"The Liberating Power of Simply Telling People the Truth."
This week:
Also this week: Yesterday's Celebrations (site turning 21!)
COMPENSATING for a lack of legal merit by throwing many hundreds of pages (of someone else's work) into the pit is understandable. Throwing highly complex legal questions (that even some lawyers or law students would hesitate to answer) is also one manipulative way to distract from the fact you represent someone who was in prison for good reasons and had already done other really bad things, which he is belatedly held accountable for in the media (his initial reaction was to beg for mercy, knowing he had done bad things).
Whether you send 1,200+ pages of legal papers through my door or "just" 700+ pages doesn't matter (we can make an adorable "group photo" of those rude, threatening letters and bundles when the Court approves it's over, so keep sending more till it fits whole carpets and rooms). The threatening letters speak for themselves. This is not an exaggerated statement. It is an enhanced form of 'polite' bullying, directed not only at me but also at my family at large [1 2, 3] (you're attacking their privacy for no good reason and add subtle insults, including veiled racial microaggression). It's kind of a big deal when a Law Degree gets misused or abused to actively participate in bullying, which can take many forms. Having already bullied his own victims (poor women), now he's bullying the reporter (who merely explained what happened, citing official and authentic documents).
They ought to understand that I'm already accustomed to this kind of nonsense and it always backfired [1, 2] - without a single exception - on people who had naively tried it, even companies as large as Novell (about 7,000 staff) and organisations like the EPO (also close to 7,000 staff). Microsoft is a lot bigger, but the company has terrible reputation. Its hirings are so bad that their staff ends up literally stabbing other staff [1, 2], even inside the workplace (it should be taken seriously when people like these already blog about desires to stab colleagues). They also hire men who later strangle women, which perhaps they fail to understand is a bad thing.
A "boutique" law firm (that's what those are called) on shoestring budget with about 7 people in the office cause a fair deal of trouble/nuisance (if determined enough to bully a man and his wife in Manchester), but at what cost? A loss of its licence to operate? Because it looks like it might happen soon. Not only has the firm done silly things (no doubt out of sheer desperation to whiten the reputation of bad people from Microsoft), it overstepped its authority and now its own staff is fleeing.
I've done online journalism for 20 years (I wrote in news sites) and activism for even longer than this. These sorts of things always end up the same way - possibly with compensation from the bully. Their letters this week show they're "taking the bait" and walking into the trap; it not only takes up a lot of their time (money) but also leads them to saying utterly self-incriminating things in official communications. A good law firm would handle this differently. A great law firm would simply not start such SLAPPs in the first place. Their own client boasted this lawsuit was meant to be "funny" as if courts are some entertainment-themed YouTube channels. They're not. You're just clogging up the dockets with frivolous PR stunts for terrible people who lost fame, lost relevance, and foolishly believe that some vexatious litigation would somehow turn them into heroes. This was attempted 4 years ago at a curious time.
By now the litigants must be aware that sending more and more threats to people who speak out about threats isn't wise. Generally speaking, extortion against someone “who doesn’t have a fear gene” is like shouting at a deaf person. It's not only pointless; it makes you look exceedingly bad to everyone around you.
No decent law firm would take a Microsoft dime from this small and highly insecure man (addiction didn't solve this problem for him) who assaults frail women to elevate his distorted sense of ego and then pretends it never happened (he also lied to girls he was with and later openly boasted to them that he had lied to them). But one can imagine and we certainly understand why a firm this poor would abandon basic filtering or standards (or its own credibility). Once a firm aims this low there is an immediate consequence or harm not just to its reputation but also its ability to practice law (in a country where regulation exists and NGOs do try to protect the press - what little is left of it after decades-long, persistent attacks on it, the fourth estate and oftentimes the last and critical fallback when democracy fails, e.g. lawyers bribing incentivising District Attorneys to cheat/game the system).
As the famous paper (now site) put it this week in Happy 160th Anniversary to “The Nation”!: "Since 1865, we’ve held fast in our belief in the liberating power of simply telling people the truth."
Finally, as we put it in April, "Never Try to Justify Strangulation of Women (Not in the US and Not in the UK)"
This wasn't even some "kinky sex", the victim was in tears and had struggled to breathe. Lawyers must always study the cases and clients they're handling, not rush to give misguided advice (which would prove costly to both sides but still line the pockets of opportunistic law firms).
The moral thing to do is to walk away from such SLAPPs and protect veteran reporters in the UK, not Americans who attack these reporters (and even their family members!) via London. Revisit the following:
- Weaponisation of For-Profit Dockets - Part I: Hiding Behind Lawyers (or Guns for Hire) After Abusing Many People and Even Strangling Women While Microsoft Paid Salaries
- Weaponisation of For-Profit Dockets - Part II: Hiding Behind Lawyers and Barristers Who Lack Standards so as to Engage in Classic Corporate Extortion
- Weaponisation of For-Profit Dockets - Part III: No More Media Lawsuits From Brett Wilson LLP This Year, One Can Only Guess Why
- Microsoft's Serial Strangler and Matthew J. Garrett Join Forces in Trying to Gag Techrights (for Exposing Microsoft Corruption and Crimes Against Women)
Worry not. People who did nothing wrong have nothing to worry about. In the UK, merely mentioning a crime in another continent is commendable and very much necessary. █
Miguel de Icaza on Alex Graveley and Nat Friedman (they still talk about each other and with each other; they used to do a podcast together, the two of them):
