[Updated 05-02-02: It is now abundantly clear that Godfrey has no case against Attrition for libel. Why is it clear? He still has not filed suit against us in any court. Instead, his only real weapon is to harass our ISPs with threats of lawsuits. Because they are businesses who don't want to gamble on whether he will actually file suit, they can't justify the potential money spent on retaining a lawyer to handle the threats. This material and/or Attrition may move several times in the next year. We are not breaking any law, we are not libeling Godfrey. As a result, this material WILL stay up in one form or another. Using threats of lawsuits and bullying tactics is cheap and only proves that we are right.]
[Updated 04-17-02: Jericho gives Godfrey one last chance to explain how we are libeling him. As expected, the (lack of) reply proves he has no case.]
[Updated 04-16-02: Cancer Omega gives Godfrey the final smackdown. If Godfrey wants to push his luck, that's up to him. cOmega's had it with this moron. Be careful. Bring coffee.]
[Updated 04-13-02: As you see, we found a new home. This material will stay up despite ongoing harassment by both Godfrey and Berryhill (part of some kook network it seems). Godfrey is still threatening to sue us and hasn't done anything beyond harass our ISPs and us.]
[Updated 03-20-02: Laurence Godfrey has threatened our ISP with a lawsuit for the material posted here. Despite him having no case for libel, he is still pursuing this. Our ISP has no rights to this machine and has no ability to update the content on it. Despite that, they are still caving in and pressuring us to either remove the "libel" (read: the four questions in the original usenet post not made by attrition staff), or to pay all legal fees associated with the case. Thus, we removed the offending four lines and they were no longer available on this site.]
Welcome to our latest installment of Going Postal, and our latest sue-happy wacko. This week's legal threat comes from a British physicist who decided to threaten us over a Usenet post that he didn't like. Instead of ignoring it and moving on, he decided to mail us and threaten a lawsuit even though he knew the post did not originate from Attrition.org. Worse, the post he claims is libel is nothing more than FOUR QUESTIONS. Despite this, he goes on to threaten us further. But, see for yourself what kind of winner we're dealing with.
Notice in this mail he says "you" did this, "you" did that with so and so intent. It is clear in this mail he is directly accusing us of making libelous remarks on the usenet group.
Notice in this mail he clearly says that he thought it unlikely that the post originated from Attrition. Personally, I think I showed him the basics of newsgroup headers and that led to his reply. Further, if he really thought we had nothing to do with it, he could have mailed and politely asked, not demanded we apologize for something we had nothing to with. He says our hostile response wasn't necessary, but somehow his hostile mail to us was?
He tells us that he is "trained in law" despite being best known as a physicist. He also calls my threat "infantile", even though his threat to sue over a usenet post with four questions is somehow not infantile. He claims he has been in several proceedings in the past. Sue happy.
I guess it doesn't matter to him that the same remarks are likely posted to hundreds of web sites that mirrors newsgroups, and all the servers that archive/host newsgroup postings. But that doesn't matter to litigation happy fuckwits really. They just want someone to go after.
I guess he didn't get a clue that jericho[at]attrition.org with a NIC contact of jericho[at]dimensional.com might be the same person. But I know, he is just following procedure, which is commendable.
Notice here he tries to claim he said it was "unlikely" despite the specific wording in his original mail. While I may be 'unwell', it still amazes me how people think that blindly threatening legal action is somehow noble while other types of threats (like posting the correspondance to a web page) is infantile or childish.
Once again, Godrey responds to the same mail twice. It appears he has a serious problem with premature responses and can't do it in a single piece of mail. Once again he says he will proceed accordingly.. despite the fact we have still done nothing. We didn't post the original on the newsgroup, and at the time of the mail no part of the correspondance had been made public. Doesn't matter, he is a sue happy gimp.
And from here, no more replies from our new friend Laurence Godfrey. I checked Google's archive of all three newsgroups this was posted to. It's very odd that the post was not archived under any newgroups, only the replies were.
So, tell us what you think, or better yet, mail ole Laurence and tell him what you think! [an error occurred while processing this directive]