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Musician Wins $260,000 In Lawsuit Against Ex-Girlfriend Who Sabotaged Career
In the spring of 2014, Eric Abramovitz got the opportunity of a lifetime. He just didn't know it. Abramovitz was the victim of a deception that a Canadian judge called "despicable," as he granted Abramovitz $350,000 Canadian dollars (more than $260,000 U.S.) in damages.
Abramovitz is a gifted Canadian clarinetist who received national attention when he was still in his teens. As a student at McGill University, he applied for a spot — and a scholarship — at the prestigious Colburn Conservatory in Los Angeles, where he would study under the famed clarinet teacher Yehuda Gilad.
Only two spots open up per year, and they're seen as launching pads for elite careers. Competition is fierce. Abramovitz made it to the audition phase. But in March 2014, he saw an email in his inbox telling him he had been rejected.
It was heartbreaking. He went through "some really dark, sad, angry days," he told BuzzFeed. His girlfriend at the time, Jennifer Lee, another musician at McGill, consoled him.
But Abramovitz's despair was born out of a lie — and Lee's comforting words were, in retrospect, "really sick," he told the site. He had actually made it into the Colburn Conservatory. He never saw his acceptance email, however, because Lee got to it first — and sabotaged him. Apparently, a Canadian judge concluded, she didn't want him to move from Montreal to California.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by maxwell demon on Monday June 18 2018, @06:49AM (2 children)
And now imagine that cryptographic signing of emails was widely understood and employed.
The conservatory would have routinely signed their mail. And if his then-girlfriend had tried to manipulate the mail anyway, his mail program would have raised a big warning about an invalid signature. Give the importance of this to him, he certainly would have immediately contacted the conservatory, and would have learned that he indeed had been accepted, not rejected.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 18 2018, @07:30AM (1 child)
The easiest way to fake an e-mail signature is to not add one. The recipient is unlikely to notice.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 18 2018, @12:42PM
In that hypothetical dream world, unsigned emails would cause a warning, too.