You’re Under Attack!
Stuff happens. You have fired an employee who holds a grudge, a competitor is libeling or slandering you, or you’ve offended a fringe advocacy group. You are under attack. We have worked several attack cases, and they can be very difficult to contain. The technology for delivering an attack is easy, cheap, and offers a high degree of anonymity. The costs associated with mounting any type of a legal response are very high. A legal battle will likely cover many jurisdictions in many countries, offer no reasonable likelihood of victory, and if victorious – little hope of recovering your costs.
The technology available to spread libelous and slanderous information has certainly outpaced the ability of legal systems to respond. What can you do? The first thing you need to do is find out who is responsible – and in most cases we’ve seen, the offended party already knows.
Rogue web pages. Check if any of the posted material is protected by intellectual property laws. If so, you may be able to use the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) as a means to force the host to take down the site though a non‐judicial process called a Take Down Notice. You can use the same notice process to require search engines to cease recognizing these locations.
Bribe the system (excuse us, use emoluments) by buying ad‐words specific to that site and redirecting them to your site, or a new site that factually refutes the offending site.
Set up a new site specifically dedicated to exposing the shortcomings of those who put up the offending site. In time you may be able to agree to a stalemate and removal of both sites. Setup a site listing the personal details of those behind the offending site. This is bringing out the heavy guns, and may or may not be advisable. In any case, be sure to maintain copies of all content along with a timeline of when content was posted (all content should be verified by a disinterested party).
If your plan is to turn up the volume, you have to calculate the ire of the self righteous twit who is offending you and how much time they will invest into making your life miserable. Do they back down, or do they rededicate themselves to their cause.
