A Sad Story

A Sad Story

On Friday, April 12, I received a registered letter from Lyara. At her specific request in that letter, I am posting it on the site, as a graphic.

You may be startled by the content. I certainly was. A brief explanation of the events leading up to it is in order. I first joined the on-line Forum that Lyara offers, and which her husband Michael (using the name Andronicus) administers, on Feb 2, 2002, for a month. In early March, Lyara asked me to renew, and I did, for six months.

But during that time, February and March, there were some serious disputes on the Forum, and I was not happy with the abusive way Michael treated those with whom he disagreed. In fact, he violated the Forum’s own posted guidelines repeatedly. While Lyara also posted abusively (referring to someone as an “addictive” person, for example, something only the Creator can know), she at least avoided profanity and often expressed regret for things she had said in a previous post.

I wrote Michael privately and objected to some of this; after several rounds of emails, he "heard" me, and apologized publically for some of the worst of it. Then he and Lyara decided to remove posts they didn't like from the Forum record. Again I objected privately. This time I got such an ugly reply, full of profanity, that I terminated communications with Michael. Next came a long reply from Lyara in the most condescending of terms. I gave her a very gentle response, but still maintained my view that editing history was wrong. She then told me that I had been removed from the Forums, again in violation of her own policies as I had only disagreed in private, and very politely.

After thinking this over, I felt led to set up a site at which people who connected with this material could discuss it without the abuse and virtual violence of the Forums. In fact, I had a direct message from the Hosts suggesting this. So I registered operationterra.org, and told Lyara about it, again in friendly terms. I explained to her that I consider it "fair use" under UDRP:

(iii) you are making a legitimate noncommercial or fair use of the domain name, without intent for commercial gain to misleadingly divert consumers or to tarnish the trademark or service mark at issue.

But her response was not very positive. I won’t go into a point-by-point rebuttal here; my attorney wouldn’t like that. Suffice it to say that I am on very solid legal ground, and am prepared to defend that ground in any venue where Lyara chooses to press her case. After all, one of the guidelines from the Hosts is that we should be willing to put our lives on the line for the truth; I welcome this opportunity to prove, once again, my willingness to do so. I have faced much worse, and won...

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