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Google+ invite lands man in jail

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Re: Google+ invite lands man in jail

#32

I watch American tv shows and movies and am well aware of restraining orders but thought it was something very rare and almost never happens; now I read this. Is it that normal to get one 'after a breakup'? I have never heard anything like that in my country except for hardcore, life threatening criminal situations. Is it that easy to get one there and you actually get rounded up and hauled to a cell for violating wh…

Well if the person is threatening your life, then it makes sense that you might break up with them...

Re: Google+ invite lands man in jail

#33

I watch American tv shows and movies and am well aware of restraining orders but thought it was something very rare and almost never happens; now I read this. Is it that normal to get one 'after a breakup'? I have never heard anything like that in my country except for hardcore, life threatening criminal situations. Is it that easy to get one there and you actually get rounded up and hauled to a cell for violating wh…

If it sounds unlikely, then there's probably more to the story. We don't know what happened between them that caused a judge to believe the order to be necessary, but I presume that such orders are not given lightly.

They are given lightly. For example, a woman in Santa Fe got a restraining order after a "breakup" with David Letterman. He was ordered to stop communicating with her via code words on his show. Kelsey Grammar was also involved somehow.

http://www.volokh.com/files/lettermanapp.pdf

http://www.volokh.com/files/lettermantro.pdf

(It was later overturned on the grounds that the Santa Fe court didn't have jurisdiction over mind control transmitted from NY.)

Re: Google+ invite lands man in jail

#34

I watch American tv shows and movies and am well aware of restraining orders but thought it was something very rare and almost never happens; now I read this. Is it that normal to get one 'after a breakup'? I have never heard anything like that in my country except for hardcore, life threatening criminal situations. Is it that easy to get one there and you actually get rounded up and hauled to a cell for violating wh…

(IANAL) Restraining orders are usually granted without requiring any evidence, aside from the testimony of the person requesting it. I believe it is a common strategy for (especially) women to exploit this in order to gain some sort of advantage over their partners following a breakup.

Them sneaky women! Always tricking men into things!

Re: Google+ invite lands man in jail

#36
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I presume that as well; I hope someone here has experience with that and can tell how hard it is? Because I just had that 'wow!' experience ; it feels like they hand them out at the police station to anyone asking :) I know they are not, but some 'actual', non media enlarged information would be great!

I'm confused as to why you are under the impression that restraining orders are 'normal', or that they hand them out to anyone asking, based on a single data point of one person getting one restraining order?

There are 2 to 3 million of them handed out each year [1].

If not "normal," that's certainly _common_. There is no proof or evidence required to issue one. The judge only reads a description of events. It is not required for the restrained party to be there to defend or present counter-evidence.

It's simply a 5-10 minute meeting between a judge and a person who alleges "fear" or "emotional harm." Exact laws vary from state to state.

They are free to file and cost 5-10 thousand dollars to appeal.

[1] http://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/03/30/the-high-price-of-res...

Re: Google+ invite lands man in jail

#37

I watch American tv shows and movies and am well aware of restraining orders but thought it was something very rare and almost never happens; now I read this. Is it that normal to get one 'after a breakup'? I have never heard anything like that in my country except for hardcore, life threatening criminal situations. Is it that easy to get one there and you actually get rounded up and hauled to a cell for violating wh…

If it sounds unlikely, then there's probably more to the story. We don't know what happened between them that caused a judge to believe the order to be necessary, but I presume that such orders are not given lightly.

You presume incorrectly in the case of a temporary restraining order. These can be and are granted without a hearing from the restrained party:

http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Temporary+Rest...

http://www.walnut-creek.org/citygov/depts/police/faqs/violen...

Re: Google+ invite lands man in jail

#38
post #3

The article focuses mainly on whether the man did indeed send the Google+ invitation to his former girlfriend. It seems to me that the actual troubling question is whether sending a Google+ invitation can be considered a violation of a restraining order. The bar is far too low when receiving a single inconsequential message that you have full ability to ignore can be considered a form of harassment.

If the restraining order says "Don't contact them", then it makes sense that if you manually triggered an invite that would break the order.

Re: Google+ invite lands man in jail

#39
hmm, this is an interesting case!

I think it must hinge on whether or not the guy actually acted to cause the invitation, or whether this was an automatic google thing based on previous emails between the two accounts.

If it was simply an automatic "add these people from your past emails" notification, then it seems very unreasonable to hold him to account for it. Sounds like the defendant needs a witness from Google about how Google+ works - which will almost certainly be difficult to get!

Re: Google+ invite lands man in jail

#40
post #7

Just opened up Google+ on a 15" Mac Book Pro in Chrome and all I see is whitespace and "You may know", "Interesting people and pages" and other useless crap, what I'm not seeing is my feed . Only around 10% of the screen space is used for things I care about, it really baffles me how Google thinks that this is a contender against Facebook. They should realise that spamming people won't make them like their horrible U…

Could you possibly exaggerate any more? 10%? Really? With the multi column newsfeed on Google+ it's just impossible that you see less content than on Facebook. And how does your comment have anything to do with the article?

Out of curiosity I just opened my g+ on a 1280 x 800 thinkpad and counted pixels and 17% was feed with my normal settings. Actually by changing the text size you can vary the percent of screen your feed takes from 0% to a max of about 75%. Facebook has a fair bit of empty space too.
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