Slashdot Mirror
PetsWarehouse vs. Mailing List
klaun writes "Salon is running a story about a federal suit against members of an Internet mailing list. Seems a company got a bad review on the list and the owner sued the person that said it and everyone who agreed. But the case grew bigger from there, including a suit against the legal defense fund set up to support members of the list being sued and anyone who linked to the defense fund. The ultimate rub of it all is that it basically worked. Most of the defendants have settled." This is a truly bizarre story.
It's called 'mobbing'.
Crows hate owls and hawks and cannot possibly ever hope to win a fight with one, no matter how many crows there are. So, rather than hiding, if crows see a hawk, they will fly around it at a safe distance and SCREAM at it. Caw! Caw! More crows will come and join. If the hawk goes for any one crow, goodbye crow, and the rest will scream even worse. Result: good luck finding prey with a lot of crows tirelessly screaming around you, hawk!
Thus, the hawk is 'mobbed' by crows, and that is the defense I mean.
I read this story in Salon, from a link on CNet. The first thing I thought of was 'slashdot oughta cover this!', and then when I came to Slashdot, it was the top story. Good job, all the people who no doubt all submitted it at once... because nothing quite rivals Slashdot as a 'mobbing site'. Many, many people read Slashdot- many people who are NOT FOND OF BARRATRY.
The fact is, as things stand right now, legal attacks of this nature ARE beyond what most people can withstand, whether they are justified or not: it's unsurprising that people are forced to settle because they cannot destroy their lives just to be an example.
That's why 'mobbing', like crows mobbing hawks, is the best answer: if you have no defense and can't possibly win a fight, it CAN still be possible to make things so unpleasant for an attacker that it gives up. I would love to see this 'petswarehouse' guy bankrupt: judging from the Salon story, I think he is a danger to society, all the more because his behavior may be imitated by others realizing, "Hey, you don't HAVE to be a multinational corporation to wreck ordinary people's lives with baseless lawsuits!".
I am no more capable of this than the original victims were: but I hope I have expressed the 'mobbing' defense adequately that it may turn out useful. People do this already- the point is, rather than being whiny bitches who can't win, they are sounding the alarm in a disorganized but determined way, about a deadly threat.
The aquatic plant growing community is fairly small and relatively easy to keep tabs on the entire community. All he has to do is give enough bad customer service and monitor all the message boards waiting for someone to complain. Then he can move in and start making some real money by filing lawsuits (notice that he doesn't use a lawyer, so he's not losing any money doing so).
He tries to post messages to defend his honor, but for some reason they were getting blocked. Note here that he is a regular poster to these message boards and is well aware of how to use them. But this time he decides to include MIME attachments to his posts, which I would assume he knows very well would bounce. Now he can claim that they're trying to censor him!! That's worth at least another couple of million dollars!
From the sounds of things this guy hides behind a pathetic business just to drum up people he can sue and make some real money from. Sounds like one of the lowest life forms out there. It's sad that he's making so many lives miserable, and that he seems to enjoy it. Heck, he's made a career out of it. He's probably riding high now, but it will all come back to haunt him in the end. He who lives by the lawsuit will die by the lawsuit. One way or another, he'll get the reward he so richly deserves.
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This is merely bizarre. For a truly surreal story, look at the case of Brandi Blackbear.
She was suspended from school for successfully practicing witchcraft. She allegedly cast a spell which made a teacher sick. The ACLU is taking it to court.
Yeah, it's offtopic, but it is interesting.
-Vercingetorix
"Necessitas non habet legem." -St. Augustine
If someone were to go to a phone booth or dorm phone, avoiding the use of their home phone (which would show up on the WATS billing statement, even if line-blocking or *67 were on), and were that person to dial PetsWarehouse at 1-800-991-3299, they would discover that the call is free to the caller, yet Long Distance to Pets Warehouse.
If one were to call them a bunch of times, it would cost PetsWarehouse more. If many people were to call them many times, it would be kind of a huge phone bill for them. A phone ringing off the hook a whole lot with no business coming in would really be bad for PetsWarehouse's business, too.
To do this, of course, would be wrong. Terribly, terribly wrong. Perhaps Congress should create a law that prevent the Internet and the phones from being abused in this manner.