[Imc-web] Libel and copyright infringement on your site

[Mike Lehman]

Hi Daniel,
You may or may not have noticed that the status of the article in question is "hidden" so it is not on display on our website, except by looking specifically in the hidden files area. This was done because we judged it to have been posted by a person who is rather infamous for his spamming of concocted stories to various IMCs, including ours.

It is generally against our policy to delete articles. The article was hidden as soon as it was noticed and it was labeled as fraudulent by having the identity we know him by appended to the author's name he used for this article (he uses a multitude of screen names and we identify him by his posting patterns). Usually the person posting this stuff operates overnight in the hopes of it staying up as long as possible, so at most it would have been on display briefly at a time when few people would have been reading the site anyway.

You are free to post a comment to the article explaining its fraudulent  and possibly libelous nature, in your opinion. As it stands, the person who posted it, whose identity we do not know for certain (although he has left clues over the _years_ he has been posting similarly rewritten-to-incite material on our and many other IMC sites) is totally discredited, so for that reason alone no one here considers any article identified as being posted by him as credible. Ironically, since posters at our website are anonymous, we have no way of judging the authenticity of the letter of yours you say is inlcuded -- the only thing that seems to confirm that it may be anything other than yet another fabrication of his is your complaint about it.

In our view, it is not a legitimate post, which is why it was hidden, however our policy generally does not allow deletion. Here is a link to the policy:
http://www.ucimc.org/mod/info/display/policy/index.php#iii

Please note that your commenting on the post will bring it to further attention via our Latest Comments page, since that is the way the software works. So will the process that I will need to take in order to delete it. If you do want me to take those steps, I will initiate such action, but I cannot guarantee you that it will be deleted, given it does not clearly fit within the policy for deletion, which we usually take to be obviously illegal speech, something that in the US is mostly limited to threats of violence. 

What I am wondering is how a personal letter of yours made it into this person's hands? You are in a far better position, knowing that, than we are to take legal action against him. Those who post to this site are responsible for the content of their own posts. I refer you to our disclaimer:
http://www.ucimc.org/mod/info/display/disclaimer/index.php

If you are able to ascertain this person's identity by tracing how he obtained the letter you claim was written by you, I encourage you to take whatever legal action you feel appropriate against him. We'll be cheering you on. We would also appreciate knowing who this person is so that we can consider taking our own legal action against him, since some of his past attacks have amounted to denial of service attacks on our site. He is someone adept at using anonymity services, some of which have ironically utilized US government servers. We have our suspicions that he may in fact be part of a government operation attempting to discredit Indymedia, given his ability to disguise the origins of his fabrications. But your beef is with him, not with us.
Regards,
Mike Lehman

dsword at macalester.edu wrote:

> Dear Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center:
> 
> I am writing to inform you that material contained on your website at
> URL: http://www.ucimc.org/newswire/display/20228/index.php violates my
> rights in that it a) is libelous and b) infringes upon copyright
> protections granted under the Copyright Act of 1976 and the Digital
> Millenium Copyright Act of 1998.
> 
> The page claims that I am a member of the ISM, which is not remotely
> correct. I have never been to an ISM meeting, never received ISM
> mailings, never demonstrated in support of the ISM. The attacks against
> my character are made without any supporting evidence (the ISM is not
> mentioned in any of my statements reproduced on the site), and is
> therefore libelous.
> 
> Furthermore, a personal letter of my penmanship not intended for
> dissemination is reproduced on this webpage. See Salinger v. Random
> House Inc., 811 F.2d 90 as an example of controlling caselaw. There are
> two important points: 1) I retain the right to determine first
> publication of my own writings, including personal letters and 2) the
> reproduction of a copyrighted item in its entirety is in no case
> protected under the fair use doctrine.
> 
> I hereby request that this material be removed immediately.
> 
> Sincerely,
> Daniel Swrod
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