ4d
in his younger pics, he looks totally different. seems he went crazy and just
stopped caring.
Wed, 07 Feb 2024 13:39:02 -0800
zerosugar
from private IP
/all
im also not sure what makes somebody want to stalk a celeb. i’ve never even
had the desire to meet a celeb. think it would just be a disconnected experience
and their real life personalities can never live up to characters they play in
movies or their on stage personas.
leonardo dicaprio had a stalker too from chicago named Livia Bistriceanu who is
very crazy looking and who knows why she traveled all the way to los angeles to
find him. the initial allegations were that she was being trolled online by him.
hahaha i can sort of imagine him laughing at people online though, but this lady
was probably just a sicko who was in love.
https://www.facebook.com/livia.bistriceanu?mibextid=LQQJ4d
Wed, 07 Feb 2024 13:58:58 -0800
Andy from
private IP
/all
It turns out that the 13 Management email server is configured to reject all
messages, so I'm posting my open letter to Taylor Swift's general counsel here:
---
Dear Mr. Baldridge,
I am a lawyer and part-time web application programmer in California. I
understand from past media coverage of Ms. Swift's management company that you
are Ms. Swift's General Counsel.
Let me preface this by saying that I respect and admire Ms. Swift for many
reasons, including her once-in-a-century talent and her originality, creativity,
and philanthropy. I also don't envy the task of her legal counsel in, among
other arenas, trying to protect her from undue interference with her life while
balancing public relations concerns and freedom of speech.
Regardless of how I feel about Taylor Swift's talent and music, I am writing to
express my vehement disagreement with Ms. Swift's outside counsel's recent
efforts to silence an innovative 21 year-old college student whose enterprising
and technical mindset resulted in the Taylor Swift jet tracking app.
The Taylor Swift jet tracking app is interesting for technical reasons that are
not germane to this email. Bottom line, it increases transparency and provides
an interesting window for fans to peer into the stratified world of Taylor Swift
by seeing where her jet goes. The key, though, is that the flight data are
public and anyone can filter them with minimal effort-- and also, the position
information for the jet does not discriminate between flights Ms. Swift is
actually on and flights she is not on. The position of the jet is merely a
proxy or an interpolation of Ms. Swift's present location-- and this may be
inaccurate for any number of reasons, such as Ms. Swift renting out her plane
for others' use.
In any case, after the sale of her other jet, I was able to find Ms. Swift's new
jet, N621MM, in five minutes of searching. I cross-referenced ownership records
for the only two 7X jets registered in Tennessee with some legally required
disclosure documents that her dad apparently filed, which stated that he is
managing the corporation that owns the jet. This is a trivial level of effort
compared to what would normally be required to find a non-public figure's
airplane. That's my long way of saying that it is futile to try to keep a
billionaire celebrity's jet tail number and position private. More importantly,
it is also not illegal in any way under any state's law, or Federal law, to
publish the movements of a jet registered with the FAA.
I don't think Ms. Swift should be sending frivolous demand letters to
student-level programmers. Although I am not yet panel counsel to the
Electronic Frontier Foundation, I and several other freedom-loving attorneys
have offered to support the prospective defendant in Ms. Swift's case in an
innovative crowdsourced effort focused on freedom of speech, as well as the
right to publish publicly available information. I just hope that is considered
when Ms. Swift is deciding what she wants to do with this case.
Best,
Andrew Watters
---
How did I do?
Sat, 10 Feb 2024 12:27:35 -0800
Andy from
private IP
/all
Tagging this in #PublicFigures
Tue, 13 Feb 2024 09:14:35 -0800
Andy from
private IP
/all
I was just approved to join the Electronic Frontier Foundation's attorney
directory, which I applied to specifically because of this irritating case.
Taylor Swift is just one celebrity trying to shake off jet-tracking bots, and
this issue at the intersection of technology, privacy, and freedom of speech is
certain to recur.
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