Remember I am not a lawyer, and this is a stong opinion piece.

I am trying extremely hard to create an assertion of fact dressed up as an opinion

ePerks Are Suing Vlad

I found out on Saturday from Vlad that he is being sued by ePerks.

Here are the documents served on Vlad.

Just a quick note for anyone who shares this document, it would be well worth modifying it to include some keywords in the links that Scribd inject. I should have also suggested to Vlad that it be prefaced with some links to relevant discussions.

<a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/3271851/Barabus-vs-Zablotskyy">ePerks - Brabus vs Zablotskyy</a> - <a href="http://www.scribd.com/upload">Upload a doc</a></div><div style="display:none"> Read this doc on Scribd: <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/3271851/Barabus-vs-Zablotskyy">ePerks - Brabus vs Zablotskyy</a>

It is interesting to note that for some reason Brabus are looking for punitive damages and claiming malice, and they have confined the case to the way Vlad defended his family name when he was attacked quite viciously on multiple websites suggesting he is/was a paedophile which as far as I know is untrue – Vlad has always come across as a kind and generous person.

This was particularly damaging for Vlad, he writes a pro-life blog, and is in the process of filing for adoption.

Vlad’s post in my opinion, and I have read it at least 20 times, doesn’t seem to directly accuse ePerks of anything, and would only suggest suspicion, but certainly not direct accusation, if the whole situation up until that point was taken into account.

At that time the suspicion was warranted, “Jaffar S” was using the same IP address in comments as people claiming to be ePerks employees, and others posting multiple positive comments, the same IP address range as I previously highlighted being used for ePerks shilling.

76.206.0.160 to 76.206.0.167 – I suggest anyon who has come into contact with ePerks in any way search their databases and email accounts for every IP address in that range – it may be vital evidence.

Ben Behrouzi claimed his company ePerks had nothing to do with the address range, and Vlad posted that information very clearly on his blog.
There was a little confusion though of which Ben might not be aware – though Vlad originally mentioned Texas, the IP range is actually tied to San Francisco and San Jose, where ePerks is located, and that is the area that lots of shill comments originated from as well.

As Trace points out about ePerks

Vlad made no accusations but simply presented anecdotal evidence indicating that ePerks was possibly linked to the false charges

Trace also goes into detail that the papers served on Vlad have no relationship with the previously sent Cease and Desist.

All of this is important, lets take a look at what I didn’t (deliberately) quote from the chilling effects article.

Question: If I write something defamatory, will a retraction help?

Answer: Some jurisdictions have retraction statutes that provide protection from defamation lawsuits if the publisher retracts the allegedly defamatory statement. For example, in California, a plaintiff who fails to demand a retraction of a statement made in a newspaper or radio or television broadcast, or who demands and receives a retraction, is limited to getting “special damages” — the specific monetary losses caused by the libelous speech. While few courts have addressed retraction statutes with regard to online publications, a Georgia court denied punitive damages based on the plaintiff’s failure to request a retraction for something posted on an Internet bulletin board. (See Mathis v. Cannon)

If you get a reasonable retraction request, it may help you to comply. The retraction must be “substantially as conspicuous” as the original alleged defamation.

Vlad very clearly posted the statement on his blog that Ben Behrouzi claimed the attack on Vlad’s character was nothing to do with ePerks.

ePerks – Brabus Ventures are suing Vlad under California law, and my reading of Vlad’s article on IP addresses is that that could be looked on as a very fair statement given equal weight in the public eye, even though (as far as I am aware) no request for a retraction was ever received from ePerks / Brabus Ventures.

In a similar light, ePerks at least on Vlad’s blog might be looked upon as a public figure – they paid him to write about them – one article opened Pandora’s box.

From Chilling effects

A public figure must show “actual malice” — that you published with either knowledge of falsity or in reckless disregard for the truth. This is a difficult standard for a plaintiff to meet.

How Can We Help Vlad?

Spreading the news – this affects all bloggers free speech.

Donations – Greg Swann has set up a donation fund for Vlad

Greg has created some logos / banners / badges along with donation buttons that can be easily syndicated and posted on your blog.

Support Vlad Zablotskyy’s Defense Fund
Defend your own right to free speech!

I might have arranged things and orchestrated things differently, using a dedicated site for the donations, and coordinated the release of information, but nothing can quell the desire to help Vlad in any way people can.

If you have come into contact with Vlad in the blogosphere, or support free speech, or are a parent disgusted at the way false claims can be made against people anonymously, or someone who understands how important a clean reputation is for adoption, you might want to consider a donation.

For bloggers out there, remember to use descriptive anchor text for every link

Blog Posts

I am going to start compiling blog posts of people writing about this horrible situation, especially where they add something significant to the conversation (lawyers, want a link? SEO help?)

Aaron Wall went through this in the past, and has noted that ePerks is going viral (the negative point of view)

Are eperks spammers?, by Lord Matt takes a look at “piles of poo” about ePerks, and a very clear statement of personal opinion from Matt – “I fully believe that Ben Behrouzi of Brabus Ventures (eperks) is both a spammer and an unpleasant human being”- the type of vernacular he normally reserves for the local council and utility companies.

Joe from Sellsius Real Estate is the first lawyer that I am aware to blog about this, and whilst of course this can’t be looked on as legal advice the discussion regarding the long arm of the law and personal jurisdiction in libel cases is extremely interesting.

I never thought I would see the day I would link to Ripoff Report, but someone seems to have listed a complaint about ePerks there. Please don’t add to the report unless your have a genuine complaint about their service.

Not too long ago it was their attempt to force people to give up domains legally registered using the acronym “g.m.a.i.l” or gmail, which Google uses for their email service.

The Polish Poets are still in business, and apparently Google also lost in other countries.

So today news is breaking about Google’s new “Open Social” platform for social media web developers. The big problem is that Google don’t own the trademark, or even a lot of the concept behind it, and they certainly don’t own their own SERPs (search engine results pages)

Google Open Social?

I first heard about Google’s OpenSocial development platform on Techcrunch. In fact I had also read their earlier post but at the time the initiative did not have a name.

But as far as I can see, Google does not own the phrase “Open Social”

Open Social Web

The Open Social Web “Bill Of Rights” was launched September 9th 2007

Brad Fitzpatrick, formerly of Six Apart, and with Google since August 2007 was mentioned as being involved with Google’s new initiative in the Techcrunch article from September, and was also mentioned on the Open Social Web Bill of Rights website and one of his articles was referenced, but at that time he, or Google were referring to the “social graph”.

Open Social? – Cool Concept & Name – I will Steal That

Well that is what it seems to me that Google has done.

Whilst the Google technology may well enable many of the concepts from the published Bill of Rights, that doesn’t mean they should be able to take the named concept and use it to name a product, especially based upon their previous history with trademarks and domain names.

From the Open Social Web Bill of Rights

A Bill of Rights for Users of the Social Web
Authored by Joseph Smarr, Marc Canter, Robert Scoble, and Michael Arrington
September 4, 2007

I wonder what they think of their concept stolen by Google to turn into a brand?

I personally think signing something like this over to Google y default is a disservice to the internet, and Google does not own the internet.

This is similar to allowing one company to brand “Freedom of Speech”

Google Don’t Own Their SERPS

I was glancing at my stats earlier, and noticed that I had some incoming traffic for terms like “Google Open Social”

That is actually my post on Open Social Web but also covers lots of reasons why Google owning control of a blogging related service such as Feedburner doesn’t make it more open and actually can harm the development of the service.

Google’s Idea of “Open”

Google’s whole idea of “open” is to have the data available to them to index.

• They don’t really care about privacy
• They don’t care about copyright
• They just want access to all your information

Sometime in the future, Google will have control of how your personal profile is represented online, and in many ways how it is portrayed.

Take for example their innocent little bar of green commonly referred to as “PageRank”, and how as I have written I have been “Defamed By Google”

I continued to monitor how Google were representing the “quality” of my website online, with their mass downgrade of many sites, and their supposed change of heart for the innocent.

If this really is a war purely on paid links, and I have clearly stated I do not sell PageRank, then why am I still being defamed?

How do I repair the publicly repaired reputation of my website?

As I believe I haven’t done anything wrong, I can’t honestly file a reinclusion or reconsideration request.

Google, Please Repair My Social Profile

If Google ultimately have all your online activities inter-connected and indexed, they are going to know absolutely everything about you online, and they are quite capable of making mistakes.

If you haven’t read Cory Doctorow’s amazing portrayal of Google, when he asked “What If Google Were Evil” in “Scroogled” I suggest you reserve 20 minutes to do so.

Google $700 per share? I don’t honestly care, though the higher they are, the harder they fall.

Update: Somehow I submitted the wrong URL for this one to Sphinn, so here is a usable button