October 27, 2008 by Editor.

On a morning on which the trades each have items describing the Allens’ “hopes” to resume negotiations on TV-Theatrical, we’re scratching our heads over one of the stranger items to pop up on a message board dominated by Membership First - an item about the blog they love to hate - but always read…us.

It all started when someone anonymously posted an item claiming that while our server is in Germany, our site “emanates from Atlanta” - whatever that means. From that astonishing (and, we think, wrong) assumption, without so much as a bit of additional detail, the poster claimed that means that the President of Atlanta’s SAG branch is the Editor of SAGWatch, that is, me. 

As we’ve said repeatedly we have no idea where our server is physically located. We hooked up with 1and1 Internet because the night we were discussing the idea of SAGWatch, someone had a computer magazine with an ad for $1.99 per month hosting, and the provider was 1and1. $1.99 per month seemed like the right price, so we signed up with them online. The decision was that simple.

It turned out that 1and1 is owned by a German company. Who knew? But it’s provided lots of room for conspiracy theorists to engage in fantasy, and that’s something we enjoy in and of itself. They’re very creative in their fantasies, and we take a certain perverse pleasure in watching them get more and more excited about their “discoveries.”

Anyway, we have no idea what “emanates from Atlanta” is supposed to mean, and we’re not going to get drawn into running down a list of the 120,000 members of SAG, denying each until, by elimination, some one is identified. But simply because this one’s so off the wall, and has the usual gang of (pardon me) idiots yapping and foaming at the mouth even more than usual, we thought we’d comment this one time. 

Ridiculous.

Posted in SAG Politics, Miscellaneous Hate Mail and Threats | Print | 17 Comments »

October 12, 2008 by WW.

With our friendly local editor off on a Columbus Day vacation with wife and kids, it falls upon me to remind everyone that while this blog invites comments, it insists that the comments be civil. That means name calling will get a comment either edited, if whoever is reading feels like doing the work, or simply not approved in the site’s moderation process.Today I’ve bounced three comments entirely, something that’s never happened before - and edited a couple more.All viewpoints are welcome. All epithets are not. 

Posted in Miscellaneous Hate Mail and Threats | Print | 4 Comments »

June 25, 2008 by Editor.

Lawyers can be dopey, and lawyers can be jerks, we all know that (we’re being polite.) But we got one of the most ridiculous attempts to be threatening from a lawyer who says he represents Cutter Garcia, an actor whose IMDB credits range from Hannah Montana to “Pink as the Day She Was Born” described as “A rock-n-roll sex comedy about a young girl who will do anything to become a rock star, working in an LA domination parlor to support herself” and our old pal Linnea. OK.

Back about ten days ago, on one of the days when the craziness about SAG and AFTRA was spiking, one of our regular e-mailers, Linnea Liu Dakin, who has written material for posting on our old board and the newer blog version, forwarded us a long e-mail chain. She was trying to let us know that a particular Membership First director who also serves on the AFTRA board was not the original author of another e-mail attacking AFTRA. It turned out she was right.

One of the folks who was on the chain was Cutter Garcia. He didn’t write the original e-mail, he just commented on it. He didn’t say anything nasty or bad, he just expressed his opinion.

No big whoop…what people do here and elsewhere every day.Like every other e-mail sent to us since last October, whether from that particular author or not, we posted it. A letter to editor@sagwatch.net is a letter to the editor, right?

Within a period of 9 hours we had at least 13 e-mails from practically everyone on the chain. In one way or another they were asking or demanding that we do this or that or threatening us if we didn’t take the whole chain down. We thought, what the heck, we’re not mad at anyone, and even though there’s nothing wrong with what they had to say, if that’s what they want, fine.

We took it down and we put up a note explaining that, as the title suggests, at Cutter Garcia and Linnea Liu Dakin’s request, we had removed the e-mail. We weren’t happy about it, but again, no big whoop. Seven of the 13 e-mails we counted had been from Cutter Garcia.

But just taking it down wasn’t good enough. Garcia demanded that we remove his name or any mention of him. We politely but firmly said no, that we’d honor his first request, to remove the e-mail, but that was the end of the line.

And we wrote the following in big bold letters: ”But we want to be perfectly clear! If you send it to us, unless you tell us otherwise, we assume you mean for us to use it! And that includes e-mails making demands. And threats. And all that stuff.“

So, what now? A letter from Henry S. David of a law firm whose letterhead is so faded in the PDF he sent us that we can barely make it out. The demands and threats? Those were easy to make out.“On behalf of Cutter Garcia and Linnea Liu Dakin, we write this letter to demand that you removeall references on your website to Mr. Garcia, including but not limited to the post on The SAGWatch Blog located at http://blog.sagwatch.net/2008/06/18/at-cutter-garcias-request/#comments.”

Henry David goes on to say we’re in violation of our website host’s Terms of Service.

“You (The SAGWatch Blog) agree and warrant that Your Data shall not constitute or contain or link to material which is libelous, slanderous, defamatory, or which will violate or infringe upon or wil otherwise give rise to any adverse claim with respect to any common law or other right of any person or other entity, including, without limitation, privacy rights and all other personal and proprietary rights. You agree not to collect the personally identifiable data of any person without that person’s consent, records of which shall be maintained throughout the term of this Agreement and for three years afterward. If you collect this data through Your Web Site you shall do so only pursuant to a posted privacy policy disclosing anyand all uses of such identifiable data and in compliance with applicable law. 

“As of June 20, 2008, The SAGWatch Blog does not have a Privacy Policy posted. Therefore, you were unauthorized to post the email that Ms. Dakin sent you, and you were not authorized to post, or to continue to post, the name “Cutter Garcia,” because you have no consent on record to disclose Mr. Cutter’s “personally identifiable data.” 

After some recounting of the various e-mails sent by Cutter Garcia and Linnea Dakin, he gets to his punch line: 

“If you do not remove Mr. Garcia’s name from your blog within seventy two (72) hours after we have sent this letter to you, we may take one or both of the following actions: (l) inform 1 & 1Internet Inc. of your actions and your non-compliance with the Terms and Conditions, and demand that 1 & 1 Internet Inc. take the necessary steps to remove Mr. Garcia, even if the only means to do so is to shut down your website (as provided in Section 7.9 of the Terms and Conditions); and (2) commence legal action against all responsible persons.”

Message to Henry David: Someone’s name who made a request of us is not “personally identifiable data.”

Second message to Henry David: We don’t collect ANY data, personally identifiable or otherwise, about our users. If 1and1 (our hosting company) collects it, and we don’t know if they do, we don’t download it, much less post it, though we do occasionally look at aggregate data regarding the number of hits to the site and the internet providers that the hits come from.

Third message to Henry David: Nothing in any post here has been libelous, slanderous, defamatory or infringes upon any right of anything, including privacy. It’s bleeping news and commentary, dude. You don’t get to control it. Do you think a newspaper gets permission from everyone it writes a story about? This is no different. Your client or clients wrote their letters to the editor, just as you did, knowing full well that they could be published, unless they specified they were not for publication. You didn’t specify that in your letter – in fact, you read the page saying we’d post threats, and sent them anyway. Here you are.

We didn’t publish their 13 e-mails and at their request removed the one e-mail chain, because many of them said please don’t publish them, and because we were trying to play nice.

Other than that, thanks for your letter.

Posted in Miscellaneous Hate Mail and Threats | Print | 3 Comments »