A Florida A&M University computer science professor is on the losing end of a long-running defamation suit that could cost him millions. And if he doesn't fully comply with a judge's order, Bhanu Prasad could be back behind bars.
Prasad was held in the Leon County jail for seven days following his arrest for civil and criminal contempt Wednesday for his failure to remove from the internet defamatory material about a University of Georgia computer science professor as ordered by Leon County Circuit Judge Charles Dodson. He was released from jail Tuesday afternoon.
Prasad, an expert in artificial intelligence, software engineering and operating systems who has taught at FAMU for more than 15 years, will remain free for seven days to give him another chance for him to comply with a previous court order demanding he take action to remove all previous online posts promoting unfounded allegations against UGA Professor Hamid Reza Arabnia, and a lucrative personal business owned by his wife, that sponsors academic and professional conferences in Las Vegas.
If he fails to comply, he could be sent back to jail for the remainder of a 30-day sentence.
The case highlights the perils of damaging someone's reputation in a digital age when false claims can live on the internet and come alive with every Google search.
Dodson’s ruling says Prasad has defied court-ordered injunctions associated with the case, primarily that he remove offending posts and websites deemed defaming.
The court also has ordered Prasad to pay a judgment of $2.3 million to Professor Arabnia and to the private enterprise, Computer Science Research Education and Applications, along with more than $650,000 in attorney’s fees.
“This case demonstrates the wonderful aspects of computer technology and the internet, and the tremendous damage that can be caused when it is abused,” Dodson wrote in his order. “This case is about an egregious cyber-attack and smear campaign perpetrated by the defendant, a computer science university professor.”
Hamid Reza Arabnia, a computer science professor at the University of Georgia (Photo: Special to the Democrat)
A case of defamation
Arabnia has been a UGA computer science professor since October 1987. He’s also editor-in-chief of The Journal of Supercomputing and speaks at conferences around the world.
Arabnia also is an organizer of Computer Science Research Education and Applications, is an organizer of World Congress in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, and Applied Computing, the scholarly conference known as WORLDCOMP.
Arabnia was responsible for booking keynote speakers, coordinating research/tutorial presentations, promotions, sales and registration.
Samira Arabnia, an attorney representing her father, said he first became aware of Prasad's attacks in early 2012, after hearing from colleagues, students and conference participants who had received damaging emails.
The emails described WORLDCOMP as “The World’s Biggest Fake Conference in Computer Science, a great shame brought to us by a computer science professor from Georgia, USA.”
The letters and emails also accused Arabnia of fraudulently saying that research papers would get “peer reviews," that speakers were not qualified and that Arabnia accepted every paper for review if the person paid the registration fees.
Websites promoting “Worlddump” also were created, along with disparaging posts about Arabnia, his organization and the conferences. All of the allegations were investigated and found to be false.
“At that time, we learned there were many websites created with these allegations,” Samira Arabnia said in an interview with the Tallahassee Democrat. “There were several hundred, if not thousands of websites, blogs, and emails that contain this defamatory information about my father."
Samira Arabnia, daughter of Professor Hamid Reza Arabnia of the University of Georgia (Photo: Special to the Democrat)
She hired a cybersecurity investigator and an IP address was located and records were subpoenaed from Google, Yahoo and Hushmail. The vast majority of the IP addresses were from the Leon County Library. Others were from FAMU addresses and Prasad’s residence, she said.
In February 2013, Professor Arabnia sued Prasad for libel in Leon County Circuit Court.
After Judge George Reynolds ordered a forensics sweep of Prasad’s computers at work and at home, investigators found he had deleted hundreds of thousands of files and other evidence from his electronic devices, according to court documents.
“He put himself in a pretty bad position with the judge,” said Gary Printy, a Tallahassee attorney who represented Prasad for nearly two years before withdrawing in late 2017.
Take it down
In May 2016, Reynolds ruled Prasad liable for all claims and ordered him to remove from the internet all negative claims targeting Hamid Arabnia and his businesses.
In February 2017 bench trial, Leon Circuit Judge Charles Dodson ruled Prasad was liable and ruled for damages against him.
Three months later, Dodson ordered Prasad to take all action, “to request the removal from the Internet search engines including Google, Yahoo and Bing, all defamatory, disparaging, libelous, and false statements about plaintiffs that defendant posted on the Internet."
Dodson also ordered Prasad to pay $1 million in punitive damages to Arabnia’s company, Computer Science Research Education and Applications, and $1.3 million to Arabnia.
A major point of contention in the case was the court’s order that Prasad take “all action” to have the defamatory websites, emails and other posts removed from the Internet. Prasad did the bare minimum, sending correspondence to 22 of the 52 websites listed in the injunction despite the Judge’s warning that would not be sufficient, Samira Arabnia asserted.
But Printy said the judge’s wording of “taking all action to get documents removed from the Internet,” was vague.
Printy said the courts should have had Arabnia’s attorney send a letter to Google and other sites.
“Prasad can never be in compliance because there is no standard for him to follow,” Printy added. “It’s like ‘do something,’ and after you do it, I’ll tell you if I don’t like it, do it again.’”
Samira Arabnia said Prasad never did what he was supposed to do.
“He sent form letters but never followed up,” she said. “I believe he has the ability to remove comments from websites he created.”
Printy disagrees, saying, “there was zero chance he would be able to get it removed...we have the First Amendment so you cannot compel Google to take it down."
Digital resolution
What happens next is up to Prasad and the courts.
Last week’s order for his arrest says he can be kept in jail for 30 days. But after spending seven days in jail, he will be released for seven days, when he must “take all action” to comply with terms of the injunction.
If he does so before the seven days, he must file for an emergency hearing for the court’s review. If the court decides he has fully complied, the court will issue an order to waive the remainder of his incarceration on the criminal contempt order.
He could be sentenced indefinitely for civil contempt, if he fails to remove the unlawful defamatory material from the internet.
“My father and his colleagues went through hell because of Prasad," Samira Arabnia said. “The harm that this massive cyber-attack caused to my father professionally, financially, and emotionally needs to be fixed."
Contact senior writer Byron Dobson at bdobson@tallahassee.com or on Twitter @byrondobson.
