The Cost of Pursuing the Much-Needed Reform/Shield Against Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs)
“It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.” ― Mark Twain
“A man with outward courage dares to die; a man with inner courage dares to live.” ― Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
“I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence.” ― Frederick Douglass
“Knowing what's right doesn't mean much unless you do what's right.” ― Theodore Roosevelt
“I would rather be a little nobody, then to be a evil somebody.” ― Abraham Lincoln
People who have repeatedly engaged in hateful, aggressive and sometimes illegal conduct (against many people) eventually need to face the consequences [1, 2]. Ultimately there must be a price. Trying to get cheap revenge using broke bullies while residing half a globe away isn't just an act of cowardice but clear misuse/misappropriation of a foreign system - a subject raised with NGOs and politicians due to a disturbing pattern which is widely publicised. Thankfully many people talk about it and are familiar with it. Some of them write to us.
NGOs are already well aware of this. Soon politicians too. We'll do our best to keep them properly informed.
The "FFII was threatened for defamation in the UK in the past (we exposed a lobbyist)," the FFII told us, so "we pulled down the content because we did not want any single cent on lawyers. There was an anti-SLAPP report in the EU which pointed at UK as problematic country. If you watch the 38c3 talk about Polish trains, the company accused also used SLAPP against an MP and hackers."
That was months ago: "We've not been trained for this: life after the Newag DRM disclosure" (and the initial presentation from 2023, "Breaking "DRM" in Polish trains: Reverse engineering a train to analyze a suspicious malfunction").
Based on my personal experience and observations, SLAPPs only work against relatively weak or afraid targets; otherwise they backfire at the end. Quite often, given proof of various aspects, the SLAPPer needs to compensate the target of the SLAPP. Residing in a different country (or even continent) isn't a financial shield.
Techrights has been running as normal this past year, publishing even more articles than in all prior years. The more we look into the details or the closer we examine these SLAPPs, the worse it looks for the Microsofters. They must have realised this too, hence the chaining of SLAPPs and constant threats (I very well know the boundaries, having covered SLAPPs for nearly 20 years); they're basically just engaged in shouting and table-pounding, knowing that laws and facts are not on their side and all the facts were publicly available all along. We did nothing illegal; we exposed the illegal.
We write about it quite a lot because it's a "slam-dunk" (meritless SLAPP-fest) and if people moan that we speak about it in public, then quit moaning and send/disseminate the writings, which are self-explanatory. The SLAPPers have repeatedly whined that we write about it without even once pointing a single factual error. They cannot find any; that's a huge problem for them.
Bullying gets people nowhere; it's extremely damaging to one's reputation and any reasonable 'externals' or outsiders tend to interpret bullying as a weakness; in reality, when it's about morale, will power and perseverance those less willing to carry on (or lacking prospects of "Success", which isn't the same as justice) will drop out, irrespective of moral support, be it warranted or not. This double SLAPP was doomed to fail right from the very start, hence the SLAPPers already attempted to settle at least 4 times (we declined each time; never give bullies and thugs even an inch because concessions empower and give appetite to those bad actors [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]).
When truly pathetic people make demands [1, 2] (after strangling women) the worst one can do is take the "easy way" out. Bad people must pay for their mistakes, not point fingers at their victims. █
“Integrity is telling myself the truth. And honesty is telling the truth to other people.” ― Spencer Johnson