Scam sites and the bowels of the Net.

Ever been to page 1000 of your chosen search on Google or Yahoo? I have,and further beyond. I have been trying to find out the characters involved in the murky world of scam crusader sites, like scam.com and scamfraudalert.com. It became a depressing look into the dirty underbelly of the Internet.

When surfing the web we tend to spend our days wandering through the top ranked pages on search engines and enjoying a utopia of corporate web sites and beautiful imagery, which would keep us under the impression that the web is wonderful shiny place of innovation and free speech, all Youtube and Myspace.

Look deep enough and further enough into a subject such as scamfraudalert.com and you will find a place that is infested with html disaster sites and murky characters all scrapping for traffic and protecting their outward veneer of respectability, while all the time battling with each other in the background arguing which of these would be corporate assassins is the the most trustworthy.

I have to say, just writing about it makes me want to have a shower. When people start to call each other 'Internet Terrorists' and "Low-level monkey boy' (I kid you not), isn't it time that the web had a clear out?

"Low level Monkey Boy" was apparently aimed at one James Landrith who was accused of owning scamfraudalert.com, but who denies it fervently. This guy is an ex-gulf war vet who campaigns for racial equality! Low level monkey boy! I think not. (He is also extremely eloquent, take a look at the posts on scamfraudalert and make your own judgement as to the eloquence of the site administrator, my lips are sealed).

This is just the kind of unintelligent verbal diarrhoea that comes from these so called crusaders who are the first to champion free speech, but at the first sign of criticism bite back with, more often than not, made up accusations and threats of law suits. I dare you to spend time as I have done, trawling the web to see who is behind these sites, and then spend the next day looking into all the allegations that are being made about these people and where it leads you. I don't mind telling you, it is a depressing place to be. Imagine being on the beach at Ipanema basking in the beautiful Rio Sun and then visiting a favella, where good honest people struggle to live in an infested wasteland among thieves and criminals, and you will have some idea of the difference between Google page 1 and Google page 1000 and the murky world inhabited by these so called scam crusader sites.

This is part of the game for these sites however. Once a company is defamed on a scam site the page rank for that will, inevitably, be above that of the company itself, virtually neutering the web as a marketing tool for that company. Indeed, they even change the meta tags within individual posts! These are changed to include the company's name who they are lambasting, according to one email we have had. We also did a quick look up and it appears to be the case, although we don't know if this process is somehow automated, from what we have heard, its not, which means that these pages are being changed specifically by the 'webmaster' in order to be highly ranked on the search engines for the names of the companies they are targeting... doesn't this seem a bit odd to you?

It also nullifies the argument of hiding behind the law that protects publishers such as ISP's. If these scam sites have input into a topic (and changing the meta tags would surely be input) then they will get caught, arguing that they are merely publishers, will not fly.

While ensuring their search engine rankings are great for their victims posts, they also are very adept at burying bad information on the sites and their owners in the bowels of the Net, hence my travels there.

However, just like, eventually, a blind squirrel will find nuts in a forest, these scam sites inevitably have genuine scams posted on them. These do save people from becoming victims, but surely this shotgun approach is just laziness in executing a worthwhile cause. Wouldn't it just be easier to do it properly and research each accusation?

For genuine companies who appear on these sites it can result in thousands, maybe tens of thousands of dollars down the toilet, "all because some dirty filthy coward did not do his research properly".

These are the angry words of a CEO we spoke with whose company has appeared on one of the scam web sites. "We have spent around $400,000 creating the structure of the company and the initial marketing. We have identifiably lost $500,000 in contracts and much more in reputational terms and the business that would bring in."

When asked if they would be going after the scam site concerned. "You bet" was the only answer that we could could coax out, initially, then we got him warmed up.

Having explained that the owner of the site probably did not have any money and it could, according to sites such as cyberlawyer.com, cost up to $100,000 to get the case to court and that, even if they won, they would be the enemy of these so called crusader sites for ever, the response was:

"A well researched scam site with a method of rebuttal and some identifiable place of business and someone to sue, is a valuable tool, because it is truthful and honest, it has to be, or you will be on the end of a law suit. These scam sites are not like this. The person running the site that we are on can only be one of three things, an idiot who does not know what he is doing, a blackmailer hoping to get some money out of us, or a mixture of the two. This person has put our reputation on the line, our ability to do business in the future without being tainted by lies, but worst of all this person has put the livelihood of our staff at risk. This is unacceptable and we do not put a financial limit on it. If the other scam sites want to take us on for defending ourselves, then we will see them in court too."

It appears that this particular businessman is a little hot under the collar and has vengeance in his blood, but will he really spend money chasing down the owner of a web site? What then?

"Justice will take its course, but we suspect that we will sue for a multi million dollar case" When we pointed out, again, that this guy is probably a nerd with computer, a skateboard and a dog and little else, our CEO says "He has had his opportunity, we tried to be nice. We will take his computer and skateboard at the bankruptcy court, if he does not do it again, we may let him keep his dog."

He continued "The music business is taking 12 year old's to court for illegal downloads, not because they want to to take their pocket money, but because they want to send a message, and that message is 'downloading copyrighted material is illegal, if we will take a 12 year old to court, we will do it to you'. That's kind of how we view this situation, who ever is behind this site will not get off lightly, that time has passed, we are going for him or the organisation that is behind this site and making them pay for their arrogance. We intend to make a statement that anything said about our company that is not researched and incorrect will result in a court case, period.

Although a little harsh and the journalist in us naturally sides with the little guy (and the dog) we can see how this, frankly inconsequential part of cyber space, has really affected the moral of the businessman in question.

When building a business reputation is everything and page one of Google is pretty much your reputation in ten titles and if a couple of those titles say "Scam" your marketing money is gone.

Being able to defend your reputation has been possible until the advent of the Net, where defamation lawlessness is rife if you don't have the money to defend yourself. Even if you do have the money and the will to follow the cyber trail to its ultimate destination and clear your name, do you think it possible that the person will give up writing on the Net? No he/she will surface again, under another name and carry on. You will have yourself a cyberstalker.

Still the CEO we interviewed seems undeterred and having the resources and the determination to pursue whomever has caused the problems, it looks to us that this company may yet cause the unmasking of another so called scambuster and some cracking stories.

And we have the exclusive...role on Google page 1.




Do scam.com really own pickyourownperversion.com!!!!!! Please scam.com, tell us it aint so....

Libel and Spaghetti... Go Figure!

"We say, without intending any disrespect to a great national dish, that on true analysis, a bowl of spaghetti Milanese is a better image for the claimants' case - jumbled pieces of evidence superficially tasty in parts but whose individual strands lead either nowhere or to muddled conclusions or to ends which are simply obscure."

The above was taken from an article in the UK Daily Telegraph:

Libel action 'like a bowl of spaghetti'

This is a very interesting aricle for those who follow libel cases, or indeed those who are considering mounting thier own case. The basics are that Sir Martin Sorrell, Chief Executive of WPP, is suing for alledged libellous statements of alledged money laundering and criminial activity. It all ivolved from a broken close friendship between Mr Benatti and Ms Weber and of Sir Martin's termination of Mr Benatti's consultancy as country manager for WPP Italy.

The problem is that even though there appears to be evidence aplenty, of the forensic variety (computer records etc) of someone at the Defendants company, FullSix, actually posting the offending writings, the company have simply said "that the FullSix stance was that if anyone in its workforce was responsible, it was a highly regrettable piece of personal misconduct which had nothing to do with the company's proper business and was wholly unauthorised and, in all the circumstances, they were not liable."

They followed with ""In neither case do the claimants have any witness who can give any direct evidence that Mr Benatti .... did it,"

This will be an interesting one to follow. How many libel cases would fall apart if the defendant could say "It might have been from my computer, but nobody actually saw me do it, therfore I am not liable". How insane would that be?

Fullsix do have a point though. If an employee at a huge firm were to libel someone on the web, it would be a stretch to hold the company responsible, would it not? Also a company is a seperate entity under law (it can sue and be sued) so its right to defend itself against being held liable for the defamation would seem to be a good strategy and in our humble opinion, may be a winning one.

It would seem that if this case is lost by Mr Sorrell it will be a valuable lesson for those who seek to protect their name in the courts, the lesson being 'sue the person, not the company'. This throws up the problem of suing people on the web, the individual has to be indentified to make a case stick and we bet that it cost Mr Sorrell a fortune to do it in this case.

Of course, if the Judge in this case does rule in favor of Mr Sorrell then I can see a raft of employment contracts being changed to preclude employees from making comment on the net.

We are very much in favour of seeing those who libel innocent people on the Internet being brought to book,its just bullying outside the playground really, but a situation where a company (albeit owned or directed by the alledged defamer) being held liable would, in our book, be a step in the wrong direction.

Lawless Web, is a Useless Web

Following up on some comments received we would like to point out what the blog is trying to get across. We are not anti-free speech in fact completely the opposite, we are not anti ‘crusader sites’ and we are not attempting to usurp the right to question our government, our celebrities, the companies with which we do business, or indeed our next door neighbor.

We are however attempting to highlight (in our own miniscule piece of cyberspace) the problems that we forsee with the growth of libel on the net. Look back 10 – 15 years ago and to libel someone in a way that would warrant a legal case was pretty difficult. If you wrote to a newspaper you would be unlikely to be published either as an individual ‘letter to the Editor’ or as a story unless you or the journalist could back up what you were writing. There basically was no media in which you could have a huge affect on someone’s reputation that would warrant the legal fees to prosecute your accuser.

If you were defamed, you would more than likely be a politician or a celebrity with the funds necessary to fight a legal campaign against your accuser. It was, affectively a ‘rich mans game’. If you were defamed and couldn’t afford to fight a case you could always rely on the fact the soon it would be ‘yesterdays news’. Today’s newspaper is tomorrows fish and chip wrapper was the way that many looked at these situations.

The Internet has changed all that. If you have a web connection you are up and running. Blogs, forums, Myspace, news groups etc etc are accessible to everyone. The possibilities for defamation are endless, and pretty much for all time in a Google cache somewhere. We all make mistakes, someone somewhere will be reading about these for a long, long time. If we are under the impression that employers do not look up your name on the web when you go for a job, or a potential partner doesn’t check you out on Google then you are in for a shock.

People have said to me this may make a better society, one in which we can all check out the misdeeds of others and be prepared, I agree this would be great, but I just don’t see it. Have you had an ex lover that has spread rumours about you when she/he was jilted? Now it will probably end up on the web, check out http://dontdatehimgirl.com.

“The flagship site of TJC Media Group, DontDateHimGirl.com is a powerful online community of women from around the world…..advice to help you make better decisions in finding a man you love…..exchange experiences in real-time and of course, the postings of hundreds of thousands of women who are creating a global sisterhood on the Internet!”

Guys, even been a bastard to a girl? You will probably end up here and you are now stuck in the process of trying to defend yourself against 'the sisterhood'!

Been in prison for something? It will be on the web the second you annoy someone, no second chances here. Had a business fail, despite your best efforts? Its on the web…what about those people who lost money when it failed? Have they forgotten?…Not on your life, it will end up on the net. Been bankrupt? It will end up on the net… If you want to put your side of the story, do you think the people who put the information up will let it lie at that, unlikely. From what we have seen you are more likely to end up with a thread on a forum being 30% - 40% larger than those that have not responded, why because people like watching car crashes. They want to goad you, that is their goal.

If you want to remove the info you are left with at least a $10,000 bill. Not something the average guy can afford to lose, because lose it you will, even if you win your case you are unlikely to see any damages. $11.3mn was recently awarded to a victim of defamation, the woman in question is “still paying off her legal bills” and realizee she “will never see $1mn never mind $11mn.

This is where it gets interesting, we have seen people banged into a corner and so now you get dedicated web sites that start to tell stories about the person that has been libeled in the first place. www.esaybackgroundchecked.com was a response to www.easybackgroundcheck.com. These two sites fight amongst each other to discredit the other site. Once you get into doing some research as we have you will find hundreds, if net thousands of similar situations. Why? Because your right to seek redress in the courts has been made so difficult to achieve because of the fear of the loss of free speech. Laws have been created that protect ‘publishers’ which, unless you have a savvy lawyer you will find difficult to get around, and you better have the bucks if you want to do it.

Heres’ what you can do: Subpoena the site for names of those who have defamed you…. $5,000 to your lawyer, if no one fights you.

Issue a court order for a take down notice to the ISP. $5,000 - $10,000

If you do find the person responsible and want to sue them. $10,000 - $50,000.

Its just plain crazy, basically if you are rich and someone writes something untrue about you, you are perfectly OK if you are willing to throw $50,000 down the toilet….reputation restored. If you can’t well, unlucky, rotten feeling, sorry about that.

The system should protect everyone, not just those that can afford it. If someone beats me up in the street, I go to the cops and the guy is arrested, its my basic right of protection. Try walking into the cops and telling them that some anonymous person has posted on a web site that you are a pornographer and you steal from old ladies at the weekend and once were involved in a homosexual act in a Thai brothel. They do not care. They do not care that this may be read by every employer you ever go to an interview with, every date you ever have and God forbid you ever become a prominent figure, it will be there shadowing you everywhere you go.

The affects of things like this can be devasting, these are just some headlines found on the net:

“Wrongly accused nursery nurses 'contemplated suicide' “
“Man charged with defamation after boss’s suicide”
“Defamation led to suicide”

Surely in this day and age we should be able to protect our good name from those that would do it harm without having to be wealthy enough to do it. Is the reputation of a Pop Star or Politician more valuable than your reputation in your community or profession? I for one don’t think so.

The laws should be streamlined for those whose wish to challenge defamation on the web, there should be extremely harsh penalties for those found guilty of defamation, and there should be even harsher penalties if they are repeated after the event.

Surely those who would seek to keep the web totally free from any such laws can see that a lawless web, is a useless web.

Inside the Scam Busters

Scambusters or just Scamsters?


The Con - The scamster sets up a web site dedicated to unearthing scams. He can remain anonymous because he says he does not want to deal with retribution from criminals for revealing their scams. He can also claim the essential air of respectability because he runs a crusading site. If evidence on the web is to be believed some of these scambusting sites are run by convicted felons who can say they have turned over a new leaf and are protecting others from people like themselves. The set up is perfect and probably adheres to the scamsters rulebook, which is no doubt available on the web somewhere.

The genius of this is that the scamster will, inevitably, get scams that are genuinely posted on his site, people will see this, not deal with the company and hail the site owner as a hero, thus perpetuating his crusader image. So how is the scamster supposed to make money? There are three ways, the obvious one is posting Google adwords all over your site, the second is asking for ‘donations’ to keep the site free, the third, and by far the most lucrative, is extortion.

The Mark- As a budding internet scambusting scamster you will need a ‘Mark’. Usually an ‘offline’ scamster will research his Mark very well. Knowing his weaknesses and his strengths he will create a scam off the back of them. Blackmail for the adulterer, identity fraud for the careless, financial fraud for the greedy etc. In the pre-Internet days selecting this Mark was known as an art form in itself according to the many books dedicated to the subject, the Internet, however has made this a whole lot easier. Our scam site scamster is in a league of his own however, his Marks are delivered to him on a plate.

I think you would agree that JP Morgan is a trustworthy banking organisation with many years of history, a first class pedigree and about as far away from a scam as you could get. Put JP Morgan AND Scam in Google and you get 271,000 pages. Some may be scams against JP Morgan others are accusing JP Morgan of some sort of scam. I imagine that anyone who would accuse JP Morgan of a scam would receive a barrage of letters from the highest paid and most vicious lawyers on the planet, so our Internet scamster would do well to steer well clear. What if, however, you are a smaller company, who has spent lost of cash on developing your web site and your reputation but couldn’t afford JP Morgans’ flesh eating lawyers? What if someone were to put your name in Google and a scam site was the first thing that came up, what then?

The Sting – A genuinely aggrieved client, an ex employee, a jilted lover or just someone jealous of your company’s’ success, any of these are lurking waiting get their revenge, so they post something, anonymously of course, on a scam web site. You send an email to the site administrator protesting your innocence and he promptly posts your email on the web, making you look like you are trying to bully our scam crusader. The pages on the web are now there for all to see, anyone who you have slighted in business, upset in your local bar or, more likely, someone who is in competition with you, can find your name and perpetuate the bad press about your company, even if you have done nothing wrong. All this in total anonymity.

The sting? Simple, our scamster knows that you will have to spend at least $5000 to get a lawyer to start the process to get him to take down the malicious posts, you will also have to provide evidence to counter complaints that don’t actually exist and you will have to take time to sort the whole issue out. By this time you are getting emails from clients, you may even have lost some business, all you want to do is to get those posts off the web. Then you get an email.

“Dear Mr CEO. I am the administrator of scamsareus.com. From the posts that have appeared on our web site you seem to be having some problems with your client base and have received very poor publicity from posters on our site.

I appreciate that you may want to resolve the situation as quickly as possible so perhaps we could make a suggestion. We will follow up the complaints that have been made on our site on your behalf and attempt to placate these clients to where we feel that there has been a satisfactory resolution. At this point we would be happy to remove the posts from our web site.”

Although you don’t think that there have been any legitimate complaints because no one has contacted your company, you nevertheless think this would be a least a way of getting the posts removed. You write to the administrator saying this would be a good idea and you get a response.

“Dear Mr CEO. Thank you for your mail and I am happy that you value your clients and reputation so highly that you are willing to deal with the situation head-on. When this issue has been resolved this will look very favourable for your company as we will be happy to post that you have been so cooperative and pro active.

We believe that we can resolve these issues to your satisfaction but this will take some time and effort on our part where we will not be able to give full attention to our company. In order that we are compensated for this we will charge a fee of $10,000 payable directly to our account.

We hope you feel this is reasonable for all the time and effort we will be expending to help you regain your reputation with these clients. Clearly if this type of complaint cannot be resolved your company would suffer much greater losses”

There you have it. A brazen request for money to remove these posts wrapped up in a threat of further problems. Not the veiled threats of yesteryear and the skulking in doorways waiting to pay off a blackmailer, a straight up front threat to ruin your business if you do not pay.

So what do you do? If you call your lawyer you are going to pay $5,000 and risk antagonising the scam site and getting worse publicly. For an extra $5,000 you can make it all go away. You are a risk taker, that is why you own a business and you can calculate the risk reward, so you feel that you will probably spend more on lawyers to get nothing, so you pay. The posts are removed and you get on with you life. That is until the next time.

There we have it, the perfect scam. How much did it cost the scamster? Nothing, input “free bulletin boards” in Google and you get 31,200 pages or put in ‘free forums’ and you get over 8,000,000 pages. It is easy to set up one of these sites. We know, because we did it in ten minutes. We set up http://z6.invisionfree.com/Scamfraudalert2 (OK not the sexiest name but it was free!) to gather research on these sites. As of writing we have no members however we suspect we will get lots of research from those who have been contacted by the scam board scam artists, we suspect that we will get our fair share of people standing up for the ‘reformed felons’ too. This will make for some interesting future articles at least.

I am sure by this stage in the article you are wondering whether the above is a plausible situation. With the litigious nature of the US and the ambulance chaser mentality of some law firms, you would have thought that taking defamation cases to court would be a lucrative business. It appears that this in an area were even lawyers are afraid to tread en mass.

Take the case of Les Henderson, allegedly he is the owner of scamfraudalert.com and allegedly goes under the name of ‘scrub’ as an editor on other scam sites. The site came to our notice when we trawling the web for research. A number of companies on the site have complained and had personal mails posted, so we emailed them to hear their stories. This led us on a fascinating path to discover whether some of these scam sites are a front for criminal activity. According to reports on the web (http://www.easybackgroundchecked.com/leshendersonscam.html) Les Henderson was allegedly convicted in California for shoplifting in 1993 and in 1998 was allegedly convicted of selling stolen goods. This may be hearsay but in the spirit of the scambusters we stand to be corrected and will take as read what is on the web, as we are expected to do so with these sites.

Would such a man really attempt such a scam as is detailed above? We have no idea, however, there are a number of court cases that have or are being brought against scam site owners for just this sort of conduct (http://www.internethatesites.com/FR2ndAmmended.pdf is one of them). We have not made a judgment on whether or not these cases have any merit but one would assume that you would not go to court if you were actually perpetrating a fraud.

What if does get to court? Who do you sue? Mr Henderson allegedly lives in Canada behind a string of postal boxes and even if you did get him to court there are various laws protecting owners of anonymous web sites. So you go to the sites Internet Service Provider (ISP) and tell them that in the absence of being able to get the owner of the board you are going to take them to court. Would this work?

There is a very interesting article at http://www.jisclegal.ac.uk/ispliability/ispliability.htm which explains the early adoption of Internet defamation laws which are very much the same today.
The Landmark UK case of Godfrey -v- Demon, 1999. Is detailed on the site which concerns statements posted on a site that were described by the Judge as being "squalid, obscene and defamatory to the plaintiff". The posts were on a newsgroup hosted by the defendant ISP Demon Internet Ltd.

When he became aware of the posts, Dr. Godfrey immediately notified the ISP of the existence of the defamatory postings and requested that they be removed as quickly as possible. The defendants failed to remove the postings, despite numerous requests having being made by the plaintiff. The postings remained available to the worldwide public for a further ten days until the system automatically imposed an expiry timeout period.

Predictably, the defendants sought to rely on what has become the standard defense of section 1 of the Defamation Act, 1996. This provision allows for a defense against a defamation claim, where it can be shown that the defendant is not the publisher, author or editor of the statement complained of; that they had taken all reasonable care in relation to its publication and that they did not know, or have reason to believe, that they had caused or contributed to the publication of the defamatory statement.

Essentially the ISP has ten days to resolve the issue, if not they could be held liable. So surely the best way to deal with these issues is to contact the ISP and issue what is known as a ‘Take Down’ notice. Well yes and no, Goggle tells us there are 10,500,000 pages for ‘ISP Provider’. Mr Henderson, allegedly, has moved one of his sites 12 times and put up the same posts.

Surely printing your private email address and private correspondence on the web is against copyright law? In brief, these are your rights:

• Copyright law stops other people from using and abusing your original work, this includes email messages

• All your email messages are copyrighted to you (or your employer) automatically, you do not have to register this copyright

• Whoever you send a mail to does not own the copyright of messages sent and nor does the administrator of the site you send it to

• When you post to a public list you do not lose copyright, but your message may be, archived, forwarded to other lists and quoted by others

Mr Henderson routinely posts private mails that are sent to him and vilifies the poster, inviting others to post against the mailer who is attempting to defend his position. If you respond you have just committed a fatal error. Your name is now archived and available on the search engines for all to see, and to comment upon. Our scamster now has a further grip on you. It’s one thing to have your company on the web, and completely another to have your personal email available for the world to spam you and, generally, abuse you.

In the US the Digital Millennium Act is becoming a crutch for the scamster. Basically because you have to go to court for the offending material to be removed for good.

“The Digital Millennium Act deals specifically with the issue of Internet Service Providers' liability vis-à-vis copyright. The general rule that an ISP will not be held to be liable for providing access or facilitating access to copyright infringing material is preserved by this Act. The Act stipulates a clearly defined notice and take down time table. When an ISP is notified in writing that copyright infringing material is available through its service, it must act expediently to remove or disable access to the offending material. The written notification must provide adequate information to support the claim of copyright infringement. The ISP is then obliged to notify the party, the subscriber that placed the offending material on the server, that the material will be removed from the server within ten working days of the notification having been served. The party alleging the infringement must then seek a Court Order to restrain the subscriber from engaging in the infringing activity by way of an injunction. This must be sought within a ten-day period of the notification. Failure to comply with this time limit, will oblige the ISP to replace or re-activate access to the material in question. This somewhat long winded procedure seeks to strike a balance between the right to Freedom of Expression and the proper enforcement of intellectual property rights.”

Source: JISC Legal Information

Our CEO who has been defamed by the scamster has little choice, if he does not want to pay blackmail he needs to secure a lawyer, issue a takedown notice to the ISP and then seek and injunction. What if you are in France and the ISP is in the US or vice versa? You would have to be able to sustain substantial legal fees with zero hope of getting these fees reimbursed through the courts.

Anonymous Media Requires Rules

The Internet is a fabulous tool for investors, allowing a global research platform that brings together opinions from all sides of the equation. Used correctly it can be a tool for protection of citizens against those who would do us harm physically or financially.

However, being an anonymous media, the potential for abuse is vast and tempting for both mischief makers and criminal elements intent on exploiting it for their own ends. The saying "Beware a vested interest masquerading as moral indignation" could have been an original commandment in the rules of engagement for those reading certain scam boards.

Although we are, of course, in favour of sites that have the genuine intention of protecting us, we abhor the practice of so-called public crusaders masking their nefarious activities with the outward veneer of helping us out and protecting themselves from the consequences by hijacking well intentioned laws. We will continue our research and would like to hear from anyone who believes they have been scammed by this process.

Extortion is extortion, whether it is perpetrated by a Columbian kidnap gang or a former felon masquerading as our savior. If the Internet is to carry on as a valid information platform, lawmakers must address the inconsistencies of legal and procedural issues that let individuals stir up trouble for their own benefit and, ultimately, devalue the Web as a believable information platform.

The Mouth Of Truth

The 'Industry' Of Liable is Nothing New.


Bocca della Verità is situated in the atrium of St. Mary's in Cosmedin church in Rome. According to popular belief it was said that anyone putting his hand in this mouth and swearing falsely, could not withdraw it.

Little known other ‘mouths of truth’ are in Florence and they were used for, some would say, less noble services. They were carved lions heads with a gaping mouth and were used by the local government for citizens to leave notes accusing fellow citizens of a crime. It is believed that Leonardo da Vinci was arrested on homosexual charges because of an accusation placed in one of these heads.

The idea was that an accuser should put his name on the sheet of paper and his accusations, if the accusation turned out to be false the accuser would suffer punishment. Of course the accuser often did not put his name or put a false name. Nevertheless, if it suited the authorities of the time the accused could suffer harsh penalties for his alledged (and often falsified) crimes. Da Vinci escaped execution (the penalty for homosexuality in those days) because the father of his ‘friend’ was a high powered nobleman. Da Vinci was let off with a ‘light beating’.

So here we have a 14th century medium where anonymous accusers can post a note accusing a fellow citizen of crimes for which he has little chance of rebutting, even if he does, his reputation is now lost in the mire of public opinion and the ‘no smoke without fire’ attitude.

Of course society progressed, the law made sure that you had the right to face your accuser in a court of law where you could defend your honor and your reputation. Then some guy invented the Internet and we made a technological leap into cyberspace. Unfortunately at the same time the Bocca Della Verita went global.

On early Internet boards you used to post your actual name, I remember I used to do it. You can bet your bottom dollar the first person to use a ‘nom de plume’ on the web was someone just about to defame someone else, and there we were back in the 14th Century only this time we would not be dragged in front of a local authority and beaten or fined, we would be pilloried by competitors or rivals.

Take the case of Sue Scheff, who runs a small educational business in Weston, Florida. She filed a lawsuit in 2003 claiming she had been subjected to 10 months of ugly criticism on the internet from Carey Bock. Ms Bock, from Mandeville, Louisiana, had posted the comments on Fornits.com, a board used by parents of troubled teenagers.

A jury in Florida awarded Mrs Scheff $11.3m (£6m) in costs and damages after the former acquaintance Carey Bock accused her of being a crook, a con artist and a fraudster on an internet talkboard.

The award, believed to be the largest verdict of it sort relating to individual postings on bulletin boards or blogs, was handed down by a jury in Broward County, Florida. The sum included $5m (£2.7m) in punitive damages.

With almost two new blogs created every second, and 1.6m postings each day the mass of unmediated comment from individuals is changing the face of media law. "This is a growing trend because of the exponential growth in the number of people publishing on the internet who do not have the training or oversight of traditional hardcopy publishers," said Dave Heller, a lawyer with the New York-based Media Law Resource Center which monitors legal actions arising from the web.

Craig Delsack, a media lawyer in Manhattan, said that many bloggers were publishing first, thinking later: "People are thinking they can say what they want but they don't realise the long-lasting implications of what they write and that they can be held accountable. Posting is not like having a conversation in the bedroom with your boyfriend."

Several cases have come to court in which individuals have been sued by companies for their comments on the web. It is less common for private individuals, without either huge personal wealth or public profile, to sue each other.

Lawsuits currently before the US courts include that of Todd Hollis, a Pittsburgh lawyer, whose name appeared on DontDateHimGirl.com, a website on which women comment about the men they claim to have known. He is suing women who posted claims he was a transmitter of sexual diseases, which he denies.

The Florida case arose after Ms Scheff helped Ms Bock remove her children from a special school in Costa Rica. She says Ms Bock grew belligerent after she refused to give her confidential information for a documentary she was working on.

Ms Scheff says she is still paying off the legal fees and accepts she will get little of the $11m. "But this award is vindication. I hope it does make people think twice about what they post on the internet. When people post they are writing from emotion, and it can be very damaging."

Because Ms Bock failed to defend herself, media lawyers say the award is less likely to set a precedent.

She told USA Today that she had no money to pay the damages, and said she had been silenced. "I don't feel like I can express my opinions. Only one side of the story was told in court. Nobody heard my side," she said.

Mrs Bock may have been an angry law abiding citizen who just got carried away, we don’t know, but what if you accuser has something else in mind, something far more sinister than vengeance for a supposed slight, what if the mouth of truth has been hijacked for commercial purposes?

The ‘industry’ of liable has been around for many years, but it used to be called blackmail. Basically I will tell someone what you don’t want them to know unless you pay me $X. The perpetrator, however, had to be very careful that he or she didn’t make a mistake and trap themselves into getting found out. Imagine if you were of the criminal persuasion and you knew you could get away with blackmail every time because you are protected by law? Cue Anarchy..

However, we believe that this kind of situation is existent on the web as we speak. No we are not conspiracy theorists on some mission to ban the Internet we are just pursuing what we believe is a sinister practice being perpetrated by sinister people.

This practice involves making up accusations about a company and then offering to help the company remove the offending posts. All hiding behind anonymous IP's and legal loopholes that protect internet publishers. It is is a criminals dream.

It is going on and we aim to expose it and those who are perpetrating the act. However, we need your help.

Have you been accused of something on the web, only to then have been asked to pay for its removal?

Have you been vilified wrongly on a blog or bulletin board?

Let us know, as we want to here from you. We aim to give resources on this site that will aid you in your defense of such allegations. We suspect we will be unpopular, when the hunter becomes the hunted, anything can happen. We are not the only ones who are not happy about the situation and are frustrated at the lack of protection from the law… our inspiration is http://defamation-libel.blogspot.com. Go there, there are many resources that can inform and help you.