In 2006, Jason Fortuny — one of the so-called "Internet trolls" featured recently in the New York Times Magazine — placed an ad on Craigslist in which he pretended to be a woman seeking sex. Later, he posted photos and emails sent to him by the ad's respondents. Now, one of them — image and response pictured above — is suing him for $75,000. This John Doe claims Fortuny's post caused him to "suffer and continue to suffer from humiliation, embarrassment, lost opportunity of keeping his family together, and emotional distress." The plaintiff claims Fortuny violated his copyright, wrongfully disclosed private facts and intruded upon his seclusion. By way of response, Forturny wrote an eight-page letter to the judge in his own defense . It's much to long for even the most concerned citizen to read, but since its contents so seriously affect the legal system of our nation-state, we've shortened it down to the crucial bits, below.

Defamer just managed to get our grubby mitts on a secret copy of a strongly-worded letter that "Actress" Kirstie Alley's legal team over at Goldman & Kagon recently sent to US Weekly. In it, the firm asks that United States Weekly sever their relationship with fashionista/comedienne Danica Lo because of an innocuous Scientology joke she made at the expense of billion-year contract escape clause benifitee Nicole Kidman. The joke in question ran in the "Fashion Police" section of the mag and referred to an outfit Kidman wore to the Australian premiere of The Golden Compass, which the tony Miss Lo described as being "specifically designed [to repel] Scientologists." Um, zing? The legal letter and offending picture follow after the jump.

Microsoft and Best Buy are liable for subscribing the retailer's customers to Microsoft's Internet service, MSN, without consent, the Supreme Court ruled today by overturning a lower court's ruling on an appeal. One question the Supremes should have asked: "Who in their right mind subscribes to dialup anymore?" [AP]

Last month, a South Korean joke/entertainment site called Humor University (certainly not to be confused with College Humor!) engaged in a tiny sideshow of legal threats versus Google over the search giant terminating their Adsense account. Google claimed there was some clickfraud chicanery going on with the Humor University account, which HU disputed. Unfortunately for Google, the issue got much larger, irritating, and potentially costly.

The Korea Fair Trade commission ordered Google to rewrite its Adsense contracts this week, removing provisions that allow Google to unilaterally terminate the agreements. Such action is considered unfair under Korean law. This has emboldened Humor University to move forward with its lawsuit asking for 20 million won (about $21,000), the amount HU claims it is owed for its Adsense account. HU president Lee Jung-min doesn't plan to sue for punitive or related damages, saying "The litigation is not about money, but about our self-esteem." Google hurt their feelings more than anything else, you see. If successful, copycat lawsuits will no doubt come in from all over South Korea, which could result in Adsense getting crippled or pulled nationwide. Who, then, will provide income to thousands of crap websites about anime characters and nubile Asian chicks?

You have to admire the George Costanza-like persistence of one Anand Lyer Vaidyanathan. After hanging around the Sequoia lobby a little too much last October and November, Vaidyanathan was finally arrested for trespassing. Vaidyanathan protested, convinced that he somehow already worked for Sequoia. He then applied for another Sequoia job in December, and when a private investigator told him to stay away and not contact anyone in the office again, Vaidyanathan responded with, "I thank you for your offer. I appreciate your timely action. I accept your offer of employment." So they just went ahead and hired him; really, what else could they do? Only kidding! They took out a restraining order. Incidentally, that wasn't all Sequoia had to deal with as 2006 came to a close.

The VC giant also had a tussle with Comventures — they of the recent Filmloop discorporation — when Comventures attempted to rip off Sequoia's website design. After some litigatory saber-rattling, Comventures backed down and settled, though terms were not disclosed. Perhaps Comventures could have used the Vaidyanathan strategy, and responded to Sequoia's demands with something like, "We thank you for your website design. We appreciate your timely action. We accept your copyrighted work for our own use."

On the heels of good news about her TV show, former politico Jeanine Pirro must now face an bead investigation. As part of a wider probe into her potential wiretapping naughtiness as Westchester district attorney, Pirro's embarrassing hobby of crafting beaded necklaces and selling them to acquaintances has also drawn the feds' attention. (This is, for our money, potentially an even more embarrassing personal quirk than her husband's yacht-bound ass-fingering.) So what's the story on those beads?

In addition to finally copping to her cell-phone maid assault, Naomi Campbell has somehow scored a sweet interviewer's gig with British GQ. This supposedly came about due to Naomi's stellar performance when grilled for GQ by an old enemy, i.e. columnist Piers Morgan; he had to pay her $1.7 million in damages in 2004, back when he edited the Daily Mirror and his paper invaded her privacy by running pictures of her attending NarcAnon meetings. One assumes that most of Naomi's interview questions will revolve around the location of her jeans.

Back in October of last year, we ran a little guessing game about who had leaked the story of Las Vegas casino mogul Steve Wynn poking a hole in his Picasso painting just before he was about to sell it for $139 million. Now, Wynn is suing insurer Lloyd's of London in Manhattan's U.S. District Court, attempting to make them expedite processing of his claim for $54 million in lost value. (Apparently, Picasso's "Le R ve" is still worth $85 million even with the hole.) Lloyd's wants Wynn to formally name the depreciation figure first, after which they'll "agree or disagree." A restraining order has been issued versus Wynn's extremities for the duration of the restoration.

Figurative and literal anal-penetration victim and Girls Gone Wild producer Joe Francis has beaten 34 of the "more than 40" felony and misdemeanor charges against him for videotaping minors having real and/or simulated sex. "Hundreds of hours" of damning tape seized from Francis's homes and plane were suppressed from evidence because of improper search warrants; a few counts remain on the docket due to potential testimony from the videographer and photographer in question. So other than a few fines and community service, things are looking good for Joe. Perhaps he'll go beat up a reporter to celebrate!

Certainly, it sucks to be Timothy McDarrah, former Us Weekly and Las Vegas Sun columnist who was convicted December 20 for soliciting Internet sexing with little girls. After McDarrah's 2005 arrest, the sordid details of his proclivities were inflicted on an unfortunate public. Nevertheless, it's a stroke of bad luck that McDarrah was found guilty at the start of a dead holiday news cycle, as all it takes is an AP retread of last week's news to spawn a raft of "new" reports about how McDarrah was "just convicted." Cheer up ... only a couple more days before we can all stop phoning it in.

Erwin Arnada, EIC of Playboy Indonesia, in happier times — last April to be exact, when Playboy Indonesia debuted. Unfortunately, The Man has cracked down on his mag, with Arnada on trial for publishing indecent material. To wit:

Britrocker and Kate Moss manbutter supplier Pete Doherty may have been caught with heroin and crack in his car while ostensibly in drug rehab, but that's nothing a few hundred pounds and a break from driving can't fix. Making his weekly court appearance, Doherty didn't pretend to wince at this slap on the wrist, even enjoying a compliment from the judge for one of his songs. He now has a few days to try and figure out just what, exactly, one has to do in London in order to actually go to jail these days. We look forward to more progress from what must surely be the most tolerant (if not successful) rehab program in the world.

Despite legal threats from counsel representing the family of Nicole Brown Simpson, plus "concern" from HarperCollins, copies of OJ Simpson's If I Did It that escaped the pulper keep popping up for auction on eBay. An early copy was bid up to over $1 million by spoofers before the auction was halted; the copy listed above had received 59 bids to a more "reasonable" $6,600, but eBay monitors deleted it before we could click through. Oh well — at least you can marvel at base human behavior through the magic of Google cache.

For the 2000 wedding of Catherine Zeta-Jones and Michael Douglas, British tabloid OK! had an exclusive contract with the Douglas-Jones enterprise to run dewy styled photos of the proceedings. Rival exclamatory publication Hello! scammed and ran their own photos, resulting in years of litigation between the two tabs. This week, the dispute reached Britain's highest court — a panel of "Law Lords" in the House of Lords. OK! claims business interference, Hello! claims the journalistic right to "spoil" its rival's scoop. Concerning a particularly unflattering Hello! shot of Douglas feeding her wedding cake, Zeta-Jones says, "I don't usually like my husband shoving a spoon down my throat to be photographed." Notice the key phrase "to be photographed" — Douglas can shove a spoon down her throat all he wants, long as it goes undocumented. So amusing that the highest British court has to waste its time with such frivolous celebrity tomfoolery. Silly foreigners! Oh, wait.

After managing to stay away from the authorities for over a week, Pete Doherty, Babyshamblet and Kate Mossifier, was arrested yesterday on suspicion of driving on crack. Apparently, Doherty and a couple pals were busted near his London home, meaning he was either on his way out or on his way home. Buzzkill. But at least this is a comfortingly familiar territory for Doherty and the rest of the world. You just know that baby can't wait to meet daddy!

Universal Music Group is suing MySpace for copyright infringement, a proceeding Federated Media's John Battelle likens to a "big poo-flinging goat rodeo." At issue is music and video from Universal ending up on various nerds' MySpace pages — what the suit dismissively calls "so-called 'user-generated content.'" The suit claims the content is in fact "user-stolen," which doesn't have quite the same ring to it. Certainly not as jazzy as "goat rodeo."

"OK, Ms. Campebll, I'll go high, he goes low, you hit it straight up the middle." While contending with new charges that she's a "violent super bigot," Naomi Campbell stood in Manhattan Criminal Court for all of three minutes today, apparently not even stopping for a kosher hot dog on the sidewalk. The court convened to consider charging her with second-degree assault for opening up her housekeeper's head with a hurled cell phone. The judge set a new hearing date (January 16) while prosecutors and Campbell's lawyers try to work out a plea deal; she faces up to seven years of supermodel prison hottness, if convicted.

Finally brought to book on charges that he kicked a reporter on the way out of court the last time he was brought to book on charges, Kate Moss cocaine-impregnatron and Babyshambler Pete Doherty was ordered to pay $2,255 in various fines. The aspiring fashionistard

Apparently, the folks at Universal Tube & Rollform Equipment Corporation — manufacturer of fine, inscrutable tube-making machinery at utube.com — remain none too pleased with their newly wealthy and phonemically similar friends at YouTube.com. It doesn't appear a $3 million offer for their domain name is forthcoming, and their site only just crawled back online after mistaken YouTube traffic besieged and crashed their servers several times. Now UTube sues YouTube, with the former demanding the latter either stop using youtube.com or "pay the company's cost of getting a new domain name." And they want the $10 million gold-plated domain name certificate this time. With diamond sprinkles.

Late yesterday, when we noted corporate garbage disposal behemoth Emerson Electric Co. lawsuit against NBC over Heroes' unauthorized, potentially defaming depiction of one their fine waste-elimination products, we weren't able to hunt down pictures of the disputed scene. But we've finally obtained screen captures of the grisly, brand-besmirching images, which we've helpfully assembled into a collage demonstrating the network's clear attempt to portray the featured InSinkErator™ device as a looming, cheerleader-mangling black hole from which no teenage extremity could possibly escape unflayed. NBC still maintains that Emerson's claims are without merit, but in the interest of insulating themselves from further frivolous lawsuits, plan to remove a controversial scene from the show's fourth episode, where the rapid-healing character further demonstrates her invulnerability to kitchen appliance injuries by placing her bare foot in a whirring Sunbeam blender.