In his original post, Lashinsky wrote a few short paragraphs about a piece the magazine did on a Brazilian hedge fund taking control of Burger King and Heinz, a piece he said every business-school student should read. Then he linked to an online preview — although he said he didn’t understand why Fortune had decided to put a free preview online, and added: “The kids say they can get everything they need to read for free on the Internet. Sorry. It’s not true.”

What happened then is instructive for a number of reasons: in a nutshell, all hell broke loose. As Lashinsky noted in his follow-up post, his short piece on LinkedIn got more than 200 comments:

“The overwhelming majority of which criticized me in some fashion for linking to a behind-the-paywall article in the first place, having the nerve to suggest journalism is worth paying for, ‘spamming’ LinkedIn users — including those who follow me — and writing poorly.”

It’s not just about whether it’s free

I looked at all of the comments on Lashinsky’s piece, and he is both right and wrong in how he characterizes them. It’s also worth noting that — as far as I could tell — the Fortune writer didn’t respond to a single comment, positive or negative, which might say something about the overall tone of the responses.

It’s true that many of the commenters seemed irritated by the fact that Lashinsky’s entire LinkedIn post was basically a sales pitch for a Fortune magazine article that was behind a paywall. As one reader put it, in a comment that was up-voted by over 125 people: “If I can’t read it without being a subscriber, don’t post it on LinkedIn. I’m less likely to subscribe after this type of empty tease.” Others referred to Lashinsky’s post as “spam,” and said they would not seek out either his posts or Fortune articles in the future.

In his subsequent post at Fortune, entitled “Why I am unapologetic about paywalls or promotion,” Lashinsky defended his original piece and seemed offended by those who complained about his behavior. And he trotted out some of the usual defences for paywalls and the attitude that surrounds them:

“I get that web readers who expect everything to be free think it’s bad etiquette to link to paywall-protected content… but what’s particularly irksome is the inability of many to recognize the value of online content.”

Entitlement is not a viable business model

Lashinsky’s comment immediately reminded me of a great Jeff Jarvis post from 2011, in which he described what he called “hard economic lessons” for news outlets — including the need to dispense with the sense of entitlement that many traditional publishers have about their content. As Jarvis put it: “Should is not a business model. You can say that people should pay for your product, but they will only pay if they find value in it.” Also:

“No one cares what you spent. Arguing that news costs a lot is irrelevant to the market. The only thing that matters to the market is value. What is your service worth to the public?”

Lashinsky is upset that readers don’t want to pay for a Fortune piece that he sees as magnificent, and he adds that he doesn’t understand why his magazine even put a free preview online. In other words, readers should pay for Fortune because, well… because it is Fortune, and because Lashinsky says so. That’s not exactly a great sales pitch, and I think readers were right to point it out. And I think the Fortune editor got mad because he doesn’t really have a response to that accusation except: “Pay us because we deserve it.”

On top of that, posting a short promotional pitch to LinkedIn for a piece you give very few details about is a poor use of the platform. And not even responding to commenters — apart from a passive-aggressive piece chewing them out for not paying for your content — shows a lack of understanding about how social media can help your publication reach new readers, and yes, maybe even get paid.

Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Flickr users Stephen Brace and Arnold Gatilao and Shutterstock / Daniilantiq

The complaint, filed this week in Los Angeles, accuses LinkedIn of violating laws related to hacking, wire-tapping and false endorsements. Users say the social network’s marketing practices have given rise to fear and embarrassment as a result of emails sent to business associates, ex-spouses and, in one instance, a mentally ill former contact.

The claims draw attention both to email privacy rights, and to the tactics underlying LinkedIn’s aggressive growth strategy.

Update: LinkedIn has responded with a blog post that states, ”Claims that we “hack” or “break into” members’ accounts are false.”

“Breaking into” email accounts

According to the complaint, LinkedIn prompts users to enter an email address, and then uses the information to download every account from a user’s account such as Gmail or Yahoo. LinkedIn is allegedly able to do this so long as the user are logged into the email provider; if they are not, LinkedIn suggests they log-in:

LinkedIn does not require the password to the email account, but is nonetheless able to download not just an “address book” but any address ever sent or received. The complaint says the tactic was a deliberate strategy by LinkedIn to add users and make money, and cites a former engineer who boasts of “hacking.” Here are screenshots (the engineer’s profile is still up here)

LinkedIn has told Bloomberg, which reported the complaint, that the lawsuit is without merit.

Thousands of invitations

The heart of the complaint involves LinkedIn’s practice of encouraging people to invite others to their network when they sign up with the service or, if they’re existing members, to expand their network.

If a user agrees, LinkedIn sends out an “invitation to connect” to all of the user’s contacts. If the contacts don’t respond, the service then send outs out two more reminder emails.

According to the complaint, the LinkedIn sign up process is deceptive and doesn’t clearly inform users that it will “spam” their contacts. The plaintiffs are a former ad manager for the New York Times, a professor, a lawyer and a movie producer. Their complaint, which is a request to sue on behalf other LinkedIn users across America, also object to the fact that LinkedIn does not provide an easy way to retract the multiple follow-up invitations.

The complaint also claims that LinkedIn often emails thousands of messages without disclosing it will do so:

The company is making new rules on public domain and “other non-exclusive content.” Seth Godin got an e-mail highlighting the new rules (because he’s a Kindle author, not because he’s a spammer) and here they are:

Public Domain and Other Non-Exclusive Content
Some types of content, such as public domain content, may be free to use by anyone, or may be licensed for use by more than one party. We will not accept content that is freely available on the web unless you are the copyright owner of that content. For example, if you received your book content from a source that allows you and others to re-distribute it, and the content is freely available on the web, we will not accept it for sale on the Kindle store. We do accept public domain content, however we may choose to not sell a public domain book if its content is undifferentiated or barely differentiated from one or more other books.

In other words, Amazon appears to be officially banning private-label rights content — articles that can be bought cheaply online and quickly formatted into an e-book — as well as public-domain works like “Alice in Wonderland” that many users are trying to sell. In the past, the company has taken a few steps to get this type of content under control, but this is a stricter policy.

It’s not clear how the new rules will be enforced, but it could mean stricter vetting at the submission stage. As Nate Hoffelder at The Digital Reader points out, Amazon has banned undifferentiated public-domain works before. But the company may be more serious about it this time around because the spam e-books have started making their way into the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library.

E-book retailer Smashwords already bans this type of content.

The case began in 2008 when Facebook sued Caymen Islands-based Power Ventures over a scheme that offered $100 to users who signed up 100 of their friends for Power.com, a site that allowed people to link their social media accounts.

If a user agreed to take part in the promotion, Power.com would scrape their Facebook address books and send an email from “facebook.com” to encourage their friends to sign up.

In his order, U.S. District Judge James Ware rejected Power.com’s argument that the messages were not spam because they originated from Facebook’s own servers. He concluded that this was a technicality and that Power.com violated the Can-Spam Act because it had written and launched the email campaign.

The court also found that Power.com violated California criminal law and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act by circumventing Facebook’s efforts to screen the emails.

Judge Ware scheduled further proceedings to determine what Power.com must pay and whether its founder is personally liable for the action. The site current appears to be out of business; the top of its website has a message that the name is for sale.

Craig Clark, Facebook’s Lead Litigation Counsel, provided the following statement, “We are pleased that the court ruled in our favor. We will continue to enforce our rights against bad actors who attempt to circumvent Facebook’s privacy and security protections and spam people.”

Facebook Power Ventures Order

Wallace is a 43-year-old Las Vegas resident who moonlights as DJ MasterWeb when he isn’t engaged in e-mail hijinks. He surrendered to the FBI on Thursday and will be prosecuted in San Jose federal court. He’s scheduled to appear there on Aug. 22. He stands accused of sending more than 27 million spam messages, including an alleged scheme to spam Facebook users in 2008 and 2009 that compromised about 500,000 legitimate Facebook accounts.

Even before the criminal indictment issued, Wallace had been on the receiving end of massive civil judgments for violating the federal anti-spam law, called the CAN-SPAM act. Facebook got a $711 million judgment against Wallace in 2009; that followed the $230 million anti-spam judgment that MySpace won in 2008.

Those massive fines didn’t follow trials. They were “default judgments” that went into effect because Wallace simply didn’t show up in court to defend himself. The civil cases also resulted in a judicial order that Wallace stop using MySpace and Facebook. He might not have been able to help himself, however-he’s accused of violating that order by logging into his Facebook account on a Virgin Airlines flight from Las Vegas to New York.

Needless to say, social networks probably shouldn’t count on any big payments from Wallace, although if convicted some restitution could be part of his sentence. He filed for bankruptcy back in 2009, just before he made a rare court appearance, realizing the threat of criminal charges was beginning to materialize.

If convicted on all counts, Wallace could be facing up to 40 years in prison. (That’s mainly because the three charges of damaging a protected computer are felonies that can be punished with up to 10 years each.) But federal judges have a lot of discretion in sentencing, and if he is convicted, it’s hard to believe a federal judge would slap a spammer with a prison sentence more suited to a murderer.

Facebook issued a statement form its lead security counsel, Chris Sonderby, saying: “We applaud the efforts of the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the FBI to bring spammers to justice. Two years ago, Facebook sued Wallace and a federal court ordered him to pay a $711 million judgment for sending unwanted messages and wall posts to people on Facebook. Now Wallace also faces serious jail time for this illegal conduct.”

Mike Masnick at Techdirt has some more history about Wallace. Apparently he started off his career in the junk-fax business, and moved on to email in the mid-90s. Wallace also had a run-in with the FTC over distributing spyware back in 2004.

Wallace didn’t immediately respond to an e-mail to his personal account. He seems to be favoring Google+ these days, and recent posts indicate he’s taking the episode in stride. He’s been posting party pics from around the San Francisco Bay Area on his Google+ account.

The tagline in Wallace’s Google+ account now reads, “2011 will prove to be an interesting year in my life.” That is certainly true.