What started out as a garden variety legal threat, turned into the posterchild for overzealous armchair lawyers that are more interested in suing than resolving the problem. These are the types of people that directly contribute to the problem of the legal system. A system that allows any assclown to agressively pursue a lawsuit while intentionally ignoring and refusing the easy solution. Worse, refusing a solution that would have been required of him had it gone to court.
The first mail from Richard Buss and his ultimatum.
This seems abundantly simple to me. If he actually dragged this to a court, he would have to file a document proving they own the image. Rather than do this, I ask for him to prove it and avoid all the headache. All he had to do was point out of one of the numerous sites in his spammy signature and told me that the girl in the picture was named "tawnee stone", and I could have put two and two together. Instead, he decides to fight this as if he has some secret desire to be macho by waving his penis like a gavel.
Shut him "up"? Shut him "down"? Who knows...
And I have the case record to back it =)
No matter how he meant it, this came across as purely disgusting. What is interesting here is that he threatens to report us to the police for the image being "kiddie porn", yet maintains that his company holds the copyright to it. So if this image is his and the girl isn't 18, that means that Lightspeed Media sells child pornography. If the girl is 18, then he is violating a wide range of laws depending on state and federal law that including filing a false police report, harassment, and malicious prosecution. If this ever went past the initial complaint, he would likely be guilty of obstruction of justice and perjury, all in order to "seriously fuck up [my] life". What a reputable business.
Besides missing the point of the web page, harassment and threatening us in such a manner as his previous mail suggests isn't a right.
Despite being warned that this mail would be published, Richard Buss shows what kind of person he is, and what kind of company Lightspeed Media is. But let me guess, he did so thinking he could threaten another lawsuit...
How can someone blatantly threaten to break the law in attempt to make my life hell, and not expect me to fight back?
Err, didn't he already do this when he cc'd his lawyer? Thanks for the heads up.
Acts like a quack.. sounds like a quack...
After all this headache, he provides the one thing I asked for originally. Why do I have to pull teeth to get people to resolve this simply and to their satisfaction?
Oh yeah, hope he considers everything...
No.. no you don't.
And of course, he didn't reply.
Jun 17, 2004 - I noticed that Richard's personal page uses images copyrighted by other people, and I find this terribly ironic. Check out his picture page and notice the thumbnail of the two girls kissing, labeled "Adventure Weekend Phoenix 2003". This image is copyrighted to Tanya Chalkin and can be obtained in poster format from allposters.com. Since Richard shows that copyright law is only there to serve his purpose, I am restoring the image he whined about.
May 27, 2005 - Looks like Lightspeed Media fell on hard times.
http://starpas.cc.state.az.us/scripts/cgiip.exe/WService=wsbroker1/names-detail.p?name-id=10181014&type=CORPORATION
Corporate Inquiry
File Number: -1018101-4 AD-DISSOLVED-FILE ANNUAL REPORT 12/09/2004
Corp. Name: LIGHTSPEED MEDIA CORPORATION