Tempers Flare Over Ill-Tempered Sword Remarks

msaulters writes "The Austin American Statesman is reporting on Daniel Watson, a Hays County swordsmith who is suing a group of San Francisco-based techies, charging that they extorted him by posting negative comments regarding his sword-making business on the discussion forums they host and then offering to clamp down on such comments if he bought advertising with them. On the one hand, this sounds very chilling, as the defendants, Sword Forum International, are very well-known and respected in the world of sword-making, and abuse of that position would be very un-cool. On the other hand, they make some valid points in the article, and historically, the ability to express your opinions freely online is one aspect of the internet that arguably should never be curtailed."

Comments

The Angel Sword website.

[immanis]

A look at their website should excite this thread (knowing geeks anyway).

It's hard to take this lawsuit seriously looking at this. And with terms like "Avatar of Techno-Wootz(TM) Damascus steel".

I wonder if we'd get sued for slashdotting their server.

Living Steel

[CritterNYC]

For the curious, here is a link to the "Living Steel" section of the angelsword.com site which no longer appears to be there, courtesy of archive.org.
Living Steel