Best wishes and good luck! Beat the bastards to death with their own
rules.

The street finds its own uses for technology.

                        William Gibson

On Sun, 3 Jun 2001, Declan McCullagh wrote:

> ----- Forwarded message from Declan McCullagh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -----
> 
> From: Declan McCullagh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: FC: Zenon Panoussis's letter to Kirkland: "I invite you to sue me"
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Date: Sun, 3 Jun 2001 23:55:03 -0400
> X-URL: http://www.mccullagh.org/
> X-URL: Politech is at http://www.politechbot.com/
> User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.2i
> 
> Zenon has been sued by Scientology for mirroring their ostensibly
> secret scriptures: http://www.dtek.chalmers.se/~d1dd/cos/zenon-eng.html
> 
> ---
> 
> Date: Mon, 04 Jun 2001 04:24:47 +0200
> From: Zenon Panoussis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Organization: Marcab Technologies
> To: Steven A Smith <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED],
>       Kirkland City Manager David Ramsay c/o <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: The fine art of suppressing information on the Internet
> 
> 
> Dear Steven
> 
> With some amazement, some disbelief and a lot of amusement, I read 
> at http://www.politechbot.com/kirkland/ that you have been threatening 
> legal action on behalf of the city of Kirkland against Declan McCullagh's 
> politechbot.com for its publication of some police officers' social 
> security numbers. 
> 
> Dear Steven. Being a good counsel to your client is not limited to 
> firing off standard cease & desist letters at the press of a button. 
> On the contrary, being a good counsel involves advising the client 
> on strategy and, in doing so, taking into account the nature, 
> strength, habits and expected reactions of the counterpart. 
> 
> Dear Steven. You have advised your client to start a war against the 
> Internet. Not only that; you have actually started a war on behalf 
> of your client. Any half-wit who has been online for more than six 
> weeks could have told you that anybody who starts a war on the 
> Internet is guaranteed to lose it. If you would rather not take the 
> advise of half-wits, you could have asked the Recording Industry 
> Association of America, The Motion Picture Association of America, 
> the Church of Scientology (OK, I admit, those *are* half-wits, but 
> they are half-wits with millions), the Ford Motor Company or the 
> German government instead. They would all have told you the same. 
> 
> Dear Steven. I regret to have to tell you that you did a lousy 
> job in persuing your clients' interests. The best way to go about 
> it would have been a polite e-mail, asking whether politechbot.com 
> would kindly remove those SSNs from the web as a token of 
> consideration and respect of the officers' privacy and worry about 
> possible abuse. You never know, you could have striken a cord there. 
> The next best way to go about it would have been to just do nothing. 
> 
> Dear Steven. Your client has to pay for your mistakes. The article 
> that you demand removed is now republished by me at 
> http://www.provocation.net/mirrors/kirkland/p-02008.html and I am 
> hereby inviting your clients to sue me. You can do so in the US, 
> but a US ruling will not be enforceable against me. If you want 
> an enforceable ruling, you need to sue 
> 
>   Zenon Panoussis
>   2e van Swindenstraat 188
>   1093 XA Amsterdam
>   The Netherlands
> 
> (that's me) at the appropriate Dutch court, which is 
> 
>   Rechtbank Amsterdam
>   Parnassusweg 220
>   1076 AV Amsterdam
>   The Netherlands
> 
> You see, dear Steven, this means that any legal action against 
> politechbot.com will be useless even if it is successful; the 
> article in question will remain on the web, and it will attract 
> so much more attention precisely because of your lawsuit. Of 
> course, you could continue threatening and sueing left and right 
> for ever, until your clients run out of money and you become 
> known to your collegues as Don Steven Quixote. Somehow, though, 
> I think that you are able to learn from your mistakes and that 
> nothing of this will happen. Somehow I suspect that you will 
> not reply to this mail, and that you will quietly and with as 
> little loss of face as possible drop the whole issue and forget 
> that you ever started it. I am pretty sure that your client 
> will appreciate that. 
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> Z
> 
> 
> -- 
> oracle@everywhere: The ephemeral source of the eternal truth...
> 
> 
> 
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> 
> ----- End forwarded message -----
> 


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