Almost exactly three years ago, we wrote about a ridiculous situation down in Louisiana, where the "Global Wildlife Center" was able to get a judge to issue an injunction against an obviously satirical site that had written an obviously satirical article about "killer giraffes" and a "recent attack" at the Center. The article was poking fun at recent violent attacks at other zoos, normally involving animals like tigers and bears. It was amazing that a court issued the injunction, and thankfully, less than two weeks later, the injunction was removed and GWC was told to pay the legal costs for the site. And that was the last that we had heard of the Global Wildlife Center... until now.

On Friday, the Center's President apparently threatened to sue lawyer Ken White, better known as Popehat, defender of internet free speech. You see, Popehat had covered the original story too, and for some reason, the President, Ken Matherne, isn't too happy about that (even though it's three years later). Perhaps it was this tidbit in Popehat's original post (which was actually quoted from a local news site):

In addition to filing this lawsuit, via email Global Wildlife Foundation president Ken Matherne threatened to file criminal charges, FCC charges, fraud charges, an IRS complaint, a governor’s office complaint, and a federal lawsuit against Brilleaux. Matherne’s email did not explain any basis for the additional threats.

If that gives you a sense of Matherne's grasp on basic legal concepts, and his willingness to assume that he can use all sorts of totally unrelated laws against people he doesn't like, well, you're just getting a tiny little sense of what Popehat went through on Friday. You kind of have to read the whole thread on Popehat to get the full effect, because each time you think "this can't possibly get more ridiculous," it does exactly that. Assuming Matherne really did send the emails in question, he would appear to have almost as much trouble with the English language as he does with the legal concepts he uses to threaten White. Here's a snippet from the first email:

My last case to decide the Apple vs Microsoft case. I am not joking – you can send this email to the judge and soon as I file suit. I will ask you as I asked that kid to take it down, if you think your malice to to our Foundation is free speech – let’s get real lawyers and hosted judges to find out! It scared teachers, parents and the general public. They were canceling trips, it was malicious, and the evidence given to court was a fraud. I did not say anything at the time. But, I think he would get dis-board by the falsified documents he presented to the judge. His father was a friend or I would have had he dis-board.

Everyone will see the truth of you and your boyfriends. You can print this – You do not have a clue what you did to damage my foundation I created for my daughter. And when you wake up in the morning – hoping you have kids- I want you to think about what you have done. Your site has done more damage than the issue and my guys think your damages will be worse the any free speech issue. And we are ready!

We are going to dp this all legal – get ready – I will have one of your partners, associates , friends , spouses, in dispositions for the at least the next 6 – 12 months. Minimum – 1 lawsuit lasted 12.7 years, the next only 6 . I have the means – so write me back or get ready. This again is no threat. Simply a promise. It is no longer about what the kid did – it is about what your company did! And I promise you we will win = you have damaged my daughters trust for at least 50 years. You are about to meet the best attorneys on the planet.

There's also a discussion about Matherne's belief that White is apparently a dope smoking drug fiend who is having sexual relations with the partners at his law firm (or maybe on Popehat, it's not clear). White, quite calmly, asks Matherne if there was anything specific in the original post that he felt was a false statement of fact, and offered to review such claims and "make adjustments to the post if appropriate." Matherne's response was to just demand that the original Popehat article was taken down "or believe I will do everything for my daughter that you would do for your children !"

And then it got wacky.

Just send me you attorney of record – you will not hurt my daughter – I do not care what it cost ! Ken It was a BS move – and I appreciate that you do that for the best of people – but you always know our kids are first – and I don't care how many $ it takes – my daughter will not live with this – so I will ask you one more time to pull this down – as a gentleman – or I will come to you! My airplane is only 10k an hour – have more cash & Gold in the bank than you can imagine – but if you hurt my daughter through this – my executives has all authority to go until all is done – I only have 1 daughter and it breaks her heart to see this! I would not do this to you or your family!

I really love this line: "My airplane is only 10k an hour – have more cash & Gold in the bank than you can imagine."

White points out, in response, that he is still waiting for any specific inaccuracies, and notes that he's willing to speak to any attorney representing Matherne -- to which Matherne initially sent a simple "Game on!" email, followed by this (not the full email, which has more where this came from):

Get your check book out – and unless you can buy every judge to the State Supreme Court – you will pay damages = not about freedom of speech –
Oh, And I will follow up with everything I said I would do. Ken White, You better have an attorney or get one .

Cannot wait to meet you – You are and I can “quote again” a piece of shit! You do a disservice to mankind. I hope the judge we come before understands what a parasite you are and does not want his kids or grandchildren to be exposed to someone like you!

And I do not care about are inaccuracies about was said or texted. You are wrong and you are libel. Again, I do not lose lawsuits, and I do not think to can pay off the judges!

If I'm reading this right, and I believe that I am, Matherne is not only threatening to take White to court under some ridiculous legal theories, but he is flat out admitting that he does "not care" about "inaccuracies." He also seems to be admitting throughout that he's doing this to tie White up in court. I would imagine that if this ever actually got to a court and wasn't thrown out immediately, these admissions would not help his case very much.

Randomly, out of curiosity, I went to check out the website for the Global Wildlife Foundation, and discovered that if you have Javascript turned off, you can see that they've got a ton of "payday loans" spam links hidden on their page. Either they've been hacked or they're selling link spam. Maybe they should take care of that before issuing bogus legal threats trying to censor a lawyer known for vocally defending the First Amendment.

Oh, look. Yet another person has made the assumption that the "c" in "copyright" stands for "censorship." We've seen this before. Several times. Just in the past six months, we've seen these attempts (sometimes successful) to wield copyright as a weapon:

- Actress Cindy Garcia tries to have "Innocence of Muslims" film removed from Youtube by claiming she owns the copyright to her performance in the film.

- Human Synergistics International gets a 2-year-old blog post removed for quoting four sentences from its "exclusive" trapped-in-a-desert team building exercise.

- Universal Music uses a false copyright claim to remove a negative review of one of its artist's albums.

- A minority owner of the Miami Heat sues a blogger and Google in an attempt to censor an unflattering photo of him.

- A cartoonist, irritated by criticism of her work, attempts to get her cartoons removed from Something Awful, accusing the site of theft.

Now, Craig Brittain, the owner of "revenge porn" site "Is Anybody Down" (whose first skirmishes with Marc Randazza were covered here) is trying to remove posts criticizing his site, his inability to keep his story straight, his likely extortionate "photo takedown service," and, well, pretty much everything, actually. He's sent a DMCA notice demanding the removal of three posts at Popehat, claiming that these posts contain copyrighted material.

Craig also tried to get the three posts about him on Popehat taken down by sending a bogus DMCA takedown notice to our host, Dreamhost. I've been a little mad at Dreamhost recently because of some outages, but I'm very happy with their response to this, which gives me confidence they will handle it correctly. They've recognized that's the notice is defective and they're not requiring a counter-notice from me yet — though I'd enjoy writing one.

It's refreshing to see a hosting company dismiss a baseless claim out of hand, unfortunately one of the rarer sights on the internet. Ken, who wrote all the posts in question, has posted the DMCA notice at Popehat, noting that Brittain clearly doesn't know, or doesn't care, what copyright actually covers.

The notice is patently ridiculous on any number of levels. Note, for instance, that Mr. Brittain is asserting copyright in a printout of his criminal record and in a correspondence between "David Blade" and Marc Randazza.

He also notes that Brittain takes care not to make any assertions that "David Blade" is an actual person (although he seems more than willing to protect Blade's "copyright" for him). Then there's this paragraph, which starts out in the general area of copyright before wandering all over the place:

Identification of the material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity that is to be removed or access to which is to be disabled: The posts and images above contain personal information which is owned and copyrighted by its respective copyright owners and is damaging in nature and contains personal information in violation of copyright and numerous privacy laws and must be removed immediately.

Sure, some of the stuff on the list might be "damaging in nature," but it's all self-inflicted. Here's what Brittain wants removed:

http://www.popehat.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Blade-Ad.png
http://www.popehat.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/correspondence-with-22david-blade22.pdf
http://www.popehat.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Craig-Brittain-Felony-Record.pdf
http://www.popehat.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/ChanceTrahan-480×562.png

An ad from his own website isn't "personal," and if it's "damaging," it's Brittain's own fault. The communication between nonexistent "lawyer" David Blade III and Marc Randazza may be both "personal" and "damaging," and while whoever actually wrote "Blade's" side may have a weak copyright claim in his portion of the discussion, there's obviously an incredibly strong fair use claim in republishing the entire correspondence. The felony record could be considered "damaging," but it's a matter of public record, removing it from the "personal" column -- and there's certainly no copyright claim there. And the photo? It's a screenshot of Chance Trahan's public tweets! How the hell does that violate anything?

Craig/David/Chance, the unholy trinity that is actually (most likely) a duo (at best), is attempting to undo the damage done, not by apologizing, taking down the site or just simply shutting up. Instead, Brittain thinks the internet can be controlled by abusing existing IP laws. And even if this particular gambit had worked, it still wouldn't have worked.

Even if you catch some abuse official on a bad day and convince them to take a few posts down, 100 more will pop up talking about your sick campaign of fraud and extortion.

Of all the things copyright is supposed to be used for, trying to erase your dodgy internet history isn't one of them. A weapon that has the potential to outlive you for seventy years is entirely too much power to be placing in the hands of those willing to abuse it. As we've noted before, the "perjury" aspect of bogus takedowns simply isn't enough of a threat to keep DMCA notices safely holstered.

Craig Brittain may have felt he could censor his way back into "respectability," but he's apparently just going to keep underestimating his critics. This is going to end badly, but not anytime soon, it appears. As disheartening as it is to see the abuse of intellectual property in the pursuit of shutting critics up, it's nice to see these clumsy attempted bludgeonings working less and less frequently.