ASCII by Jason Scott

Jason Scott's Weblog

Infringement From The Future, Legal Dept. —

From: Ted Schredd - Discover Fun <tedschredd@discoverfun.com>
To: mailbox@textfiles.com
Cc: legal@discoverfun.com; admin@discoverfun.com; securitybreach@discoverfun.com
Subject: Fwd: Your content on your site...
Hey there,
Very funny content on your site here
http://www.textfiles.com/humor/bored.txt
Unfortunately you stole it from our site without giving us credit.
Please remove it immediately to avoid legal action
Yours truly,
Discover Fun Legal Department

This threat letter is particularly interesting once I put together two pieces of data.

Here’s the first piece of data:

Registrant:
Club Schredd
Ted Schredd
403 East 16th Street
North Vancouver, BC V7L2T4
CA
Email: schredd@imag.net
Registrar Name….: REGISTER.COM, INC.
Registrar Whois…: whois.register.com
Registrar Homepage: www.register.com
Domain Name: discoverfun.com
Created on…………..: Mon, Jan 07, 2002
Expires on…………..: Thu, Jan 07, 2010
Record last updated on..: Sun, Jan 04, 2009
Administrative Contact:
Club Schredd
Ted Schredd
403 East 16th Street
North Vancouver, BC V7L2T4
CA
Phone: 1-604-9846161
Email: INFO@DISCOVERFUN.COM

And here’s the second piece of data:

snuhdot# pwd
/skimmilk/textfiles/humor
snuhdot# ls -l bored.txt
-rwxrwxrwx  1 root  wheel  16723 Oct  6  1999 bored.txt
snuhdot#

P.S. This page was up in 2001. Maybe I should send them a letter…. oh wait, I’m not a deluded asshole.


Categorised as: textfiles.com

Comments are disabled on this post


13 Comments

  1. anand says:

    Well I guess they’ll just accuse of using touch over the specified files.. ???

  2. Chris Orcutt says:

    Good show, Watson!

  3. Results 1 – 10 of about 242 for “Things to do when bored” “Bronze your sister”

    Their legal department must be getting bored!

  4. Why did Ted Schredd include securitybreach@discoverfun.com on the cc: list? Are they secretly developing new things to do when bored and believe this to be a leak?

  5. Flack says:

    How dare you stole something they stole too!!

    Also I see you stole the @ symbol they use in their e-mail addresses. Please give that back before securitybreach@discoverfun.com has to ask for that as well.

  6. Decius says:

    Meh. Send them back a letter stating “This is what the DMCA requires in a takedown notice.” Make them send the paper- when they do, get a tech lawyer on contingency and sue them- They aren’t the copyright holder, and acted in bad faith. Even if they are, you’re a fair user.

    Or not. I just hate to see legal threats get thrown around illegally. I would just like to see someone who tried to strongarm their way into information monopoly get slammed.

  7. hmvh says:

    re. “Unfortunately you stole it from our site without giving us credit.”

    Perhaps I’m missing something here but how is it possible for them to even attempt to claim ownership without making any sort of effort to back up the claim (even a link) or without the offending text file even including any sort of copyright notice?

    All things considered, I guess Mr. Schredd wants more hits for his site. The joke’s on you, Jason…

  8. Fake Rake says:

    That doesn’t sound like the kind of wording a legal department would use in an e-mail, I would expect them to just skip right to “cease and desist, blah blah blah.” I wonder if all the addresses on the cc: line just go to the same account, and are just put there to look intimidating.

  9. Adem says:

    “-Play tag…on 35W”

    This narrows the original writer down to Minneapolis, or Dallas.

    No point to this comment, really, it just made me smile.

  10. jas says:

    “Fake RakeNo Gravatar wrote:

    That doesn’t sound like the kind of wording a legal department would use in an e-mail, I would expect them to just skip right to “cease and desist, blah blah blah.” I wonder if all the addresses on the cc: line just go to the same account, and are just put there to look intimidating.”

    i totally agree and i’m sure this person wanted some hits to his site, or he’s a bit of a moron. or both.

  11. Our apologies….

    People had been stealing our content without giving credit….we made a mistake in regards to your post.

    Our apologies,

    Cheers,

    Ted Schredd

    • Jason Scott says:

      Yes, “a mistake” is what I often call claiming someone stole content you yourself “stole”.

  12. Greg G. says:

    Their content eh? I remember grabbing that very file from &TOTSE no later than 1991 or 1992, printing it out on a dot matrix printer and taking it in to work for amusement purposes. That probably makes it date way older than that. Sad to see that &TOTSE ceased to be a few months ago. At least they won’t have to send out e-mail threatening “legal action”.