How to make friends and influence people

*UPDATE*
Normally I put updates like this at the end of the post, but this is a long post and I would rather that people saw the update first in this case.

I would like to add that aside from the legal note, Hriders.com has been nothing but nice and professional to me, which is exactly how matters like this can and should be handled. Hopefully this is the final resolution and we can move on with this and I can get back to talking about anti-spam measures.

I should start off by noting that I am not a lawyer. Being a lawyer requires going to law school, passing relatively strict requirement tests, and then of course being licensed among other things.
So the fact that I have seen movies, watched TV shows, talked to friends in law school, or have family that are lawyers... that means nothing in the end since I am not a lawyer.

Of course, this whole "not a lawyer" thing is a two way street - many other people are also not lawyers.

So when someone (or some corporate entity) sends me threatening legal action, it would probably behoove them to question themselves as to whether they too are in fact, not lawyers.

Getting to the point, recently we have had a few posts on here about HRiders.com (Hellacious Riders). They are a website that has something to do with motorcycles and that sort of thing. More importantly, in relevance to this our own discussion, they offer an e-mail service which has gone up many times in its disk space allowances. Most recently, as noted by this comment here (which praises me for saying kind words about their site, even though I wasn't particularly praising or negative in my text, merely pointing out the situation), they now have 100GB accounts available to paying customers. (incidentally, the comment also says they setup an account for me, but I already have too many e-mail addresses, so I never contacted them largely out of disinterest in using their site)

The posts, like many other posts here on Spamblogging, have comments on them. The comments on this site, in case you are new to how the internet and blogging works, are from people that visit the site. They see the text I write in the posts, or other comments, and then they leave their own comments. I don't edit the comments - that said, I do remove the spam comments from the site.

So here we have our issue of the day. I got the following e-mail today in regards to my site, and specifically these comments. Here is the full text of the e-mail:

From: Legal@theitradegroup.com
Subject: Eric, The itrade group, inc. may file suit against your co.

Dear Eric,

we tried calling from The USA, all we get is a busy signal.

We are the Legal Team For The iTrade Group, Inc. our client Hriders.com which is owned by The iTrade Group, Inc. has a very serious issue regarding your blog forum.

You have a member : arun kumar, who wrote this:

Posted by: arun kumar at September 18, 2004 04:05 PM
Hriders.com is fraud, these guys do not have 36,000,000 users registered and they do not give away 10GB for free. Just how in hell are they supposed to pay for 100,000 hard drives to support such a service? A lousy motorcycle enthusiast's web site which ranks 600,000 on Alexa can not possibly offer this service. These guys are crooks, fraudsters, liars!

We consider this slander, which is against the legal system in the USA, this person is not a member of Hriders.com, has no basis for the claims he has made.

We currently give 100GB/500MB email accounts and we have been fetured in newspapers worldwide.

We are asking that you remove all postings from this individual at once. We are planning to file a legal suit for slander and defimation against this person, and other persons that are posting this type of materials on your blogs.

We ask that you remove all postings about Hriders.com from your blogs, if you do not wish to comply with our wishes we will contact your Gov't for assistance in this matter.

Thank you for your time

Legal Team'
The iTrade Group, Inc.
Hriders.com

I then replied with this:

I think you are mistaken on a few points here, but I do understand your overall complaint. I didn't write the offending material, but my blog does allow comments. I do delete spam messages from the blog, but I don't censor the comments of the readers - it adds to the discussion of any point. If they want to say I am a jackass, then so be it. Or in this case, if they question your service, that is their issue, not mine - I simply leave it open to discussion.

Instead of jumping to empty legal threats, your time would probably be better served if you instead replied to the comments on the discussion so that you can defend yourself however you feel that you were wronged - that way if anyone finds the text in a search, they can make their own decision between the two concepts.

In order to help your cause, I will post this e-mail, my response, and my additional comments to the blog - that way any readers that happen to care about the topic can see where you stand on it with your position. In the end I think you will find that far better serves you than censorship to serve your agenda.

-Eric

So I have done my part in that I have shown that they are expressing concern over some comments on this site. I will now also do my part in discussing a few key points in their e-mail that might help all of us in the future when sending similar e-mails to sites asking them to bend under censorship pressures.

I'll just run through a list here, starting at the top, since it is as good as any:
1) Traditionally speaking, legal departments of companies don't send out e-mails from a central e-mail address. For instance, were Microsoft to issue a lawsuit, you would get an e-mail from one of their lawyers, but not from the collective "legal@..." moniker. The "legal@..." e-mail address is usually reserved for general inquiry to them and not legal threats from them.
This could lead someone to believe that the legal department is in fact just one person, and even further may even lead someone to wonder if they in fact have any clue what they are doing.
Or perhaps it just strikes fear into all of those that receive mail from it, I don't know.

2) The subject implies that they will be suing me, yet the actual body of the e-mail never gets around to discussing that part. To be fair, they did suggest that they "may file suit" against me (or rather my company as they put it), so that is up to the reader's discretion as to whether that is a permissive "may" or a sign of current indecision on their part.
Generally as a matter of etiquette, if you want someone to do something for you, it is considered more polite to first just ask and if they do something bad, then threaten to sue them.
Threats right off the bat are rarely going to make someone want to help your cause.

3) Apparently they tried called me from "The USA". I am assuming from the capitalization of "The" that they do in fact mean the proper United States of America and not something less formal. I am also assuming that when they tried calling, they are implying that they have a phone number of mine and were attempting to reach me via that number.
I would also assume that they got the number (as well as my e-mail address which they sent this to - one different than what is listed here on Spamblogging) off of a Whois search.
While I am sure that they are completely honest in their statement that the phone was constantly busy, I will have to add that any number of people from the U.S. have called me using that number and I also have good reason to know if it is busy or not since it is my cell phone and on me at all times.
That noted, it is an entirely different thing if there were no answer - that would actually make sense since I rarely take phone calls if I don't know the person - a relatively common thing with cell phones.
Or one could perhaps think that these people in fact didn't try to call at all and are in some way trying to flex some sort of argumentative skill that I, not being a lawyer and all, don't fully grasp.

4) Moving on, we see that the Legal Team has a serious complain with my "blog forum". I suppose it would be an issue of semantic nitpicking were I to note that a blog and a forum are two different things entirely, and Spamblogging is only one of those - which is a blog.
But I think we can all agree to leave that as it is and assume that they just meant this blog. Any assumptions as to their net savvy or lack thereof should probably left alone for now and assumed to be unfounded.

5) They state that we have a member named "arun kumar". Here we really start to run into some problems. First off, we don't have "members" here. Spamblogging is a blog, so while there very well may be a group of regular readers, there is no such thing as a membership to the site, and there is no registration requirement. Whether it is someone's first time seeing the site, or someone that has read it everyday since its inception, they can all post... hardly an issue of being a member or not.
Looking over that and assuming that they mean someone by that name posted in the comments, we then need to also point out that the comments on this section are totally open and free to anyone that wants to post. There is no registration, and there is no preventative measures from anyone putting in garbage into the fields when they post.
So while they refer to the name "arun kumar", all they are referring to is what someone put into the field when they posted. It might be their real name, or it might just be gibberish they banged out while flailing on the keyboard, drunk one night after too many cheap beers.

6) Then they post the comment that this "arun kumar" supposedly posted and is apparently what they take issue with. Note that there is a search box on the side of this site - it goes to Google and allows you to ... well, search this site. I suggest trying it out by typing into it "arun kumar" and then letting fly with that search button and see what comes up.
What you will get is a hit on a page of course that has Hriders.com on there - in fact this page.
The issue we then see is that there is an "arun kumar" and there is also an "arun kumar.a". Clearly they are different names, but they also look so similar. But since the form lets anyone at all post, and they can just make up info - they might not even be the same person that posted.
And then more importantly of course, the post to which appears to have caused offense is at the bottom and is actually posted by someone that filled out the info with "Jason".
Apparently they are planning a lawsuit against this person, yet they appear to have the content mixed-up in terms of who wrote what.
I will go ahead and ignore the question of how they plan on suing someone with no proof that they even wrote what is posted there. Sure there is a name and maybe there is even an e-mail address, but since you can type in anything, there is no proof at all that any given person actually wrote it.

7) Then we get to the statement "We consider this slander, which is against the legal system in the USA, this person is not a member of Hriders.com, has no basis for the claims he has made."
This one is interesting on a few points. First off, this supposedly being the legal team of some company, I would have thought for sure that they would remember the difference between slander and libel. In this case, were this even remotely something worth suing over, at best they would want to pursue it as libel since that is defamation in writing - slander of course being the verbal defamation.
Then there is the point that they state the slander (libel) is against the legal system in the USA. Ignoring the fact that the slander (libel) in case here is actually against Hriders and not the US legal system and what they likely meant is that slander (libel) is illegal. We will also ignore the fact that they somehow know this person isn't a member of their site, even though I have repeatedly shown that we have no clue who it is that wrote the comment.
As for having no basis on the claim, that is actually what the law suit would have to be about, and it would be the requirement that Hriders could in fact prove that lack of basis and also show that what the person wrote was to be taken as fact and not as merely opinion.
Let's also ignore any international boundaries that may come into play here since clearly the US legal system must apply globally.

8) They then state that they have been "fetured [sic] in newspapers worldwide". Normally one would think that a legal group, what with all of their schooling and the importance of the matter, would probably tend to spell/type things better in their threatening letters that they send out - in this case I think we should just ignore that and stick to the facts that we have on hand.
After all, they have been in newspapers around the world. Clearly that trumps any opposition anyone could offer otherwise - the newspapers do not lie and always have their facts straight.

9) They then go on to get to the meat of the matter and tell me that I must censor my own blog because they say so. They also misspell defamation, which is increasingly leading me to question said legal team's ability - but yet I think we must continue to chalk it up to their extreme agitation over this.
Note that apparently this is apparently happening on all of my blogs, not just this one - even though this is the only one that we are talking about or ever mentions Hriders.com. Good to know that their censorship powers spread over more than just this blog.

10) Stepping it up an illogical notch, they also ask that I remove all posts regarding their site Hriders.com. I'm not sure what grounds they have to ask such a thing, but I will again assume that in the heat of the moment, they got carried away, drunk with power and didn't really mean it.
But they clearly mean business since they will ask my "Gov't" for assistance in this matter. I honestly have no clue which government they are referring to, nor why they abbreviated it (perhaps this is common in legal jargon and I am just way out of the loop). I am also at a loss as for how my government, whatever that may be, would be of any assistance.
If I am not mistaken though, it looks like it is to appear as a threat from the powers above.

11) Then they, very politely I might add, thank me for my time. Signed "The Legal Group' ". I am not a linguist, and we have already established that I am not a lawyer, so please don't ask me what the apostrophe at the end there signifies.
Sure, we could speculate until the proverbial cows come home - perhaps it was a typo, or perhaps it is a secret legalese code - the fact of the matter is that we may never really know.

So there you have it folks, a legal threat that is either from the most incompetent legal team out there, or in fact not from lawyers at all and instead someone trying to flex their net muscles to remove posts that they don't agree with.
I am not going to remove the posts, but I have at least done these people a service by showing how they feel about it so that those people that may find this in the future can understand that Hriders.com does not support all of the comments about them that you may or may not find on this site.

Posted by Eric at October 5, 2004 10:40 AM | TrackBack