Just days after dealing with the technical details of the spam attack that nearly crippled this server, we’re facing another kind of backlash - people using it as an excuse for censhorship.

Apparently one of the spam created pages was a link to an Amazon affiliate page selling the work of a “couture jewelry designer” who boasts Oprah Winfrey among her clients and has a blog on Barack Obama’s website where she claims to be a supporter of “civil liberties”.  Now, she’s threatened legal action if I use her name on this website, so I won’t.  I’ll just say this:

Barack Obama supporter and Oprah Winfrey jeweler has threatened to try to shut down this website.

For what it’s worth though, all three of them are public figures, which makes it pretty hard for her to make the case that my use of her name, like theirs, isn’t constitutionally protected speech that no court would touch.

I responded to her email and let her know that any suit would merit a countersuit and, as it would be a meritless nuisance, a request for monetary sanctions against any lawyer who filed it.

So, if you vote, write-in Mary Carey for President because Obama supporters are a bunch of would be censors.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Over the last two weeks spammers created over 8000 splogs on this server in direct violation of this plainly posted TOS from the front page of the site:

6. Don’t spam, splog, or scrape.

Since the WordPressmu software used to create the site only allowed me to mark 60 at a time as spam and didn’t have any capacity for automatically marking the others created from the same email domains/ip addresses, etc. I deleted the database and software.  I’ve reinstalled this front page as a standard WordPress blog.  What’s this mean for you?

First, if you are an existing user who signed up before two weeks ago, I did copy your blog posts.  I will recreate your account as a new standard WordPress blog and email you over the next few days.  If you need access before I get to you, let me know.

Second, if you didn’t have an account but want one - you’ll have to ask.  The old system allowed for automatic signups of which there were less than 10 legitimate signups in over a year and over 8,000 splogs in two weeks.  That’s not a good ratio.  I’ll post details in the next few days about how to sign up, but in the meantime just shoot me a contact form.

Sorry for the inconvenience.