Muslim and Jewish Women in Nazareth

'We can live in peace'...John Lennon (photo: Dafna Tal)

Mahzor

Mahzor

New York Public Library

Churches

Sarajevo Haggadah

Mah Nishtanah

Sarajevo haggadah

Antaea Darom

Israeli women's art

Action

Torah as music

Ben Heine

Action

ceramic bowl

Mohammad Said Kalash, "Offering Reconciliation" exhibit (photo: Ilan Amihai)

Action

Punch and Judy/Pinchas and Jamila

Avi Katz

Action

David Grossman

Ben Heine

Action

Eldrige Street shul

Lower East Side

Action

Dove

Ben Heine

Action

Two birds

Hoda Jamal

Action

Israeli and Palestinian boys

from documentary, Promises

Action

Cat in the Hat

Yiddish version

Action

Daylight through the Wall

Banksy: graffiti art on Separation Wall

Action

Maurice Sendak's Brundibar set

New Victory Theater (photo: Nan Melville/NYT)

Action

Daniel Barenboim, West-Eastern Divan Orchestra

Palestinian-Israeli musical ensemble (photo: Kerstin Joensson/AP)

Action

Great Day on Eldrige Street

N.Y.'s klezmer greats celebrate shul rededication (photo: Leo Sorel)

Action

Joint Appeal for Peace

(Avi Katz)

Joint Appeal for Peace

Ketubah, Ancona, Italy (1772)

(Jewish Theological Seminary library)

Ancona ketubah

Posts Tagged ‘blog-impersonation’

Blogger.com Refuses to Take Down Pornographic, Defaming Site

Sunday, April 8th, 2007

After getting no satisfaction in my effort to get a Blogger.com website taken down which assumes my identity in order to savage my beliefs, I have consulted an intellectual property attorney and plan to send this letter to Google CEO Eric Schmidt outlining my case against the site:

Dr. Eric Schmidt
CEO
Google
1600 Amphitheatre Pkwy
Mountain View, CA 94043

Dear Dr. Schmidt,

I have unsuccessfully appealed to Blogger Help regarding a fraudulent Blogger website, Little Dickie’s Diaper Droppings, which impersonates and defames me using pornographic and hateful language (complaint #129709468). Initially, the site also displayed images of me in violation of my copyright rights. Though Blogger has removed those images, the site is deeply invasive of my privacy and defames me by assuming my identity.

Here are some representative samples of its egregious nature:

1. the blog URL is ‘richardsilversteins.blogspot.com,’ which is my name.
2. the contact e mail address provided is a fake address also using my name richardsilverstein@yahoo.com
3. Here’s a pornographic quotation placed into my mouth: “When I get “religious” then I just stroke my penis to see what comes out.”
4. More quotations from the About Me page:

“I am a third-rate subliterate pretending to be an intellectual
Why am I so stupid?
Interests:
Destroying Israel
Favorite Books:
Mein Kampf”

As a Jewish blogger, I hope you can understand how deeply hurtful it is to have a fraudulent website proclaim in my name that my favorite book is one of the most anti-Semitic books ever written: Mein Kampf. And as a Jew who supports Israel, you can also imagine the pain caused by someone writing in my own voice that I wish to “destroy Israel.” There are visitors to this blog who will actually think that the disgusting words and ideas put into my mouth are things I believe.

This website violates the following Blogspot.com terms of service:

“You agree to not use the Service to: (a) upload, post or otherwise transmit any Content that is unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, tortious, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, libelous, invasive of another’s privacy, hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable;…(c) impersonate any person or entity… (e) upload, post or otherwise transmit any Content that infringes any…copyright or other proprietary rights of any party…”

I have asked my blog readers to flag this site for objectionable content and a number have. I have also asked them to register a complaint with Blogger over the site. I have written about this matter at my own blog and not had very kind things to say about Blogger.

I have already made one good-faith effort to get Blogger to take down this site and failed. This is my second attempt. If this fails, then I will consult with my attorney about my legal remedies including suing both the creator of this blog and Blogger.com for infliction of great emotional pain and distress on me and my family.

Please ask the senior staff at Blogger to remove this site. It not only defames me, it does Blogger’s reputation a great disservice. I will be posting this letter at my blog and whatever response you should choose to provide. I hope it will be a positive one so I can inform my readers of how decent and responsive a company both Blogger and Google are.

People often come to me as an experienced blogger and ask about which platforms they should choose. Should anyone ask me about Blogger and the company continues to refuse to take down this site, I will have an excellent and very personal reason for turning them away from using Blogger.

Hoping for redress,
Richard Silverstein

Blogger.com Supports Blog Fraud, Defamation and Identity Theft

Thursday, April 5th, 2007

Folks may know about my battle with the Masada2000 hate site and someone who may or may not be called Neil Pomper. It appears that in a feeble attempt at revenge, Pomper has created a site that purports to be my own and which ridicules me–again feebly and sophomorically. Lots of potty mouth talk, a little pornographic language and the like. The site originally posted two images of me including one with my young son. It also uses first person language that might allow someone to actually believe the site was mine. An intellectual property attorney has told me that what this jackass has done is legally actionable.

I sent a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) notice to Blogger.com demanding that they remove the image, which they did quite promptly. However, they refused to take the site down with this lame defense:

Regarding your defamation and trademark allegation, Blogger.com and Blogspot.com are US sites regulated by US law. Blogger is a provider of content creation tools, not a mediator of that content. We allow our users to create blogs, but we don’t make any claims about the content of these pages. Given these facts, and pursuant with section 230(c) of the Communications Decency Act, Blogger does not remove allegedly defamatory, libelous, or slanderous material from Blogger.com or BlogSpot.com. If a contact email address is listed on the blog, we recommend you working directly with the author to have the content in question removed or changed.

Regarding contacting the blogger, the only e mail address provided at the site is a fake e mail address in my name (of course).

I would like to ask supporters of this blog to do two things. First, visit the blog and click on the Blog Flag link at the very top of the main page. This link will report that you found the material on the site objectionable. If enough people flag the site it will come to the attention of Blogger staff which monitor the site more intensively. Also, please consider logging a complaint with Blogger that they are hosting a site which both impersonates, defames and slanders me. Tell them how disappointed you are that Blogger supports such hate speech. Tell them you’ll be letting your readers know what you think of Blogger. Frankly, I don’t know why anyone would want to blog at Blogger.com except that it’s free. But people do and perhaps if enough other people tell them they’re behaving like asses they might take some action.

And if anyone knows an intellectual property attorney who might take on a pro bono case to sue the ass off this guy and to vigorously protest Blogger’s malfeasance, please let me know. A good lawyer is the only force that’s likely to move Blogger to act in this circumstance. Like most corporations, they take the path of least resistance.

UPDATE: Brad Stone, a NYT reporter, just interviewed me for a piece he’s writing for the weekend paper on blog etiquette. It’s a follow up on the blogger death threat story, in which a high tech executive, Tim O’Reilly proposed a voluntary civility code that would attempt to both restrain over the top invective in blog comment threads and empower bloggers to maintain civility in their threads by moderating comments that violate speech standards.

Brad had read about my blog Blogger.com impersonator/pornographer/defamer and wanted to use me as an example of someone who’s been negatively impacted by blogosphere incivility. Look for the story this weekend. I hope I’m make it into the story.