tdaxp

Do you want to have your reputation ruined, pay a million dollar fine, and in general tick everyone off? If so, Dozier Internet Law is the law firm for you! But if the thought of being in the presence of "Super Lawyer" John "Bull" Dozier is too intimidating, you can examine the form that Dozier seems to use to wreck their clients. (Just note that Dozier thinks US law likely will not govern the matter!

Our friend Donald E. Morris of Dozier Internet Law (presumably not a "super-lawyer" like his boss, John W. Dozier, Jr.,) is at it again. After threatening Infomercial Scams over its warnings against DirectBuy, now DonJohn is attacking Inventor Ed for statements on Inventor-Link.

This post compares the DirectBuy and Inventor-Link threat letters. The sections below are in order, except for "Legitimate Free Speech" which floats between the letters.

Section: "Please be advised"

DirectBuy

Please be advised that our firm has been retained by DirectBuy, Inc. to investigate and take legal action against you for the series of unwarranted and defamatory attacks against it made by you and your visitors on your various websites. Specifically, these websites are www.infomercialblog.com, www.infomercialratings.com, and www.infomercialscams.com.

Inventor-Link:

Please be advised that our firm has been retained by Inventor-Link, LLC to investigate and take legal action against you for engaging in the following activities (1) defamation of our client, (2) tortious (sic) interference with our client’s business; and (3) violation of our client’s website User Agreement.

One of the most exhausting, if fulfilling, aspects of covering the Dozier Internet Law imbroglio (you know, the company that got caught red handed sending threatening super-secret cease-and-desists) is the sheer quantity of blog posts that need to be covered.

Brendan of I Hate Linux comes out with two new posts:
In "Dozier Internet Law actions indirectly limiting research?," he complains how Dozier's record of negative publicity makes it hard to do his own research on the company.
The day before, he wrote, "A double standard from John Dozier," apparently finding John "John Kerry" Dozier in a flip-flop.

The Blog of M'Gath takes a break from following dozier to note Consumer Reports' views of DirectBuy -- the home improvement company that hired Dozier.

Additionally, Fair Use Day picked up the Ars Techncia summary of the case, while I note that Public Citizen Litigation Group lists "DirectBuy and their lawyers at Dozier Internet Law in their "miscellaneous internet free speech cases" section.

Finally, the tdaxp network is busy, as well. Besides a daysworth of headlines at Jim River Report, Dozier Internet Lawsuits is go!

Gary McGath, who doesn't pronounce the "c" in The Blog of M'Gath, is the latest online journalist to cover the Dozier Internet Law public-relations disaster.

Everything that Gary writes is so good is is hard to know what to excerpt. I hope he doesn't mind a longer-than-usual blockquote, simply because everything is so well done:

Direct Buy, not liking the fact that infomercialscams.com was letting people post their complaints about it, had Dozier Internet Law, P.C., send a cease and desist letter (PDF) demanding that the reports be removed, as well as demanding unspecified compensation.

The letter claims that the following are "defamatory statements":

• "Direct Buy Nightmare" -- www.informercialscams.com;


• * "all scams are posted uncensored!" -- www.infomercialscams.com;


• * "You are reporting the following SCAM" -- www.infomercialscams.com; and


• * "Recently, we noticed a sudden influx of 4 and 5 star ratings for the Direct Buy
  program ... We don't know if Direct Buy is behind this or not. But we do have our suspicious given the fact that the reviews came from the SAME LOCATION, say the same thing, and highlight points that most customers wouldn't be concerned with." -- www.informercialblog.com

The letter doesn't deny the specific scamming activity which Direct Buy is accused of, yet it categorically states that the last claim is "utterly false and without merit." How does Dozier know that there was no such influx from a single location? Does he have access to the site's logs?

Just by the way, Dozier Internet Law presumably would regard me as a "letter pirate" for having quoted the above text.

(Perhaps the reason I like Gary's post is so much is that we think the same -- my reaction was pretty similar in my first post, DirectBuy and Dozier Internet Law SLAPPS Infomercial Scams.com).

One of the hardest things about following the John Dozier scandal (well, the latest scandal, with DirectBuy -- I've only done one post each on their handling of the SecureComputer and CuppyCoffee suits is the scale of the blogosphere's response.

Besides Sean's summary of DirectBuy's malfeasance, a whole slew of blogs picked up the Ars Technica summary:

Blue's News
Corporate critics feel the stinging lash of DMCA misuse.

Digg, Electronics Almanace, and Technology Owl:
Two recent cases show that companies aren't always fans of criticism, and some will file misguided DMCA notices and defamation cases to scrub it from the Internet.

Techno Blogo
...a company called DirectBuy (perhaps you've seen their infomercials on TV) accused the owner of infomercialscams.com of defaming it by allowing critical postings that label the company a "scam" or a "nightmare."...

That's it for now!

Ars Technica, a popular website on the technical arts that includes breaking news, user forums, and other features, prominently features the Dozier Internet Law / DirectBuy scandal by comparing it to another bizarre lawsuit.

The Ars Technica article focuses mostly on the contributions of Public Citizen and Willam Patry (who, I learned, is also Google' top copyright lawyer).

One of the hardest things about following the story is how quickly people are coming forward. Wicked Boring discusses this as a strategic lawsuit against public participation, New York Attorney Malpractice Blog quotes an length an earlier essay, Citizen Media Law Project is not impressed, and Curtis (who previously discovered by John Dozier is a plagiarist) tries to throw cold water on collective non-violenct self defense

• Free Speech and Copyright


• Comment on 'Lawfare and Public Participation'


• Comment on 'Lawfare Backlash'

That's it for now!

The DirectBuy home improvement firm has been the subject of numerous investigations, and Dozier Internet Law's "cyberlawyers" mishandling of a client's case made the Franchise Times. So both companies are used to bad publicity from their business practices. Now it appears that their lawsuit against Infomercial Scams (check out the Public Citizen and tdaxp summaries) is creeping ever so close to mainstream media coverage.

Walter Olson of Overlawyered, who appears on Fox News, Headline News, and other shows as a legal expert, has an excellent case on the Direct Buy / Dozier case titled "Nastygram: Don't you dare post this nastygram on the web."

Read it.

Additionally, South Dakota Politics, a blog featured prominently in the real-life election thriller Daschle vs. Thune, also joins the fray.

And if all that isn't enough to attract your attention, John Dozier's bizarre public statements have attracted a second post by Public Citizen.

Aside from my initial post, the blog reactions to DirectBuy and Dozier Internet Law I have posted have all been before Public Citizen and Slashdot got into the debate. (For the background of the story, check out my preliminary case study.)

As time goes on, though, more and more bloggers are picking up the story of the DirectBuy / Dozier Internet Law strategic lawsuit against public participation.

Modemac briefly writes "Direct Buy sends a threatening letter to infomercialblog.com, then threatens the blog author for copyright violation if he dares to publish the letter itself on his site'" whereas Patry Copyright Blog writes an encyclopedia article on the case.

I Hate Linux has published a follow-up to his first post on the scandal, while Primrose Road has taken notice, as well.

Additionally, a poster over at the 13th Man Direct Buy's tactics "enlightening."

Legal Research Blog and The Consumer post their thoughts, too, for good measure.

Jim River Report has headlines reading "Attention: Dozier Internet Law," "Dozier Internet Law," and "DirectBuy."

The best follow-up, however is Curtis's discovery that John Dozier's comment on behalf of Dozier Internet Law was partially plagiarized from another web site, in violation of their terms-of-use and copyright! Ha ha ha!

Earlier today I described a typical DirectBuy spam website. Further investigation that spam is playing a larger role in the propagation of DirectBuy in the wake up Dozier Internet Law's incompetent bullying on their behalf than I thought.

The blogs mentioned below are spam blogs, meaning that the are created by computer algorithms. They steal content from other sites, sometimes linking back to the original site, and display oversized ads to generate revenue. "Good" spam blogs are those that at least are helping spread the word about Direct Buy's tactics (however unwittingly). "Bad" spam blogs appear to be set up by DirectBuy in an attempt to squelch public participation. The "ugly" ... well, read on:

The Good
"Business Teacher" links (twice!) to my post on Donald E. Morris while displaying an oversized google ad.

"Internet & Web-Related Blog Feeds" links to Dozier's history of unhappy clients.

"Lemon Law Directory" is a strange spam blog with no ads (I guess it is used to link to other spam blogs -- it appears to be both automated and "clean") that noticed by full-text of the 'copyrighted' cease-and-desist." "Puykif" links to the same post.

The Bad
"Recommender: Shopping Questions and Answers" appears to have an astroturf "question" that directs readers to dynamic appointment, a front organization for DirectBuy.

The Ugly
Adisgusting spam site has a post titled "Hacking is Wikipedia? DirectBuy" that uses a half-paragraph from my article, "Is DirectBuy Hacking Wikipedia?" to display a large photo advertisement of "Adult Friend Finder members near New York." (Even worse, of the twelve females shown, only one is actually attractive. Eek!)

I don't know, but Wikipedia's Revision history for "DirectBuy" now discusses "possible user of sleeper accounts. The text that keeps getting removed reads:

Complaints

Many customers have complained that they have been deceived by DirectBuy into signing expensive contracts for the privilege of purchasing goods supplied by the company. A three-year membership usually costs about $5,000, with yearly fees in the hundreds layered on top of that. Furthermore, potential members are told at the information sessions that unless they commit to it right then and there, they will be ineligible for membership for another seven years. While DirectBuy prices have been proven to be lower than some of their competitors' prices, all purchased items incur a processing and shipping fee, which is not included in the original price quote. In many cases, these additional costs usually bring the total price to that above what can usually be found at many traditional retailers.[citation needed]

Critics of DirectBuy

• Big Membership Fee Doesn't Always Mean Big Savings


• Direct Buy: One Man's Story


• The Secrets of Direct Buy


• MLM Law on Similar Cases


• Edumacation Archives on DirectBuy


• Discover Vanouver Bulletin Board Discussion


• Numerous Complaints about the company

The section has been removed repeated by users "Wiseard" and 206.228.159.59."

While it is clear that DirectBuy intimidates those who complain and floods the web with spam, the question of whether they violate Wikipedia's conflict of interest policy is an open question. Certainly I've run against over-zealous wikipedians in the past (who deleted the entry for "5GW" and wished to destroy information on "Unrestricted Warfare"), so nothing is certain at this time.

For those joining late: DirectBuy is a "home improvement" company with a mixed track record. There's a number of mixed reviews of their services, available from both blogs and mainstream media outlets. More recently, after a blogger at Infomercial Scams complained about Direct Buy's infomercial scam, DirectBuy's lawyer, Dozier Internet Law, sent him an incompetently written "cease-and-desist" letter that was copyrighted! This "strategic lawsuit against public participation" would be more threatening if it was filed by such "chuckleheads."

Then blogs stand up. Public Citizen exposed the DirectBuy/Dozier threat, I Hate Linux asked to be sued too, and I posted the plain text of the demand letter.

Unfortunately, DirectBuy generates so many spam websites that it is hard to find out opinions about the company. Therefore, this post contains mainstream media and blogosphere reviews of Direct Buy that did not make it into my previous posts

From the Mainstream Media:

• Team 5 Investigates DirectBuy."


• WCBS TV reaches a similar conclusion."


• Direct Buy: One Man's Story (From CTV, Canada) (thanks to Jeremy's Thoughts for the link

From the Internet:

Over at Mafe Maria, a long complaint against DirectBuy's deceptive hard sell includes includes this paragraph:

The poor woman doesn’t know that both Joey and I are fricking MBAs and have spent a ridiculous amount of our lives making a living out of understanding concepts like the present value of money and financial risk… Who can guarantee us that they’ll still be around in 2-3 years?… That manufacturers won’t get off that business model in 2-5 years, when we may be ready to buy, finally taking advantage of our extremely expensive upfront investment? Why would we put down $4,500 now, when we’re not ready to redecorate yet, so the savings are uncertain, and most likely far ahead in the future?