Toronto Marlies forward Mike Zigomanis swears the pictures aren’t him. And when you’re a professional athlete in the age we live in, you hate to have to do that.
The two pictures in question appeared on the U.S.-based website isanyoneup.com. Neither shot shows the subject’s face, but you can imagine what they do show.
In addition to the aforementioned pictures, there are also images of Zigomanis fully clothed. In these shots, his face is shown, thus leading the website’s visitors to believe the nude ones are him, too.
The Marlies are the AHL affiliate of the Toronto Maple Leafs. When asked to comment, Leafs president and general manager Brian Burke defended Zigomanis.
“Ziggy assures us that the clothed photos are of him, and were purloined off his Facebook account,” Burke wrote in an e-mail to QMI Agency. “He also assures us that the nude photos are not of him. He has retained a lawyer to help him put an end to this.”
Unfortunately for Zigomanis, there might not be much he can do.
First of all, if he claims copyright to the lascivious pictures (hey, if Burke can use the word “purloined,” we can use “lascivious”), he’s essentially admitting that they’re of him.
Zigomanis could also obtain a defamation order in hopes of obtaining the IP address of the person who posted the pictures on the website; however, as Toronto Internet lawyer Gil Zvulony tells QMI, that might not get him anywhere either.
“A U.S. court will not enforce a Canadian defamatory judgement,” Zvuolony said. “Sometimes that IP address would lead you to a dead end. A Canadian judge does not have power to have it removed from the site.”
So Zigomanis might be stuck.
Jiri Tlusty was not reached for comment.