

Web page assignment leads to cease and desist letter.  - Panos
http://behind-the-enemy-lines.blogspot.com/2010/10/cease-and-desist.html

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charlief
You have an interesting blog there with a unique perspective ([http://behind-
the-enemy-lines.blogspot.com/2010/10/can-crowd...](http://behind-the-enemy-
lines.blogspot.com/2010/10/can-crowdsourcing-scale-role-of-active.html) as an
example). Given that this is your first (visible) submission since you
registered 553 days ago, I'm sure it would be the pleasure of many here if we
saw your posts being submitted more often.

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Panos
Thanks! I was not aware that a more general audience would be interested in
what I am writing. I am writing mainly to organize my own thoughts.

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protomyth
Well, I guess if you wanted an outside validation of the effectiveness of the
student's work, a C&D is probably not a bad objective measure.

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BarkMore
A goal of the the assignment is to create a site that shows up at the top of
the search results for a query. I wonder if the student created the silly
sounding C&D letter with the goal of generating page rank improving links back
to his site from discussion in the blogsphere about the letter.

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PanosIpeirotis
In that case, he gets an A in class and gets immediately hired by WPP as
senior manager of viral marketing.

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JohnnyBrown
Law school assignment leads to takedown of real website.

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troymc
Could it be that this letter was written automatically by software using a
template? Maybe they have thousands of auto-generated sites and this is an
automated scare tactic they use on their perceived competitors?

That explanatory model makes some sense, but then there's the specifics where
they complain about the sort order: "The listing of the dates on your monthly
playlists go in ascending order rather than descending. This is just one of
the many flaws of your clearly haphazardly designed website."

Are lawsuits really that cheap to file?

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kyro
_Hi Panos. My younger brother is in your class and I feel it is my duty to
inform you that the kid has the creativity, work ethic, and street smarts to
do big things, remarkably taking after his older brother. He's got my last
name, and he deserves an A._

We were talking about what the legalities were for a class project like this
if a student were to upload pirated content, etc. Who'd be responsible?

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dreur
Wow, this is something :) - As noted in the comments it might have been from a
student

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reduxredacted
I'm going to guess that it was a fellow student.

I'm not sure about New York, but it costs more than $8.00 in court fees to
file a small claims action where I live. While it's true that people don't
always act rationally with money, this seems a little too odd to be real.

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Panos
Even if it is a prank, it is just awesome :-)

But the subsequent letter (not in the blog post), almost hints that the guy is
just a crank.

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zelliot
Do share! This cheered me up!

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Timmy_C
I've seen a handful of these in my career as an Search Engine Optimizer. I
often ignore them since there is good chance it is a scam and the author of
the e-mail may not even be affiliated with the website in question.

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stretchwithme
Holy shit. Who says alien beings do not walk among us?

Give the whatever-the-heck-it-is its $7.34 so they don't zap us.

