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I don't care if this is an unseemly thread. I'm just quite confused. Apparently something went down on Sunday with a poster known as SeattleGhostWriter, right? I clicked on his name and it says he joined at 5 in the morning and last visited at 10 in the morning. So in 5 hours on Sunday something must have happened. it also says he has 0 posts here. But I've seen a couple.

I've seen a couple of comments about people here exposing some in real life information, from what I've seen a real "no no" here, and something about legal action. Something about MDD board again. But what happened exactly? Much ado about nothing?

Apparently the guy is an apologist and also has had some pornographic fiction published. Someone posted pictures of him and his family, doing the typical internet macro/meme thing to the photos (ala lolcats, etc), making fun the pornography thing. He went ballistic, made threats to the site host, and the board got shut down for a couple of days.

Buffalo wrote:Apparently the guy is an apologist and also has had some pornographic fiction published. Someone posted pictures of him and his family, doing the typical internet macro/meme thing to the photos (ala lolcats, etc), making fun the pornography thing. He went ballistic, made threats to the site host, and the board got shut down for a couple of days.

what? Now there's a Mormon apologist whose into porn? well, I'll be...I thought i had seen it all.

Anyway, how'd the site go down for a couple of days when the dude signed up on Sunday? So did the whole affair happen when he wasn't even here posting?

stemelbow wrote:

Buffalo wrote:Apparently the guy is an apologist and also has had some pornographic fiction published. Someone posted pictures of him and his family, doing the typical internet macro/meme thing to the photos (ala lolcats, etc), making fun the pornography thing. He went ballistic, made threats to the site host, and the board got shut down for a couple of days.

what? Now there's a Mormon apologist whose into porn? well, I'll be...I thought i had seen it all.

Anyway, how'd the site go down for a couple of days when the dude signed up on Sunday? So did the whole affair happen when he wasn't even here posting?

Supposedly it was from his past, and now that it's published he can't unpublish it.

I don't really know more than that.

Buffalo wrote:Supposedly it was from his past, and now that it's published he can't unpublish it.

I don't really know more than that.

Oh...that makes more sense.

Yeah it was an erotica piece. The main argument put forth by SeattleGhostWriter (a.k.a. SeattleSmutWriter) is that his pictures were copyrighted. That is in dispute, either way the pictures were only linked to, not uploaded. His beef should be with those websites (photo cache sites) that hosted those images, if the images are in fact copyrighted, which is highly disputed, since he did not get U.S. government copyrights, but instead went to a "copyright mill" on the Net.

Furthermore, many of the pictures uploaded were altered for the purpose of parody, making them legal under fair use. Also some pictures of his family, posted to his Facebook page (which was totally public at the time), were loaded but were removed after 18 minutes due to concerns expressed by several board members.

Other than that it was the thread contained usual mockery and insulting that happens when an apologist writes badly, and then badly writes erotic stand alone scenes down by the seaside. But anyway he called/emailed the host of this site and they took the site down for about 18-24 hrs. The board is now up and running and the fun continues.


~In my opinion that's how it all went down. (Gotta avoid libel right?)

©Bond Man Pimpin Productions, 2011. All rights reserved. This post can not be reused without the express written consent of Dr. Shades a.k.a. Pimp Daddy Shades; Doctor Scratch a.k.a. Grand Master Scratch, and MrStakhanovite a.k.a. Jack Johnson a.k.a. Tom O'Leary a.k.a. Wes Mantooth a.k.a. Veronica Corningstone a.k.a. Brick Tamland a.k.a. Brian Fantana a.k.a. Tits McGee.

A poster here noted a Mormon apologetics journal advertised by SeattleGhostWriter. It was even linked on SGW's MDD sig line. It was a [non] journal of SGW's own invention, and he was soliciting donations for it, believe it or not.

Well, also linked on SGW's MDD profile were articles he'd posted to Associated Content. Following that same link, a poster found erotica posted by SeattleGhostWriter, and supplied snippets of that here on the board. It was poorly-written, and seemed to star SGW himself in the lead male role. As you can imagine, jokes ensued.

A photo of SGW's face was posted to the board. The same photo is plastered all over the Internet. Polygamy Porter then posted a photo of SGW's family which was publicly accessible on SGW's public Facebook profile. I protested the posting of that photo along with Spurven and Ms. Jack. The Facebook photo was voluntarily removed by PP within eighteen minutes of its appearance on the thread. The head shot of SeattleGhostWriter remained on the thread.

Rather than approach Dr. Shades about removing the photo and waiting for a response, SGW filed some sort of copyright infringement claim with the board's host and the board was shut down for one day. I do not believe there is an actual copyright on SGW's photo, and even if there were, I believe the usage of that photo here was easily sheltered under the umbrella of Fair Use.

Nevo, one of the sharpest Mormons on the Internet, had these things to say on MDD about SGW's antics:

Nevo wrote:Word to the wise: if you're going to do LDS apologetics online (and even brazenly solicit donations for a non-existent apologetics journal of your own invention), don't publish erotic fiction on the side. Especially, don't supply links to your erotic fiction when posting on an LDS apologetics discussion board. Some critics might take note.

Nevo wrote:I think you are the author of your own misfortune, sir. (Forgive the pun.) You weren't on anyone's radar at Mormon Discussions until California Kid noticed your blog was soliciting donations for a non-existent LDS apologetics journal. Pretty soon people Googled your name and found a rich trove of fodder for their amusement, including some comically bad erotica under your byline. Naturally, ridicule ensued—akin to the sort of thing one routinely finds on, say, The Daily Show with John Stewart or The Soup. It was not gang rape. It was not cyber-bullying. There were no threats. There was no harrassment. It was people making fun of you. That wasn't nice of them, but having their board shut down seems like an over-reaction to me (although I can understand why many on this board find its demise gratifying).

SGW brought this whole mess on himself. When one preaches Mormonism and, at the same time, links to pornographic material he wrote himself, he has only himself to blame for the barbs that come his way. Add to that his solicitation for money for a non-existent apologetics journal of his own creation, and, well, he'd have to be an idiot not to know what might go down.

SGW was not a member of this board when the original thread was created and therefore was not protected by board rules against the release of his name and photograph. Nothing illegal transpired on this board. SGW was embarrassed, as he well should have been, and came unglued. That's the story.

KA

stemelbow ~ Some number of weeks ago, there was a thread here at MDB noting abnormalities at the Web site of a Mormon apologist named Timothy R. Berman, who posts regularly at MDDB as SeattleGhostWriter. Tim was soliciting donations for an LDS apologetics journal that he apparently wished to develop. Kind of an odd move for someone who hasn't even published in any of the current LDS studies journals.

Someone poked around his online material a bit and discovered this:

"At the Ocean - A Short Erotica" (Google Cache)

So, he was also running a (very poorly written) soft-core porn piece along with his LDS apologetics works. This naturally caused some amusement on the original thread:

"The Journal of Timothy R. Berman Studies?" - Page 1 (Current | Cache)
"The Journal of Timothy R. Berman Studies?" - Page 2 (Current | Cache)

A few people posted pictures of Tim's headshot avatar in conjunction with making fun of his erotica. One person posted a picture of Tim's family including his wife and children. This was quickly protested by three other people (myself included) and removed 18 minutes later. All in all, the thread lasted two pages (41 posts) and was quickly forgotten.

I'm not sure why exactly Tim chose to do what he did next, but here's what happened: Tim sent a DMCA to DreamHost (MDB's Web host) claiming that his headshot avatar was copyrighted and that MDB was in violation of copyright for linking to it. DreamHost pushed the panic button and took the entire site offline immediately. The site was down for ~30 hours or so.

Please note that Tim did not attempt to contact Dr. Shades about any of this beforehand, nor did DreamHost give Dr. Shades any time to act before taking the site down.

Tim (as SeattleGhostWriter) did a thread over at MDDB on Friday night taking credit for getting MDB offline. After the site came back late Saturday night, Tim registered here to scold and threaten us all some more.

As it turns out, in all likelihood, Tim's DMCA was illegal. You have to be a valid copyright holder or an agent of the valid copyright holder to issue a DMCA. Tim's claim was that the headshot photo was registered at My Free Copyright. That is not a valid agent of the U. S. Copyright Office, so no one holds a copyright of the photo in question and Tim never had any right to issue a DMCA in the first place. (UPDATE: I've found out that this is not the case, one need not register with the U. S. Copyright office to file a DMCA take-down notice. However, I still believe Tim's DMCA was illegal because the use of the images was covered by Fair Use, and he issued it to a site that was merely linking to the images, not to the hosts of the images.)

The mess you see on the forums now is mostly people continuing to make fun of Tim whilst discussing how not to get shut down by like-minded vindictive crackpots in the future.

according to the US Copyright Office, copyright is automatic, and filing for a copyright is not required. One could say that everyones post are under the copyrights of the poster.

however, even if the images were copyright protected, the "Mustache you a question" was clearly parody of the image. A "porno" mustache with an erotic peice, its seems only natural to parody the picture.

3sheets2thewind wrote:according to the US Copyright Office, copyright is automatic, and filing for a copyright is not required. One could say that everyones post are under the copyrights of the poster.

"Section 411(a) of the Copyright Act requires claims to copyright to be registered with the Copyright Office before a lawsuit can be initiated by the copyright owner" -- http://www.copyright.gov/legislation/dmca.pdf

Tim certainly would have been able to claim that the photo was his brother's had someone tried to take credit for the work, but in order to issue a DMCA, the photo needed to be formally registered.

There was a rather similar case some number of years ago involving Michael Crook. People were making fun of him and photoshopping his picture after an appearance on Fox News, and he tried to issue false DMCAs to several Web sites to get them to take down the content making fun of him.

The result was a whole lot more people making fun of him via photoshopped images, and a lawsuit filed against him by the Electronic Freedom Foundation.

http://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2006/11/ ... -the-dmca/