It's amazing that people remember this! Alara actually filed a suit against me, and that's when I learned the difference between being right, and being right in the eyes of the law. It involves lots of money being thrown at lawyers.
On the plus side, I later got to meet Mike (the other Australian who she thought I was in cahoots with) and later rebuilt the table into https://allthetags.com/, which is a lot more colourful but a lot less punny (shake your phone to learn something new).
Alara was absolutely sure that I'd somehow colluded with her publisher to steal and republish an illustration from her as-yet unpublished book.
I obviously knew that I hadn't. But once she'd started the legal ball rolling I had to engage a lawyer and respond through the appropriate legal channels. My lawyer told me litigation (going to court) will generally cost tens of thousands of dollars. And in California recovering costs is far from guaranteed, you have to file a counter-suit I think, and prove the original case was frivolous.
Filing a case is not free - she'd already spent at least a few hundred dollars in court costs and possibly much more for lawyers to draft cease and resists and the actual case. Either it was all a bluff, or she truly believed I stole from her. The second option was scarier. When you're faced with someone who is absolutely sure that you're a bad person, and has invested a lot of time and money into chasing you, how do you convince them they're wrong?
Imagine being in Twitter fight with someone who you think is completely off the rails. And now imagine you aren't allowed to just ignore them or block them but are forced to assemble a body of proof and pay a lawyer to convince an independent third party of the truth.
Given this was a webpage that was not making any money (I had tried to sell posters, but never ended up seeing a cent) the cost and time were not worth it.
Mike Riethmuller was the other guy she accused of theft. He managed to find a journalist to cover the issue, and that worked out much better for him! Not living in California also made him harder for her to chase down.
On the plus side, I later got to meet Mike (the other Australian who she thought I was in cahoots with) and later rebuilt the table into https://allthetags.com/, which is a lot more colourful but a lot less punny (shake your phone to learn something new).