Weaponisation of For-Profit Dockets - Part II: Hiding Behind Lawyers and Barristers Who Lack Standards so as to Engage in Classic Corporate Extortion
They're trying to scare people and they misuse their licence to operate
Law firms conditionally receive great power/s. Yes, conditionally. Once people graduate from law school they can acquire a licence to operate as attorneys/lawyers/solicitors (the title depends on role and which country; terminology varies across systems) and barristers or advocates can do a little more (and less, depending on the function). This occupation or the "sector" or the "industry" (if one can call litigation an industry as if it manufactures something) relies on consent from the public and from public officials, typically elected by the general public assuming a functional democracy. If it's deemed undesirable or "doing more harm than good", then it risks losing its mandate to operate or simply see its relative power (inside the system) diminishing over time.
The site Techrights contains the word "rights" in its name and Andy wrote a long series speaking not only about rights but also obligations - a series he sort of co-authored with RMS, who is in Europe this week and will give another public talk tomorrow. Techrights is in favour of law and order; in the case of the EPO, it's profoundly insistent that the EPO should stop breaking laws, constitutions and even conventions in the name of "patent laws" (the EPO isn't about law these days; it does the exact opposite!), so when we speak of law firms we take a stance like presumption of innocence or "good faith". Most law firms are probably OK. But the "rotten apples" must be called out, maybe even put out of business, making way for better ones to replace them. This is imperative in a society based on the Rule of Law and fair competition, based upon one's conduct.
Last month I pointed out that the lawyer and barrister who pick on my wife and I don't seem to be filtering clients. We saw that when they picked on other people who had merely exposed corruption (it's a good thing to do so! We rely on watchdogs). That was a few months before they started sending threats and lawsuits to my wife - knowing she was thin-skinned and they even used the wrong name. Over time they would only get more aggressive, more unethical, and even breach rules (according to several respectable laws firms which studied the SLAPPs in depth, along with NGOs that watch what's being done to us).
What sort of person would seek to "procure" such "services"?
What would the true motivation be?
Two weeks ago we published this long and detailed article about GNOME, Microsoft, and GitHub. And only a day after we published this long article GNOME sort of 'blew up', starting with Tobias opening up or opening his mouth, albeit not until almost a year too late, citing what the CoC folks did to some likely innocent man who is still unable to talk about it because lawyers got involved and it's generally embarrassing to GNOME.
This is a huge embarrassment to Free software in general. GNOME is a disgrace and even Tobias, a GNOME insider, blasted some people (without referring to them by name, preferring not to admonish them). Even this week some key people in GNOME still write blog posts about this, trying to contain the damage as best they can (with spin and prose) [1, 2].
Deja vu of the collapse of Team Mono, except a lot bigger in terms of scope. Novell didn't survive, Mono barely outlasted Novell, and Microsoft dumped the whole thing onto WINE because Microsoft has severe budget constraints.
Those things never seem to end too well. The trajectory is all too familiar.
Some of the overlaps here will be explained in the future. GNOME will be facing many more embarrassments in years to come and those embarrassments are connected to some companies and organisations. No stone will be left unturned.
For GNOME people to resort to SLAPPs is a nail on the coffin. It's a shot in the foot, too. One's own.
Meanwhile, there's this new article (from yesterday) in The Atlantic. The headline says "Trump Is Hiding Behind His Lawyers", just like the Microsofters from GNOME [1, 2]. Ever since the SLAPPs started they never contacted us directly, not even for more begging. The "clients" give the lawyers money to instruct them to threaten us; each threat is not cheap. It's also self-defeating. They seem to have learned nothing from their earlier threats. It flies back like a boomerang or perhaps pops like chewing gum in one's face. Each additional threat is only more evidence of a disconcerting pattern.
In the first part of this mini-series we reminded people that Bill Gates does the same (hiding behind lawyers) after his obvious scandals with Jeffrey Epstein. He's not off the hook; he got arrested several times as a teenager and he can be arrested again in his 70s if there's political will to actually investigate what he did; his own wife has said repeatedly that this is why their marriage broke down so fast and some mainstream media reported that Mr. Gates himself fainted when the media caught him in the scandals; he didn't need to SLAPP media, he's just buying the media and gets that media to lie/cover for him, "flooding the zone" with his nonsense and lies.
Not everyone can afford this strategy. It does not scale well, either.
At the end we'll work to ensure the SLAPPers and their facilitators will compensate Techrights and Tux Machines for what they did - not just what we reported on (that in itself is really bad, e.g. strangling women) but what they then did to those who only reported what had happened. Justice starts by contacting one's "boss" and more steps will follow, including a political intervention (politics are in our favour here).
What we reported here actually happened.
Talking about this isn't defaming anybody; telling truths isn't defamation, that's the whole point. If society allows people to abuse people who merely report facts, especially facts about people who harm society (typically for personal gain as part of abusive agenda in a company like Microsoft), then it's a public service that should be actively encouraged.
There's also a common misunderstanding of free speech. Death threats are also a form of speech, as is libel. But for those there are separate laws. You can express thoughts or make forms of speech that violate laws not related to speech itself. Moreover, free speech laws in the US (based upon the First Amendment) aren't applicable in the UK and enforcing libel rulings abroad isn't possible, almost infeasible (which means there's a disproportionate force and asymmetric power structure; SLAPPs from abroad should be considered inadmissible). Microsofters exploit bad laws and twist them. They're essentially 'double-dipping' a foreign system to attack the rights of people, such as the right to say true things (but embarrassing to them). People must value truths. Society depends on that.
We've received many threats from the firm above; it's not a good law firm, and in fact Glassdoor suggests they pay paralegals about the same as supermarket workers (not that there's anything wrong with supermarket workers; at least they're not women who help men attack other women), even in the notoriously expensive London area. But let's face it, based on their own filings, which are public, they're running out of money and have loads of debt (even the number of staff decreased by more than 10% per year).
So why are they picking on us? Well, it was all along about finding something cheap that lacks acceptable standards.
This will end badly and they already know it. They stopped sending us threats about a month ago after bombarding us with letters almost every day.
Well, sooner or later, if their narcissism and egoism subside, they'll come to realise just how guilty they are of so many things - both the facilitator (so-called "gun for hire"/litigation firm) and the strangler of women, the serial defamer etc.
Quit projecting your own flaws and miserable lives onto other people and try to become a better person, not a better bully or better Microsoft "attack dog".
As we'll show and explain in the next part, it seems like over 20% of their "business" now (the "gun for hire") is attacking me and my family.
Sometimes failure is the best teacher, or so goes the cliche. The SLAPPers refuse to accept defeat. So they may need to sit somewhere at the side and think about it like a sad or bad bulldog. You did some very wrong things, stop trying to point a finger at your own victims whom you envy because their lives are a lot better than yours. In fact, do not try to silence those who merely say what you prefer not to hear and want nobody else to see because it's akin to digging one's own grave.
It's a failed strategy.
We predict that at the end what will happen is what I said back in 2023: "If you want to sue, be sure to provide a valid address (not your outdated one) so I can sue you and win and perhaps bankrupt you. My case is miles stronger than the fiction and fantasy inside your misaligned head. Before you were lawyering up I had already made my case and openly (in early 2021) alleged you had breached laws while hiding in some shack in another continent." (That did happen a year later [1, 2])
Misusing the US as a "refuge" or "safe haven" is something we already saw in Sirius Open Source (then CEO fled there) and the company got sued regardless.
You can run. But. You cannot hide! █
