FC: Zenon Panoussis's letter to Kirkland: "I invite you to sue me"

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

Zenon has been sued by Scientology for mirroring their ostensibly
secret scriptures: http://www.dtek.chalmers.se/~d1dd/cos/zenon-eng.html

---

Date: Mon, 04 Jun 2001 04:24:47 +0200
From: Zenon Panoussis <oracle () xs4all nl>
Organization: Marcab Technologies
To: Steven A Smith <steves () prestongates com>
Cc: politech () politechbot com,
        Kirkland City Manager David Ramsay c/o <webmaster () ci kirkland wa us>
Subject: The fine art of suppressing information on the Internet


Dear Steven

With some amazement, some disbelief and a lot of amusement, I read 
at http://www.politechbot.com/kirkland/ that you have been threatening 
legal action on behalf of the city of Kirkland against Declan McCullagh's 
politechbot.com for its publication of some police officers' social 
security numbers. 

Dear Steven. Being a good counsel to your client is not limited to 
firing off standard cease & desist letters at the press of a button. 
On the contrary, being a good counsel involves advising the client 
on strategy and, in doing so, taking into account the nature, 
strength, habits and expected reactions of the counterpart. 

Dear Steven. You have advised your client to start a war against the 
Internet. Not only that; you have actually started a war on behalf 
of your client. Any half-wit who has been online for more than six 
weeks could have told you that anybody who starts a war on the 
Internet is guaranteed to lose it. If you would rather not take the 
advise of half-wits, you could have asked the Recording Industry 
Association of America, The Motion Picture Association of America, 
the Church of Scientology (OK, I admit, those *are* half-wits, but 
they are half-wits with millions), the Ford Motor Company or the 
German government instead. They would all have told you the same. 

Dear Steven. I regret to have to tell you that you did a lousy 
job in persuing your clients' interests. The best way to go about 
it would have been a polite e-mail, asking whether politechbot.com 
would kindly remove those SSNs from the web as a token of 
consideration and respect of the officers' privacy and worry about 
possible abuse. You never know, you could have striken a cord there. 
The next best way to go about it would have been to just do nothing. 

Dear Steven. Your client has to pay for your mistakes. The article 
that you demand removed is now republished by me at 
http://www.provocation.net/mirrors/kirkland/p-02008.html and I am 
hereby inviting your clients to sue me. You can do so in the US, 
but a US ruling will not be enforceable against me. If you want 
an enforceable ruling, you need to sue 

  Zenon Panoussis
  2e van Swindenstraat 188
  1093 XA Amsterdam
  The Netherlands

(that's me) at the appropriate Dutch court, which is 

  Rechtbank Amsterdam
  Parnassusweg 220
  1076 AV Amsterdam
  The Netherlands

You see, dear Steven, this means that any legal action against 
politechbot.com will be useless even if it is successful; the 
article in question will remain on the web, and it will attract 
so much more attention precisely because of your lawsuit. Of 
course, you could continue threatening and sueing left and right 
for ever, until your clients run out of money and you become 
known to your collegues as Don Steven Quixote. Somehow, though, 
I think that you are able to learn from your mistakes and that 
nothing of this will happen. Somehow I suspect that you will 
not reply to this mail, and that you will quietly and with as 
little loss of face as possible drop the whole issue and forget 
that you ever started it. I am pretty sure that your client 
will appreciate that. 

Best regards,

Z


-- 
oracle@everywhere: The ephemeral source of the eternal truth...



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