SLAPP Censorship - Part 17 Out of 200: A Long Track Record of Online Abuse, Then Choosing a Low-Cost Law Firm to Muzzle People Who Have Illuminated This Abuse for Over a Decade
Censorship by targeting ISPs and webhosts isn't unprecedented (he admitted under sworn oath that he had done this many times to various people); the lawyering up goes back to 2021 if not earlier (this pre-action letter may not be the first; they try to compel recipients to keep silent and there could be other targets)
In the past couple of parts [1, 2] we gave some introductory information about the SLAPPs (they're connected for strategic reasons) and today we drop some fresh news.
~13 hours ago in a few sites the facilitator of the SLAPPs - funded by a mystery third party (or parties) - advertised openings (not because of new business; they've hardly had any business for months/years and they try to fend off a lawsuit because they got sued by their own clients [1, 2, 3] and they pay RPC - which is rather expensive - to help them). Did some more people leave? No business left except sending us 75+ KG of legal papers to try to scare and censor us? We got anonymous and threatening E-mails [1, 2] demanding that we remove articles about them.
The new advertisement is quite revealing. It's to "work from home": (see "The Law Firm SLAPPing Us For the Microsofters Lost 72% of Its Tangible Assets in the Past Year, According to Its Own Reports" and "Change of Address at the Hired Guns, Address Removed")
The skills required: Microsoft.
Ranked 1 out of 5. The lowest possible ranking.
Very fine law firm! The Claimants boasted the aim was to get something cheap. It ended up very expensive.
One key mistake was not knowing their Claimants and what they had done. Over time they found out. Here's what I wrote to our barrister 2 years ago (he felt strongly about this case, he urged us to write about it once it's over).
Introduction
Why and How Strong Evidence Exists to Link the Claimant to IRC Abuse
The case rests on proving that the Claimant was always very abusive and has moreover been responsible for the abuse many people received in IRC in recent years (including but not limited to both Defendants). The Claimant clearly misuses anonymity software not in order to report misconduct, dodge authoritarian regimes, run an unauthorised NGO, or to blow the whistle; the Claimant uses it to dodge accountability for abhorrent behaviour online. That’s a key point that can only be understated, not overstated.
[2026 editorial note: Not talking about sockpuppets here; the IRC abuse involved hijacking other people's names, asking people in IRC about child pornography, calling people "rapist" (ironically, his own spouse publicly calls him "rapist" right now), and so on]
It should be noted that the abuse in IRC was very much consistent with his abuses 1) against society. 2) 12 years of online abuse against Roy (First Defendant) and serial defamation of Roy. 3) about 20 years of him defaming many other people, based on testimonies they gave.
The second key point is, the target of abuse isn’t limited to one person or a couple. There have been quite a few parties that can attest to that. Shall that be needed, some would come forward and some already have. There were examples where people unrelated to the site Techrights were targeted in the Techrights network. An example or two needs to be used to bridge these two sorts of incidents but are beyond the scope here before this case is limited to the couple being harassed, not various others who might be seen as “collateral damage”.
He is, in summary, paying the price for decades of his persistent abuse and he does not like it. He feels entitled to abuse many people without being criticised for it and he games the legal process (while perched in another country) to issue legal threats to his critics. He has sent such legal threats since 2021 (to the First Defendant) in the form of pre-action letters, but his threatening behaviour by far predates 2021. The Defendants have evidence he had done the same to other people.
This behaviour is systematic and highly corrosive.
His spouse already got sued for defamation (for falsely or baselessly calling people “rapists”) and he himself has shuffled law firms, perhaps unhappy with poor results at threatening his critics. While it is not clear if his spouse lost these lawsuits, the spouse clearly did not win (it seems like a deadlock). It is also not clear if it is the Claimant alone or both him and his spouse who have been shuffling law firms. There seems to be a lack of consistency and a lot of “shopping around” for cheap lawyers (price is a priority, not reputation or quality).
He is clearly very frustrated by the embarrassing delay and his lack of legal progress. Back in February 2024 he already sent a pre-action letter, albeit about half a year after he had said he would (probably advised by law firms that such action would be moot, even counter-productive), offering an out-of-court settlement subjected or amounting to the capitulation and censorship, which is totally not acceptable to the Defendants considering how many people this abusive person (the Claimant) already blackmailed one way or another, e.g. Linus Torvalds in 2012, 2015 and 2018 or thereabouts.
Torvalds was a very well known example because the Claimant “made a name for himself” by attacking Torvalds in public (his antics are well known to many by now and we're confident enough to say the Defendants are sufficiently well informed of this as they covered abuse directed by him at other people, including at Torvalds, as documented at the time in Tux Machines, in schestowitz.com, and in Techrights). There is ample press coverage that can serve to illustrate his attacks on people; he made a name for himself by mostly attacking (in public) people way above himself, even some of his colleagues that are several pay grades above him (especially by falsely trying to associate them with rape).
Abuse by him in IRC would not even be the worst of his actions. Nor would it be the least sinister of his activities, either.
The bottom line is, there is a very long and very well documented (in the press) track record of the Claimant attacking people in public – almost always (if not always) innocent people. He strives to darken people’s identity using false accusations. Whether they’re innocent of guilty does not seem to matter; what matters to him is that their reputation suffers and he compensates with repetition for a lack of supporting facts. In case that’s unclear, or one needs example, see aforementioned notes. To re-phrase a little, it is possible to build one’s track record by faking (seminal) achievements and then building a set of progression steps, using each prior step as “proof” of accomplishment rather than actual (original) merit. In the case of security, one can become a professional poser based on prior job titles – even for jobs acquired by cheating, nepotism etc. In other words, those prior roles do not in fact provide evidence of suitable credible. █