Donations of any size will help to defray the enormous legal costs from a lawsuit filed against the administrator of OldHippie.com, by what many refer to as a "Copyright Troll" law firm, for the posting of a TSA "Pat Down" photo they had bought the copyright rights to, after the photo was posted on this site, and then removed.
Older threads are moved to the Dumpster forum to give y'all one last look at them. About once and month I'll delete all of the threads that have been in the dumpster for more than a month without a post -- meaning a post to it will give it a 30-day reprieve.
Any thread with new life breathed into it (more than a couple of posts from more than a couple people) and becoming active will get moved back into the appropriate forum.
I suggest y'all browse through the titles to see if there's a blast from the past you don't want to see die.
* Copy and paste any information from another site
* Hot Link a photo/image from another site
* Post a link to a news site or another forum/blog
Why:
There is a new legalized extortion tactic that Lawyers have found that makes the "Slip and fall -- give me a call" lawyers look like Saints. The victims are small forums and blogs.
The current super star in that cottage industry of bottom feeding lawyer varmints appears to be a company called RightHaven LLC. Do your own Google search and you see that there is a lot of information on these guys.
Some of what you will find about them in your search, is that it is a Las Vegas law firm recently started by a Chicago lawyer, who was a lawyer at the same Chicago law firm Barrack and Michelle Obama worked for -- at the same time. They have acquired the copyright rights of many news sites, and then they troll the search engines looking for any post quoting any text they have the rights to -- or a link to their site. Then they immediately, and without warning, file a lawsuit in the Federal Court in Las Vegas against all involved with the site and post -- asking for $75,000 and the transfer to them of the domain name. It would appear that the court is "Friendly" to them -- by virtue of even allowing them to use the system this way, and it would appear to be a big reason why they opened their firm in Las Vegas. To defend yourself would cost a minimum of $60,000 -- so most of the victims have to roll over and pay to settle out of court.
So far, their main focus appears to have been to target against sites to the right of center, gun sites, and any site critical of the President. Victim's lists are posted on the Internet. The Drudge Report was targeted last week, and a list of the victims from your search will show the obvious agenda. However, since this is becoming a major money maker for lawyers, others will be jumping in with their focus in other untapped forums and blogs.
In A Nut Shell:
I don't need the drama of having this site being dragged into this extortion, so we will error on the side of caution.
You are free to describe what you learned at another site in your own words -- but you can't copy and paste (plagiarizer) the exact words. We're smart people here -- so just give the summary in your own words to get the conversation rolling -- and others will respond in their own words (or search for more information if they need it). You are free to post images -- so long as they don't violate a copyright and the image is hosted on a site you have specific permission to link from. There are dozens of free photo hosting sites -- and they're easy to use.
Acceptable Links would be:
* to another site you know I administer, as I have given my expressed permission to do so
* To a tool, service, or product that someone is specifically looking for, and appropriate to this site -- spamming excepted.
* Spamming is not tolerated here. What constitutes spam is the sole discretion of the Administrator and Moderators of Old Hippie. We draw distinction between a first time post being spam and a link from a frequent Old Hippie participant
* Ebay, Racing Junk, and Craig's List links are acceptable.
* Youtube links are acceptable -- those link play in the post for the Premium Members
It saddens me that our lives need to be adjusted to avoid trouble from Chicago Style Thugs -- but this is where we're at. Most of the people making laws are lawyers, have friends that are lawyers, and get the biggest donations for lawyers. When we put lawyers in political office -- we can expect that they're going to take care of themselves first, and they have. The current system allows for extortion from frivolous law suits that wets the beak from settlements for nuisance value. John Gotti smiles from below on the refinement of legal extortion. We need to adjust to live in this arena.
11-25-2011 until 12-26-2012
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