Now he is threatening to call the police for harassment, his lawyer for defamation, and the FBI for threatening him. He also wants to contact my hosting provider to get this site suspended and Google to delete the (for-spam-use-only) email address I gave him to conact me at. For all I know he plans to call my mother and explain to her that I’ve been a very bad boy.

Anyway, I’ve made an executive decision to stop contacting him. Eventually he started to annoy me to the point where I started to use excessive strong language – which I took to mean his apparent psychosis was rubbing off on me. Also, his last letter included a vague by somewhat disturbing threat that could be interpreted to mean I might end up as another blood-spattered patch on the pavement and front-pager of a local news story.

So, this is probably the last I will write of my internet stalker. It’s been entertaining at times, strange at others, but it just goes to show you: some people really really need to get out more.

UPDATE: he has reported me to GMail and forwarded his complaint :)

UPDATE: he is writing to various sites I have submitted content to and ranting and raving about me. It’s pretty funny, cuz he’s calling me an internet stalker, saying I’m harassing/threatening him and such, but he’s the one contacting everyone he can think of to trash me lolz. I feel like I’m back in 8th grade :(

This all started a few weeks ago when someone copied a full blog post – hotlinked images and all – from a website I contribute to. I contacted him and firmly but politely asked him to remove the copied content, warning him that his actions were against Google’s Webmaster Guidelines (though I didn’t even mention they were also illegal). Apparently, though framed as well as I could considering the circumstances, he took this as a personal threat. Here is my account of the interchange, though feel free to skip ahead to where I point out that he is breaking the law and I can sue his [noun removed].

His response was caustic, and the situation escalated though I attempted to keep my cool throughout. The conversation became too funny and I eventually posted about it here on Allsux, which he claimed (though I made no false statements and did not name him) was defamatory. He eventually started writing defamatory posts about me on his blog and has attempted (albeit futily) to sabatoge my (hilariously dubious) online reputation.

I have been polite throughout this exchange, almost to a fault and certainly beyond my natural inclinations. Each request and response has been level-headed and more kind, in my opinion, than a content thief deserves. I have, however, reached the limit. He just emailed me again out of the blue to threaten me with legal action, etc…. The following is the final email I have written him, somewhat stripped of nicities:

Look. You’re clearly [adjective removed] if not entirely [adjective removed], and I realize that if you come after me with a AK-47 I only have myself to blame, but I feel I would be disregarding my duties as a citizen of Earth if I didn’t set you straight on a few thing, so here it goes.

(1) What you did was illegal. I linked you to a source showing it was illegal. I politely warned you to remove illegally copied content and warned you of consequence of your actions rather than reporting you for them. Call it a threat, call it whatever you want, but you did something illegal and I did the best I felt I could do by telling you what steps would be taken if you didn’t fix the problem.

(2) What I did wasn’t illegal. I wrote about you anonymously and factually. By any and all legal definitions under US and Canadian law that is not illegal. First of all, everything I wrote was my opinion – I made no false statements of fact. Second of all, by not naming you I did nothing to ‘defame’ you – as defamation implies that I publicly harmed your character.

(3) What you are currently doing is, again, ironically illegal. By falsely and publicly accusing me of a crime I did not in fact commit, you are defaming me. I did not defame you – your accusation fails on two criteria, both of which are required to make something defamation. I have at least two criminal acts I could currently have you prosecuted for, and you have nothing on me.

Frankly this has been fairly entertaining but it’s getting old. Acknowledge what you did wrong, apologize for it and cease sending letters to third parties not involved in this dispute. Otherwise, I will be forced (take it as a threat if you’d like) to pursue legal action on my own behalf.

Now, how great is it that I write a blog named ‘Allsux’ so I can post entirely random crap like this and get away with it? I love you all, my loyal readers.

(5) This post about Ask, Google and Google-Sux got some attention mostly because I bashed a site, and its administrator came back at me guns blazing. However, their counterarguments got shut down pretty fast. In reality, I think it was the comments that drew more attention than the post.

(4) This post about the huge scandal about LiveLeak not being indexed by Google drew a lot of readership, though much of it was from a Spanish site I never was able to decipher!

(3) Of course, one of the biggest AllSux targets has been Digg.com – and this story that followed the huge Digg scandal was the most popular of them all. While other blogs (and major news sites like Wired) were confused, I stayed up all night and summarized what was going on.

(2) The Technorati experiment had a huge readership. I think that a lot of people are interested in the deeper consequences of using social networks, and this post struck a cord with folks.

(1) Of course the most visited page on AllSux is Allsux! That bodes well for this and my other (newer) blog, because it means that there are a lot of readers who want to see the lates and greatest, and don’t just show up to read a single post and leave. Thanks to you all – keep visiting, reading, and please leave comments! Also visit this new blog I’m helping develop: WebUrbanist.com.

An honorable mention goes to all of the articles on AllSux about Helium. Though none of these pages have individually made the top five, they have cumulatively done amazingly well. Why? Because other frustrated Helium writers keep finding them and sending me words of support as well as their own stories bout Helium.