So….they cost me a day of work and a round of golf

So yes, once again the forces of evil are trying to force us off the internet. It won’t work. It did waste some of my time, and that of our legal team who had to respond to it, but it certainly won’t work. Also, it rather ruined my golf game yesterday. Actually, it helped at first (I had a drive of 280 when Jonn called with a head’s up) but then I couldn’t tone down my anger and was beaming sand wedges like 120 yards and throwing clubs.

Nonetheless, I spent the day writing a 4,453 word response today. Baldly stated, the entire document can be summed up by my second paragraph:

The Complaint represents the website hosting equivalent of a strategic lawsuit against public participation. Wickre is significantly less interested in any terms of use issues than he is in silencing free speech and veterans’ advocates operating within the law. To date, Wickre has commented no fewer than 118 times on the Blog, which is odd considering his aversion to the nature of what we write. Those 118 comments from his IP address are directly traceable to him. They do not include the numerous comments which were deleted by the authors because they contained social security numbers of bloggers, phone numbers and addresses for the bloggers and other commenters, and some indecipherable strings of letters and numbers.

The Complaint is full of obfuscation, misstatements regarding case law, and lies regarding easily verifiable facts. I will endeavor to respond to only the issues of import regarding the Complaint.

That said, if you guys could refrain from any comments that could get me in trouble for the next few days, that will suffice for my birthday gift (which you all owe me by Saturday.) So, instead of saying something about “hammer a six-inch spike through his penis” (looking at you Nik) or the therapeutic benefits of squatting on a traffic cone and then duck walking home (another classic noted in the complaint) how about blessing him with a million unicorn butterfly kisses, or a TV which receives only 180 channels of ALF reruns. Seriously, I need rest, and I can’t fight any more. Nothing that could be construed as a threat, pornographic imagery etc.

I agree with your unstated comments. Jonn agrees with them. Everyone reading this agrees. Just cut us some slack and don’t write it, at least until we get the all clear from Rackspace (which we will.) This is NOT a win for the bad guys, as I am certain their attorney spent much longer that 8 hours working on it, and costs significantly more than I charge, which is nothing. Besides, when this one gets tossed, we will be stronger even than we were before.

Jonn always ascribes the success of this blog to you guys, the readers. I agree with him of course. Collectively we have the smartest, most diligent, wise-assiest readers and commenters this side of the Mos Eisley cantina. So, use the brain and some restraint while 1SG is watching us *not* do our concurrent training tasks. Kapiche?

Also, please consider tossing Jonn a few shekels. Although the legal counsel stuff doesn’t cost him anything, server space for this house ain’t cheap.

I am taking tomorrow off to celebrate my Birthday a few days early by doing damn near nothing except playing Port Royale 3: Pirates and Merchants on XBox. It has to be the boringest game in history, which should be good for my blood pressure. SVT will resume Monday though.

BTW- Somehow we got derailed into music again, so answer me this one…the lady at 1:51, is that Susie Benjamin? Because it looks like a younger her to me.

Category: Politics