They have one very good thing to complain about: the comment very clearly violated no laws. TechDirt had the burden of preserving records and a gag on their speech placed upon them for absolutely no reason.

The comment in question was:

"Hell, eventually somebody might decide that it’s cheaper to pay a hitman to just cut a brake line or something than go through discovery in that judge’s court."

It was in reply to a story about the founder of Silk Road being arrested for, among other things, hiring a hitman. In the Ulbrecht case, the hitman was a FED and was paid by Ulbrecht after giving staged photographic evidence of a murder.

It looks like they were investigating whether this person was doing anything in furtherance of such a plot beyond just angry comments and wanted them to keep quiet while they investigated.

That's a pretty standard burden for any org that hosts third-party speech to expect to have occasionally. I've worked at two places that had a legal hold SOP.

do you think, if i created a dragnet of internet comments threatening violence might happen in multiple forums across the internet, to varying degrees to silly to seriously contemplative?

you think, perchance, they were actually looking at multiple comments from multiple sources presenting a pattern of behaviour by some pseudononymous potential plotter?

people are so self centered and ignorant of these things,.

"...but its also not unreasonable to interpret it that way."

In the absence of other evidence, I would say that it is unreasonable to interpret it as a threat. I mean, what's next, arresting people for murdering a video game character on the assumption they would do that in real life?

I'm fairly concerned about stochastic terrorism, but I'd disagree about that comment. Reading it in context, I'd say the author has some inaccurate views about how often people will turn to murder rather than pay court fees, but... it's not the same thing as saying "someone should do X."

I think I get what you're getting at, but I see a pretty big difference between a random internet comment and a person of actual power saying "Ayyy, it sure would make me happy if so and so just, ya know, got taken care of"

When the identities of random internet commenters are difficult to establish, and may themselves represent larger interests or entities, there's some concern with that viewpoint.

> The phrase is commonly used in modern-day contexts to express that a ruler's wish may be interpreted as a command by his or her subordinates.

I think we can all recall at least one recent incident of this happening.

Some people I'm neutral toward find that priest, who I am also neutral toward, quite turbulent. I wonder if any of them would go so far as taking drastic action against him.

they just wanted a story.

also, its more likely the us marshals were trying to connect the dots on more straightforward threats and this comment ended up in the drag net.

so if you think internet threats are a big deal, then the effort going into documenting those potentiak threats are still important and juzt becausw they observed a false-positive dowsnt mean the us marshalls went overboard.

the end basically just confirms there was nothin in that specific comment.

maybe if they dug deeper, like a journalist would, they would illuminate what the actual broader activities were.

You think as part of some larger dragnet it just happened the US Marshals called them the next day?

If it's a a dragnet, they aren't calling about every single post in under 24 hours of it occurring unless the investigating team is absolutely gargantuan.

Your explanation really doesn't make sense because it's the wrong one.

I don't think they complained super hard here, and the transparency is good regardless.

But I agree: of all the law enforcement oversteps that we see in this country, this case barely registers.

How can a small company complain?

Unless you have tens or hundreds of thousands for a multiyear lawsuit, you're screwed. I recently had a trooper violate my wife's civil rights. I had a lawyer tell me it was a violation, but it wasnt worth standing up for ourselves because the judges don't care about cases unless there was extensive monetary loss.

Also no lawyer wants 30% of virtually zero actual damages. If you aren’t willing to just spend ludicrous amounts of your own money that you’ll never recover, you better have a case with substantial statutory damages or an excellent shot at a jury awarding punitive damages.

Federal civil rights cases are supposed to cover legal expenses, but the judge has to decide if they think the case was important enough to warrant it. So we might not be awarded the legal expenses.

This brings up a really big point though. If the lawyers don't want it because they can't make money, and the judges don't want it because it's not important enough, then who stands up for our rights? Do we even really have them if they can be ignored?