For those interested in following the progress of my appeal currently with the Georgia Supreme Court as well as learning the history of this case, I have presented a table of essential appellate court case documents here.
Oral Argument Videos: October 7, 2014 – Downtown Atlanta. (Oscar Michelen & Eugene Volokh arguing for Appellant Matthew Chan, Elizabeth W. (Betsy) McBride & Timothy B. McCormack for Appellee Linda Ellis)
A complete listing of all court documents including letters, pleadings, press releases, and other minor court documents can be found in the Matthew Chan v. Linda Ellis Georgia Appeal collection on Scribd.
Because the Georgia Supreme Court only allows public viewing of any oral argument video for 30-45 days, I made special arrangements to preserve and host the Chan v. Ellis Georgia Georgia Supreme Court Oral Argument video from October 7, 2014 at 2pm.
In attendance in support of Appellant (Matthew Chan) were: Oscar Michelen, Eugene Volokh, Darren Summerville. Unseen attendees in the audience were: Greg Troy, Robert Krausankas, April Brown, Matthew Chan, and Stinger.
In attendance in support of Appellee (Linda Ellis) were: Elizabeth W. (Betsy) McBride, Timothy B. McCormack. Unseen attendees in the audience were: Linda Ellis, John W. Jolin.
The Complete Uncut Oral Argument (41-minutes)
For those who prefer to watch each segment separately or specific segments, there are five videos representing each distinct presentation.
1. Opening & Oscar Michelen (10-minutes)
2. Eugene Volokh (8-minutes)
3. Elizabeth W. (Betsy) McBride (11-minutes)
4. Timothy B. McCormack (9-minutes)
5. Oscar Michelen Rebuttal & Adjournment (2-minutes)
One of the positive outcomes and prouder moments on the Chan v. Ellis appeal is having legal scholar, Eugene Volokh, join my legal team. Many of us were in shock and awe when, at my request, he agreed in July 2014 to look at my case. He offered his insights and expertise to my lead attorney, Oscar Michelen, which culminated with Eugene personally co-arguing with on behalf of my position in front of the Georgia Supreme Court in October 2014. Everyone was honored by his presence and participation. I am certainly proud of my association with him and happy to call him a friend.
Even before my appeal was decided, we knew that my case would make Georgia legal history due to the nature of the First Amendment and Section 230 CDA issues being argued. Win, lose, or draw, we knew the Chan v. Ellis case would ultimately be referred to at some point in the future. However, I didn’t realize that it would only be a few months later in August 24, 2015 when Eugene wrote in his blog, Volokh Conspiracy (hosted by the Washington Post), that he included a reference to Chan v. Ellis in another amicus brief filed in Massachusetts.
The emphasis and argument is that it is well within the First Amendment for anyone to speak ABOUT someone without fear of judicial recrimination. And that is something I and many others greatly value when we write and discuss controversial subjects, actions, and people. Preserving the right to report on others questionable actions is core to the freedom of the press that all bloggers enjoy in the U.S.
I, however, did not quickly publicize this court filing as I typically do with my other court filings. First, I was busy with other responsibilities and it wasn’t a high priority for me. Second, the filing was already reported publicly by two friends. And finally, I was curious to see if there were going to be any court responses by Linda Ellis and/or her bimbo lawyer, Elizabeth (Betsy) McBride. Quite surprisingly (and stupidly) to me, they finally did. But that is okay, I will share this response in my next post.
IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF MUSCOGEE COUNTY STATE OF GEORGIA
CIVIL ACTION FILE: SU-13-DM-409
LINDA ELLIS, Petitioner,
v.
MATTHEW CHAN, Respondent
.
RESPONDENT’S DECLARATION REGARDING PETITIONER’S MISREPRESENTATIONS & OPPOSING COUNSEL’S PROFESSIONAL MISCONDUCT
COMES NOW, Matthew Chan, as Respondent, declares to the Court the as follows:
1. I am the Respondent in this case. In the original hearing, I chose to represent myself “pro se” in this Court and I continue to represent myself now.
2. This Declaration may come as a “surprise” because it comes at a relatively late date. However, I wanted to take the time to think and reflect carefully before I submitted this Declaration. I have no desire to burden this court with any more pleadings, communications, or submissions unless absolutely necessary.
3. The purpose of this Declaration is to serve the “greater good” by including it as part of the court record. I take no joy in filing this Declaration but feel it is necessary. Over the last few months, I have gone back and forth in my mind whether I should file this Declaration. Ultimately, I have done so because I have learned that no one will ever advocate or represent me as passionately or determinedly as I would for myself. If I do not speak for myself on the matters herein then no one else will. Given the two-plus years that my supporters and I have devoted in time, energy, money, publicity, and other resources on my behalf, I want to address residual issues and matters of concern that have arisen during the “aftermath” period.
4. Because I continue to live and work in the jurisdiction of this Court, I have a strong vested interest in ensuring that every court views me fairly and credibly in any possible hearings in the future (related or unrelated to this case) and not let any possible bias, animosity, or ill will from this case negatively affect me or unfairly taint my reputation in any possible court matters in the future. I don’t expect favoritism but I strongly desire and request that any court be fair and respectful to me in the future whether I choose to represent myself “pro se” or through counsel I may retain.
5. I was vigorous and passionate in my own defense at the evidentiary hearing (as well as through two appellate courts and the court of public opinion) and I continue to hold high respect and regard for all courts. Despite my strong disagreement with the Court’s original ruling and the subsequent protective order that was issued against me, I believe that the Court was well-intentioned. I believe that because I was not a trained lawyer and chose to represent myself “pro se,” that it contributed to the ruling against me. To what degree, I may never know. Certainly, in reviewing the court record many times, I feel strongly that I made errors and did an inadequate job in presenting my case in certain parts. Indisputably, I was less educated with legal procedure than opposing counsel but I believe the Court knows I did my best while being respectful to the Court. I have had considerable time to relive, reflect, study, and analyze the circumstances up to the hearing of my case.
6. One of my larger concerns I want to express in this Declaration is the fact that opposing counsel, Elizabeth W. McBride is married to Judge Gil McBride, a Superior Court Judge. I want to be clear that I have never met Judge McBride and have no feelings or impressions of him one way or another. I did not know at the time of the original 2013 evidentiary hearing that Ms. McBride was related to, much less married to Judge McBride. I never made the connection although I had heard of Judge McBride’s name prior. This was a point of surprise and speculative discussion amongst my supporters when we later discovered this relationship. Some of us were concerned that Ms. McBride’s spousal connection to Judge McBride might have had a subtle influence on the Court in this case. Let me be clear, there is no evidence that the Court was ever influenced by this. I make no accusations of anyone that Judge McBride or his spousal relationship to Ms. McBride had any influence whatsoever on the Court in my case. However, I think it is reasonable that outside observers might speculate and wonder if cases Ms. McBride represents and wins in this Court will be entirely based on the merits and not her spousal relationship to Judge McBride especially given the relatively small number of Superior Court judges that serve the Columbus/Muscogee County area.
7. Prior to this case, I was already an avid supporter, advocate, and well-informed in matters of free speech and the First Amendment especially as it relates to the Internet. In particular, it is one reason that I chose to represent myself without a lawyer. I did not have the belief or confidence that I could easily find a sufficiently qualified lawyer locally that would passionately assert or argue my First Amendment rights or my rights as a website owner and discussion forum provider under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Further, I did not have the confidence that any local lawyer would take the time to truly understand or sufficiently explain the intricacies, operations, context, style, and culture of my website, ExtortionLetterInfo.com (ELI) and its online community.
I want to recap the pertinent facts, events, and circumstances leading to this Declaration:
1. On February 13, 2013, Petitioner Linda Ellis, sought and was granted by the Court a “Stalking Ex Parte Temporary Protective Order” against me, Respondent Matthew Chan. A hearing was then scheduled for February 28, 2013.
2. The hearing did occur on February 28, 2013 as scheduled. Ms. Ellis was represented by opposing counsel, Elizabeth W. McBride, and I represented myself “pro se.”
3. Ms. Ellis, through her counsel, sought a Stalking Protective Order against me. I, as “pro se” Respondent, vigorously and passionately defended my position by asserting that I never contacted or stalked Ms. Ellis under O.C.G.A. §16-5-90. But even if the Court concluded that I had “contacted” Ms. Ellis under said statute, I argued that my speech fell well within the scope of the First Amendment and did not constitute “stalking”. Ms. Ellis, through her counsel, attempted to place responsibility of forum posts I had not written upon me based on the flawed and incorrect argument that because I was able to delete the forum posts and chose not to do so, as equivalent to me endorsing or authoring the content of said forum posts. I asserted 47 U.S.C. § 230 (Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996):
“No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” This federal law preempts any state laws to the contrary: “[n]o cause of action may be brought and no liability may be imposed under any State or local law that is inconsistent with this section.”
In simpler terms, the author of any forum post is only responsible for what he writes and no one else. This has been and continues to be well supported in state and federal cases throughout the U.S.
4. Although I acknowledge that the Court has no responsibility of what other lawyers have said to me or about me in the past or might say to me in the future, I want to inform the Court of a particularly shocking and appalling incident that occurred during an afternoon break of the 2013 hearing. The Court might recall that I openly complained that I, as an untrained non-lawyer, knew sufficiently enough to produce three sets of exhibits (one for myself, one for the Court, and one for opposing counsel) yet Ms. McBride, a trained, professional lawyer in good standing, did not have the respect or professional courtesy to provide me (a “pro se” defendant), not one extra copy of ANY exhibit during the hearing. Not one. During one of the afternoon breaks, a female lawyer whom I did not know or ever met before openly said to me “That is what you get for not hiring a lawyer.” This unsolicited and open statement directed at me was shocking, appalling, and entitled. Every citizen has the right to represent themselves “pro se” and expect to be treated fairly, respectfully, and professionally by opposing counsel and any court. What this says to me is that there is at least one practicing lawyer (perhaps many others) in Columbus/Muscogee County that has a general disdain and disrespect towards “pro se” litigants such as myself. On behalf of myself and all future “pro se” litigants, I respectfully request this court to consider that in any future hearings that the simple professional courtesy of additional copies of exhibits for opposing “pro se” litigants be enforced. This is not a controversial or unreasonable request especially since most opposing counsel themselves would insist that they receive the same.
5. Coming into any hearing before the Court, practicing lawyers in good standing already have a substantial “natural advantage” over any untrained non-lawyer “pro se” litigants such as myself. Given this substantial “natural advantage”, I assert that opposing counsel, Ms. McBride, was unprofessional and took unfair advantage of me and my “pro se” status during the February 28, 2013 hearing by not providing me ANY copies of ANY exhibits even when requested. In fact, because of her “natural advantage” as a lawyer in good standing, she had a duty to exercise extra caution and act fairly towards me as a “pro se” defendant. Taking unfair advantage of a “pro se” litigant can result in unintended consequences. In my view, she wasn’t “doing her job”. She cheated and deprived my rightful ability to easily reference those exhibits used against me. And yet, she sat with copies of all my exhibits conveniently in her possession that she could refer to anytime during and after the hearing. I was forced to rely on my memory and brief notes I made during one of the breaks.
6. While Ms. McBride can make the argument that she could not immediately leave the courtroom to provide me copies of any court exhibits, the Court amply provided her at least two substantial breaks for her to correct this alleged “oversight”. Despite my open complaints in court (which are in the transcript), she chose not to do so. For this, I do not blame her client, Ms. Ellis, for this. I place full responsibility and blame upon Ms. McBride. She is a lawyer in good standing and has practiced law for many years. She is not a newcomer to courtroom procedure. She knows better and she deliberately cheated to gain unfair advantage against me.
7. Further, there is no good argument that she can make for not providing copies of the exhibits to me AFTER the hearing. I reached out to her several times by phone and email (Exhibits A & B). She was nonresponsive and completely ignored me. Her actions (or lack thereof) were willful, irresponsible, unprofessional, and unfair. It greatly delayed and hurt my (and my lawyers’) efforts to properly evaluate my appellate position for many months. My grievance and complaints against Ms. McBride might be beyond this Court’s jurisdiction but nonetheless I state this here and document it for the record.
8. During the days and weeks following the hearing, I sought and received legal advice of whether I should appeal my case or not. I felt that most appellate cases are generally costly, uphill battles where lower court decisions are often upheld. I was fully aware of this and it was told to me by my appellate lawyers. For any appellate lawyer to fairly evaluate my case, he would need to see the evidence (exhibits) that was used against me. However, I did not have them due to Ms. McBride’s disregard, disrespect, and professional misconduct towards me as “pro se” defendant.
9. Shortly after the original hearing, I (still acting in “pro se” capacity) attempted to contact Ms. McBride four times. Twice by telephone (when I left voice messages with her assistant) and twice by email (Exhibits A & B) I tried to retrieve a draft copy of the final protective order and copies of Ms. Ellis’ court exhibits. I also inquired as to whether or not she wanted to jointly order the court transcript. She was nonresponsive and ignored me every time.
10. Although the Court announced a general ruling at the conclusion of the 2013 hearing, I had no specific instructions and the order had not been immediately written. As such, I, as “pro se” defendant, appropriately sought to inform and advise Ms. McBride to write an appropriate and reasonable order that was not overbroad and one that would not likely result in an appeal filed against her client. I clearly did not want a protective order issued against me but, if necessary, I was prepared to accept a minimal protective order as a compromise. I wanted to make sure that any court order against me was fair, reasonable, lawful, and constitutional. Unfortunately, the final order as written by Ms. McBride and issued by the Court on March 6, 2013 was not. This was not only my opinion. It was the opinion of many lawyers (including First Amendment legal scholars) which greatly influenced me to initiate the appellate process against Ms. Ellis.
11. As I stated, Ms. McBride had the responsibility to ensure that a reasonable and fair court order was written as to not compel me to appeal the case against Ms. Ellis. That would result in unnecessary legal cost and expense for both me and her client. It would not surprise me if Ms. Ellis has since become unhappy with Ms. McBride. Ms. McBride’s poor and unprofessional choice to ignore my requests to see her draft of the protective order and deny me copies of the exhibits unnecessarily harmed not only me but also Ms. Ellis, her client. Ms. Ellis did not have the legal education, background, or experience to understand the negative ramifications of Ms. McBride’s poor choices and actions. Unlike Ms. Ellis, I am far more informed on such matters. I understand the consequences of Ms. McBride’s poor choices. I assert and make the complaint that Ms. McBride forced both her client and me into an unnecessary and costly appellate case which cost both sides several thousands of dollars in legal fees, costs, and expenses in addition to lost time and energy. Although I ultimately prevailed in appellate court, it was all so unnecessary and could have entirely been avoided had Ms. McBride simply handled her client’s case more responsibly. I cannot place blame upon Ms. Ellis in this instance. I blame Ms. McBride.
12. An interesting anecdote I want to share is that on October 7, 2014, in the Supreme Court building where I was represented by three lawyers, Ms. McBride twice approached and attempted to communicate with me directly. It seemed to be an unusual action to take. Once, she called out to me when I was walking from the sidewalk to the entrance of the Supreme Court building. I briefly glanced at her and then ignored her. The second time, I was standing and conversing with my five out-of-state friends/supporters (who traveled to Atlanta to meet me and watch oral argument) in a waiting area. She approached me (us) and asked, “Are you with the Chan v. Ellis case?” I was clearly standing there and she recognized me earlier. She also asked if one of us was Oscar Michelen. This was a disingenuous question as Mr. Michelen’s photo has been and continues to be prominently displayed on the ELI website for seven years. It is ironic that when I wasn’t represented by any counsel that she would not respond to or communicate with me in any fashion. But somehow at the Supreme Court, she felt the strange inclination to try to communicate with me twice despite the fact that I made efforts to physically avoid both her and Ms. Ellis. The time for Ms. McBride to speak with me was during March 2013, not when we finally arrived in the highest court in the state for oral argument a year and a half later.
13. Ms. McBride also had the responsibility to vet her client’s exhibits to ensure they were true, authentic, and representative of the actual forum posts and not let her client submit altered, modified, or obscured exhibits mislead or deceive the Court. I have since discovered that several exhibits shown to the Court were not true, authentic, or representative of the actual forum posts.
14. The point of my presenting “new” exhibits now is not meant as a “retrial”. It is meant to inform the Court and place into the record that the original exhibits presented in the original hearing were not true, accurate, or representative. I had always been bothered by the poor quality of Ms. Ellis’ original exhibits. I never understood why Ms. Ellis presented such extremely poor, distorted, cropped, and marked up exhibits. Conversely, I presented to the Court very “clean”, organized, and easily readable exhibits. It was only after the Supreme Court reversed the order on March 27, 2015 and Ms. Ellis’ continued to make defamatory public statements about me in the media and press as a “stalker” and “cyberstalker” did I finally feel compelled to go into the forum archives (hidden from public view) and personally review every single exhibit she submitted against me at its original online source. I was informed very early on by my appellate lawyers that no new evidence could be submitted during the appellate process. Thus, no matter how poor quality or cropped the original exhibits were, they were the only ones allowed to be discussed and referenced in appellate briefs. I did not like that but I respected the rules. It would be two years later in April 2015 (after Ms. Ellis’ public defamatory statements against me would not cease) that I finally decided to compare and analyze Ms. Ellis’ poor-quality exhibits with the original source material online.
15. Although I prevailed in the Supreme Court, there were still matters of public perception and my online reputation I wanted to rectify. Ms. Ellis seemed determined to defame me and my reputation even after the Supreme Court decision. There is no denying that my own writings in prior forum posts and one video don’t paint me in a flattering light. I (along with my supporters) became very unhappy with Ms. Ellis’ continued online antics of taking my words entirely out-of-context and distorting the actual meanings. Because Ms. Ellis used such tactics publicly as her primary weapon against me to damage my online reputation, I had to discover for myself how far she took it with the original court exhibits. What I discovered in the forum archives when compared to her court exhibits was upsetting to me.
16. In Exhibit C, my comment about Ms. Ellis being “dead right” seems to stand alone. However, my comment is actually an open response to April Brown’s comment from June 23, 2012 which was cropped out of the court exhibit and not at all directed to Ms. Ellis. The cropping and omission was not an accident.
17. In Exhibit D, the court exhibit implies that April Brown embedded the “death” lyrics of the “Hearse Song” in the forum post. And yet the actual forum post (below the court exhibit version), never had any “death lyrics” whatsoever. It was simply a lone posting of a “Hearse Song” YouTube video. I included the follow-up post to the YouTube video which clearly shows April Brown’s comments that have NOTHING to do with death or violence. The addition of the “death lyrics” was intentional.
18. In Exhibit E, I provide the first three never-before-shown posts of “Ellis – Get Ready – We Are Coming After You!” as the originating context for that thread of discussion. Ms. Ellis emphasized (through an oval mark) that boisterous topic title. And yet, if the Court reads the first three posts, it has to do with April Brown’s moral outrage over Kalka & Baer’s (Ms. Ellis’ attorneys) $100,000 demand letter issued on behalf of Ms. Ellis to a book author over an unknowing sharing of her poem. Part of the argument for my position in my appeal was that the Court was unable to fully view the true and full context of the exhibits because what Ms. Ellis presented was cropped, modified, obscured, or out-of-context.
19. In Exhibit F, Ms. Ellis presented her exhibit as if it were “current” as of the February 28, 2013 hearing that ELI user, Robert Krausankas, posted a photo of her home and Ms. McBride implied that it was still online. And yet in the forum archives, the full post shows that as of January 17, 2013, Mr. Krausankas modified the post to display only the hyperlink, not the photo. In other words, on February 13, 2013 when Ms. Ellis applied for the Ex-Parte Temporary Protective Order, she made the false statement in her petition that the photo of her home was still being posted online, when in fact, as of January 17, 2013, Mr. Krausankas had already removed the Google Street View photo of her home of his own accord! At the February 28, 2013 hearing, Ms. Ellis and Ms. McBride again made the false assertion that the photo of her home was still being shown online for the purpose of threatening Ms. Ellis. It was not. The Court was mislead. The full, uncropped forum post clearly shows that Mr. Krausankas was illustrating what Ms. Ellis publicly reported to the State of Georgia as the address of her daycare center business (Kindercare Learning Centers)! Mr. Krausankas did not post the photo to “threaten” Ms. Ellis in any way. Ms. McBride irresponsibly echoed Ms. Ellis false assertions and helped perpetrate a lie without checking online for herself her client’s “exhibits” prior to the hearing.
20. The four exhibits (Exhibits C through F), are more than sufficient to illustrate my points. I was both foolish and naïve to assume that any forum posts Ms. Ellis would show to the Court would be complete and in its full context. I never suspected that she would submit such extremely altered, modified, and obscured forum posts. Nor did I suspect that Ms. McBride would not vet her client to ensure that the exhibits provided were in fact true, authentic, and representative of the actual posts. As an inexperienced non-lawyer, I did not request from the Court that Ms. Ellis show and display the full forum discussions in its proper context and that it be printed out for all parties to review and scrutinize. Nor did I ask the Court to instruct Ms. Ellis to go online while in court to confirm the accuracy of their exhibits. Ironically enough, the “affidavit” submitted by Seattle lawyer, Timothy B. McCormack (which I fought to have put aside), provided the “cleanest”, most readable, and unaltered versions of forum posts (although they were still isolated from the fuller context of online discussion.)
21. Another significant factor that influenced my decision to submit this Declaration is that my appellate lawyer, Oscar Michelen, felt compelled (with my authorization) to send Ms. Ellis a Cease-and-Desist Letter (Exhibit G) on my behalf on April 13, 2015. This letter speaks for itself. It was written to clearly inform and put Ms. Ellis on notice that we would not stand idly by while she continued to publicly and defamatorily refer to me as a “stalker” and “cyberstalker” when the legal matter of whether I “stalked” her was ruled and settled unanimously in my favor by all seven Justices of the Supreme Court.
22. During the trial, through my own oversight, I never presented the 18 testimonial letters (Exhibit H) written on my behalf. These testimonials letters come from supporters throughout the U.S. and even internationally such as Israel, Canada, and Australia. You will find that these letters are from intelligent, well-informed individuals who were witness to me, ELI, and online discussions about Ms. Ellis. I present them now as part of the overall record.
IN CONCLUSION, barring any unexpected developments or follow-up responses by Ms. Ellis or Ms. McBride, I consider this Declaration my capstone statement on the matter with this Court. After everything I have seen and experienced, Ms. McBride and Ms. Ellis have proven to be dishonorable and untrustworthy. I (along with my supporters) remain vigilant and keep a watchful eye of signs they might falsely attack me or my reputation again. If that happens, I will once again be compelled to vigorously defend myself as I did before.
At this juncture, I do not request anything from this Court except to respectfully consider and take into account everything I have written in this Declaration. No one can change or undo the past but perhaps others can learn and benefit from this case by being informed and cognizant that things are not always what they appear to be. I have learned much from the last 2.5 years. This case has been an educational and life-changing experience I will never forget and hope to never repeat.
This 14th day of August, 2015.
Respectfully submitted,
Matthew Chan, PRO SE P.O. Box XXXX Columbus, GA 31917
I am happy to announce that I am probably the first “victim” to have ever made Linda Ellis, Author of the Dash Poem, pay real money to one of her victims as partial recompense for the unnecessary aggravation and legal shenanigans she and her side causes and engages in.
Last month, I received a money order from Linda Ellis as payment to recover some of my appellate costs which was entitled to me. It was not an automatic process. I filed a motion in April 2015 asking the court for a judgment against Linda to collect appellate costs, and that motion was incorrectly responded by her lawyer Elizabeth W. (Betsy) McBride in May 2015 claiming a full payment. But because Linda seems to enjoy engaging in passive-aggressive behavior against me (and her lawyer Betsy once again doesn’t check Linda’s “facts”), Linda shorted me payment by $0.01. I took the high road and chose not to have the Court “force” Linda to pay that $0.01. But as far as I am concerned, she still owes me that $0.01. It’s obvious that I don’t really care about that $0.01 as much as getting the facts correct. This is yet one more thing that Linda and Betsy gets wrong.
.
While I am not one of her copyright extortion victims, I now consider myself a legal victim of Linda Ellis. She managed to get a bogus lifetime stalking protective order against me in 2013 using heavily modified, obscured, distorted, out-of-context forum posts against me (some which I never made to begin with!) to give the impression that I was a physical “danger” to her and her family. She was so desperate to shut me and the ELI Community up by portraying herself in court as a helpless fear-fraught female against me, a boisterous, opinionated, highly-critical, outspoken activist male blogger. And yet, she and her “employee” John W. Jolin, have no problems whatsoever demanding (“extorting”) thousands of dollars from others for the innocent sharing of her poem. They insinuate they “might” file a copyright infringement lawsuit to anyone who don’t pay. With only one exception (against a convict, Aronson, many years ago), she has never successfully filed a copyright infringement lawsuit on anyone.)
The Georgia Supreme Court saw through the bogus story, Linda and her lawyers, Betsy and Timothy B. McCormack were trying to peddle. This was made abundantly clear on October 7, 2014 when these two so-called lawyers made a ridiculously embarrassing and poor showing at the Chan v. Ellis oral argument.
The difference between me and 97% of her legally ignorant, cowardly victims is that I refuse to shut up and stay silent. After all these years, it has only been my friend and author of “Poetic Justice”, April Brown, and a very few special individuals who has ever spoken out in a big way and make a stand against Linda and Jackass John W. Jolin. Many of Linda’s victims will forever stay her victims by the ridiculous cowering in fear of her and Jackass Jolin. I, on the other hand, am not fearful of Linda or John. Even when I was under the protective order, I was aggravated and pissed at them, not fearful. To find out more about John Jolin’s latest shenanigans, I encourage you to visit copyright-trolls.com for the latest discoveries uncovered by Robert Krausankas.
My appeal case was not a silent affair where I huddled in a small, dark room depending and praying for my lawyer to miraculously save me. I was entirely active and deeply involved throughout the entire two-year process. I did not let a detail like my being a non-lawyer from getting into the trenches. I had eyes, ears, brain, mouth, telephone, computer, keyboard, email, and Internet connection, I was going to use everything I had access to. I was not passive. I was constantly thinking, analyzing, brainstorming, strategizing, and trying out offbeat ideas to fight back.
Linda hated all the critical and insulting dialog on the Linda Ellis / Linda Lyrics / Dash Poem Letter Forum launched in 2012. She managed (through her court-submitted evidence manipulations) to shut that forum down in March 2013. (It has since been restored as a READ-ONLY forum in April 2015). But because of my unanimous legal win at the Georgia Supreme Court, this stage of the legal fight is over. However, I do not take things for granted. Linda is probably pissed that she had to pay my appellate costs and I am guessing that is why she shorted me $0.01. If it was an intentional passive-aggressive act on her part, it has obviously backfired. My supporters and I remain vigilant. It is never over until it is truly over.
I do not trust Linda or her lawyers, My supporters help me maintain a watchful eye on them. I think they should know by now if they want to reinstate any legal or reputational attacks against me or my team in any way, they can expect us to rally and engage in a very hard and public fight.
Linda may have been legally ignorant in some aspects of the ordeal we went through but her two lawyers SHOULD HAVE KNOWN BETTER. This was ENTIRELY PREVENTABLE. They were either too STUPID or they tried to TAKE ADVANTAGE of me as a non-lawyer. I think I have shown that I might be a legally-uneducated non-lawyer but I managed to rally pretty well by being determined, creative, and resourceful. As I said two years ago, I don’t fight alone. And if I do have to fight alone, it won’t necessarily be pretty.
I may not be a copyright extortion victim of Linda’s but her copyright extortion victims can take some solace that someone (me!) was finally able to make Linda pay real money for her years of legally intimidating and financially extorting people. The image of that Linda Ellis’ money order payment to me will be preserved for many years to come.
Make no mistake, what she paid me is a tiny reimbursement compared to the collective time, energy, and resources that was gathered and galvanized to get to this stage.
This is Part 6 of the “Cleaning Up the ‘Chan v. Ellis’ Mess” commentary series. If you have not read Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, and, 5, you should do that first and then come back here. Everything will make more sense to you.
Linda Ellis (Dash Poem author) and her lawyer, Elizabeth W. (Betsy) McBride, through their unwise choices wasted many people’s time, energy, and resources by forcing me and my team into the Georgia appellate process. Although many unintended benefits and priceless relationships were formed along the way through this two-year ordeal, none of this had to happen.
But the Chan v. Ellis appeal happened, it was ultimately decided by the Georgia Supreme Court Justices, and that case and decision is now part of Georgia legal history. Following the decision, one might think it is now resolved and all over. I was hoping it might but, unfortunately, the often-foolish Linda Ellis made certain declarations and took actions post-decision that were brought to my and my lawyer’s (Oscar Michelen) attention.
What people need to understand is that no matter how much Linda desperately tries to portray me in a “stalky” fashion, I can easily and objectively prove my claims and assertions all using the proper context. Linda is so foolish that she cannot see the havoc and collateral damage she has caused so many people in her efforts to smear me. She might have succeeded in creating some collateral damage for me and ELI but as time passes, she might one day see that she is being self-destructive and will have caused immeasurable harm to herself, her “employee” John W. Jolin, and her lawyer co-horts, Timothy B. McCormack and Elizabeth W. (Betsy) McBride and quite possibly even the law firm Betsy works for.
Oscar Michelen’s Cease-and-Desist Letter to Linda Ellis
But first things first. After a great deal of discussion and reflection, I am now publicly releasing Oscar Michelen’s Cease and Desist Letter (on behalf of Matthew Chan) to Linda Ellis. It was sent to Linda’s lawyer, Elizabeth W. (Betsy) McBride on April 13, 2015. We have no way of knowing for certain if or when Betsy received Oscar’s letter. He informed me that he had both emailed her and mailed a copy to her using the U.S. Postal service. As far as we know, Betsy still represents Linda in all matters between the legal dispute between me and Linda including matters following the Georgia Supreme Court decision. Hence, Oscar sent his letter to Betsy which should then be delivered or communicated to Linda.
Given that it has been two full business days with no acknowledgement of receipt or response by Betsy, I see no reason to further withhold Oscar Michelen’s Cease and Desist Letter to Linda Ellis from public viewing. It is our intention to settle once and for all the matter of her potentially defamatory language when she makes false statements of fact about me and the case. I believe Betsy is capable of clearly explaining to Linda that she is perfectly able to use the words “stalker” or “cyberstalker” in her vernacular. But as it relates to me, we now regard the style of her usage as potentially defamatory against me. Certainly, no one can make Linda do anything she does not want to but going forward she has been issued a formal, legal notice.
I have never issued a formal “cease and desist” letter through a lawyer before. This is my first time to do so. But only because Linda caused such a public, legal train-wreck that continues to cause collateral damage that I agreed to have a Cease & Desist letter written.
Cease & Desist Letter to Linda Ellis Was Not My Idea
I want it known that Oscar Michelen’s Cease and Desist Letter to Linda Ellis was not even my idea. I didn’t even push for it. Full credit goes to my friend and ELI supporter, Robert Krausankas. He read something that Linda posted online about me which irritated and bothered him. Robert then emailed me and Oscar and suggested that a “letter” needed to be sent to Betsy and Linda.
To Oscar’s credit, he quickly replied to Robert’s email and said he would get right on it. And yet, I was slow on the uptake and didn’t even understand what kind of “letter” Robert was referring to that Oscar immediately agreed to write. I had to call Robert and ask him what kind of “letter” he was referring to! And before I really had a chance to think and consider what verbiage might be in the letter, Oscar had quickly drafted and emailed me an early version of the current letter for my review. I was pleasantly surprised at what I read.
Many people seem to think I am the “instigator” of many controversial ideas. That is sometimes true. But in this case, Robert wholly initiated the idea and Oscar quickly acted upon the idea. Apparently, Oscar also became dismayed at what my supporters were emailing to Oscar. My friends and supporters were emailing him screenshots and links to webpages and videos of Linda using potentially defamatory language and making false statements of fact about me and the case. And what they emailed Oscar became a “hot mess” collection he viewed and sorted through.
Linda made factually incorrect public comments about me and actually encouraged her followers the dissemination of such false statements about me and the case. It was interesting to read her Facebook followers various responses suggesting she exercise her Second Amendment rights as well as luring me into range so that a gun might legally be used against me.
Meanwhile, I was taking a careful, methodical approach to evaluating the court exhibits and taking the time to write and directly acknowledge some of the crazy, paranoid assertions Linda made in the last two years. The Cease and Desist Letter Oscar wrote was modified several times because Linda kept adding to the list that my supporters were compiling on her about me and the case. Many of my friends and supporters wanted Oscar’s Cease and Desist letter to go out quickly. However, I felt I needed time to take careful inventory of how much and how far Linda would go during her online rampage and smear campaign of me. I asked Oscar to withhold sending the letter until I could get a good assessment of how far Linda was going to go. I also needed time to write and publish the first 5 parts of the “Cleaning Up the ‘Chan v. Ellis’ Mess” commentary series. I thought it would save Oscar a lot of time by simply having him and everyone else refer to those crucial blog posts. There was no need to recount the same explanations and discoveries more than once if it could be avoided.
While I do not want to put words into Oscar’s mouth, I think everyone plainly understands Oscar’s position (through his choice of words within the cease-and-desist letter) of this big, hot mess Linda started of which Betsy only made worse. Even when the matter has been decided and resolved, Linda continues to be a troublemaker and unnecessarily draws attention to Betsy McBride and her role of not vetting her client and her case more carefully and doing a horrendous job vetting her client’s exhibits. If Betsy is able to be objective enough and step back to look at what I uncovered with the cropped, obscured, modified, and altered exhibits contributing to the lower court’s wrong decision, she should realize Linda has caused a great deal of potential embarrassment to so many people. That list might include herself, Judge Frank Jordan, Muscogee County Superior Court, and Betsy’s law firm: Page, Scrantom, Sprouse, Tucker, Ford. Tangential to that list is the fact that Betsy’s husband, Gil McBride, is a Superior Court Judge for Muscogee County Superior Court who works alongside Judge Frank Jordan in hearing cases for the greater Columbus/Muscogee County area.
Can anyone else besides me see how this can become a big, hot embarrassing mess? Unfortunately, Linda is at Ground Zero! If I were Linda’s lawyer, I would tell her to just “shut the hell up and move on”. But I suppose that is why I could never be a lawyer because what I just proposed is “unlawyerly” behavior.
Even without regard to the embarrassment issue to Betsy herself, does Linda honestly think that Oscar (with whom I have worked with and fought so many battles against copyright extortionists for seven years) will continue to stay silent while one of his long-time business associate’s reputation gets pounded into dog-meat? Oscar absolutely hated that the 2013 PPO that was issued against me. He insisted that I appeal the order and he insisted that he be my lawyer. He didn’t want anyone else to handle my case. When my appeal was transferred to the Georgia Supreme Court in July 2014, Oscar insisted on flying down to Atlanta to do oral argument when I was simply content with the legal briefs. Smearing and damaging my reputation also indirectly damages Oscar’s business reputation. One day, Oscar may want to part ways with me. But for the here and now, does Linda really want to invite more “unhappiness” from Oscar, as well?
Does Linda need to be reminded that around 1.5 years ago, Oscar sent a cease-and-desist letter addressed to her “employee”, John W. Jolin, for engaging in potentially defamatory behavior trying to tarnish Oscar’s name and reputation by slyly insinuating he contributed to my alleged (but now wholly disproven) “stalking”? Oscar doesn’t get riled up easily but John managed to get a serious rise out of Oscar because Oscar is very protective of his reputation. John must have thought we would never see the outrageous emails to his victims. But with special thanks to April Brown (author of “Poetic Justice“) and her special relationship with fellow Dash Poem extortion letter victims, she kept us informed. From what I can tell since then, John had the good sense to never engage in such despicable behavior where Oscar’s name was concerned.
However, I do have copies of John W. Jolin’s emails about ME that are pseudo-defamatory because John makes a veiled reference of Ari Hinnant’s (online scammer from 2009-2010) so-called “accusations” about me, who intentionally made seriously outrageous and OUTRIGHT DEFAMATORY statements about me. Timmy McCormack has tried a similar tactic of trying to make veiled references to Ari Hinnant without owning up to the fact that he knows they are entirely untrue and would be considered absolutely defamatory. It is a slippery slope that John and Timmy have walked. Time will tell if they want to try that again.
To be clear, Ari Hinnant’s statements about me weren’t pseudo-defamatory, they were PLAINLY DEFAMATORY. Ari Hinnant is the one person I have seriously considered filing a defamation lawsuit against. I did not do so because there was no meaningful money or assets to go after. No matter how I might feel about Linda, John, Timmy, or Betsy, I want there to be no confusion as to how I feel about Ari Hinnant. To give some basis of comparison of my contempt and disgust of Ari Hinnant, I would sooner become friends and allies with Linda, John, Timmy, and Betsy than deal with the scum known as Ari Hinnant. Objectively speaking, I know it’s hard to fathom, but in that hypothetical scenario, I believe Linda, John, Timmy, and Betsy are much better human beings than Ari Hinnant.
I give fair warning to anyone that if someone ever wants to go down the Ari Hinnant path and want to embrace her words and insinuations as truth, they can expect I will be calling in a LOT of favors to remedy the situation. I don’t often ask or call in favors but if I do, I promise it will become very unpleasant.
I rarely scream “defamation” as I know the general standards to meet the level of defamation. But “defamation” and “false statements of fact” are clear exceptions to the First Amendment. Linda Ellis is now being warned and put on legal notice to “cease-and-desist”.
I have to believe the irony is not going to be lost to my readers that the the Dash Poem extortionist who has issued so many legally-threatening letters is now on the receiving end of one.
This is Part 5 of the “Cleaning Up the ‘Chan v. Ellis’ Mess” commentary series. If you have not read Parts 1, 2, 3, and 4 you should do that first and then come back here. Everything will make more sense to you.
Linda and her lawyer, Elizabeth W. (Betsy) McBride, through their unwise choices wasted many people’s time, energy, and resources over all this. Although many unintended benefits and priceless relationships were formed along the way through this two-year ordeal, none of this had to happen. Hindsight is often 20/20. I cannot say for certain that even with all the knowledge and experience I gained in the last two years, that if I had a chance to go back and redo the February 2013 hearing all again, that I could have prevailed. I think my chances would have improved significantly with what I know today but, perhaps, there was never really any way out of this for me except by going through it.
The Truth of Why This Battle Started
Linda wants to give the impression to others that I, April Brown, and ELI Supporters are simply irrational human beings who simply decided to one day start “picking on her” and “bullying” her. That is truly laughable considering Linda’s long history of legal bullying against churches, non-profits, and other organizations. The reality is that Linda never had anyone who dared speak out or challenge her publicly regarding her overbearing, heavy-handed copyright enforcement scheme. Although minor (and anonymous) complaints about Linda could be found on the Internet, it was April Brown in early 2012 who first used her real name and identity to complain and vocally fight back against Linda and her antics of trying to compel April to submit and pay for an innocent sharing of Linda’s poem. I won’t go into the details here (you can find out more at GetPoeticJustice.com) but suffice it to say, it was more than sending letters and emails to April.
When April came across my radar through her tweets in June 2012, she brought to my and ELI’s attention the issue of poetry copyright extortion. Because ELI had only dealt with copyright extortion as it related to stock photos, imagery, clip art, and newspaper articles, I found the idea of extracting thousands of dollars for the innocent sharing of a poem fascinating and incredulous. April has said to me she felt that I was initially skeptical of her and questioned her credibility. As I told her, it had nothing to do with her. At that time, I simply found the idea of poem extortion hard to believe and comprehend. In fact, the dollar amounts Linda was asking for poem infringements were far higher than anything we typically saw with most stock photos and image infringements.
It didn’t take long for me to start pursuing and researching the matter and a Linda Ellis/Linda Lyrics/Dash Poem Letter Forum was launched as a way to generate dialog, share information, and help victims strategize defend themselves. As we gathered letters from Linda’s letter recipients, we began posting copies of her letters on Scribd for public viewing and commentary. Since then, there have been other letters that have been posted and shared.
On June 6, 2012, John W. Jolin initiated his first “attack” on the ELI Scribd account by submitting a bogus DMCA complaint to Scribd over a document that we legally obtained from a demand letter recipient.
The bogus DMCA complaint irritated me because I then had to waste my time to write a customized DMCA Counter-Notification Letter to explain that the document we shared was legally obtained.
Following this incident, more complaints and stories came in. This ultimately led to the infamous $100,000 demand letter issued by Atlanta law firm, Kalka & Baer, on behalf of Linda to a California author which created quite a stir.
I’d heard of this $100,000 demand letter a couple of months earlier from April but it was not until around December 2012 that I actually spoke with the California author and saw the full copy of the demand letter that was later posted for everyone to comment on. April became friends with this author and was morally outraged by the stunning demand amount. Quite frankly, I understood April’s moral outrage as well as many ELI regulars who followed the “Dash Poem extortion scheme”.
In my moral outrage and misplaced zeal to assist the California author, I obviously went overboard in what I wrote in some forum posts. I let my emotions get the better of me. Nevertheless, read objectively and in full context, the forum posts clearly did not indicate making physical threats or physical danger to her or anyone else.
Linda stirred the pot some more in January 2013 by filing outrageous complaints to Eapps, my web host provider at the time, that ELI was engaged in “death threats” and “threatening and dangerous” activities by reporting on publicly available information. This created a series of unhappy events for me which necessitated the sudden move of ELI to Robert Krausankas’ web host provider. Had Robert not stepped up when he did to assist, I would have had to scramble to find a web host provider that actually had enough of a spine to stand up for its clients unlike Eapps. I would like to add that Robert generously contributes web hosting services to ELI to this very day to support me, Oscar Michelen, and ELI supporters. I can say that Oscar and I continue to be grateful to Robert’s ongoing loyalty, contributions, assistance, and service to the ELI cause.
And when we moved ELI to Robert’s web host provider, Linda once again initiated another “attack” against ELI by her ridiculous complaints to Robert’s upstream provider. Fortunately, he was apprised of Linda’s tactics and was prepared for them unlike Eapps. Although no harm was caused to ELI by this set of complaints, Linda succeeded to once again irritate and annoy us in ways very few copyright extortionists did.
To summarize my “beef” with Linda which contributed to a few “ungentlemanly” posts about her, I prepared a presentation slide for the lower court.
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The Truth About ExtortionLetterInfo.com (ELI)
One of the toughest things to do is to explain to “outsiders” what ELI is all about. In a broad sense, ELI discusses copyright issues, copyright enforcement, and copyright extortion in its various forms. However, the “culture” of ELI goes beyond traditional online discussions. There is a “rebellious”, “get educated, get empowered”, and “stand up and fight for yourself” attitude that I encourage and cultivate. The First Amendment legally allows for all kinds of speech, not just the polite, socially-acceptable, politically-correct kind. Because the American Colonists escaped the oppression of the English, the Founding Fathers wisely allowed for smaller, weaker, minority interests to speak out against larger, stronger, majority interests.
While Linda wants to place blame upon the Georgia Supreme Court for ruling incorrectly, even if I had been ruled as “stalking”, there is no way that the Georgia Supreme Court could ignore well-established historic decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court which has repeatedly supported people’s rights to free and open speech (with some very narrow First Amendment exceptions such as “true threat”, “child pornography”, “false statements of fact”, “incitement of violence”, etc.) Linda and her lawyer would do well to pay heed that Linda and Seattle attorney Timothy B. McCormack have treaded on thin ice regarding what I believe to be intentional “false statements of fact”. It is unfortunate that Betsy is not privy to written documents written by Timmy about me and others. If she did, she wouldn’t have been so quick to embrace him.
Linda supposedly believes in the First Amendment and was not trying to shut down the ELI Forums and yet, that is precisely what she and her lawyer, Betsy McBride did with great success. They “permanently” shut down a portion of the ELI Forums because Linda and her cohorts convinced the lower court that I was so “dangerous” that my and ELI users’ right to speak out on ELI was unceremoniously shut down. Even if I had been “stalky”, why were the dozens of other ELI users forbidden to share and post their comments? Because Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act was entirely ignored and disregarded by the lower court.
In the lower court, I presented slides that tried to succinctly explain what ELI was all about as of February 2013. Aside from some small changes in the last two years, these slides are still largely representative of ELI.
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I believe the slides do a fairly good job in visually explaining and encapsulating what ELI is all about, not the distorted views Linda tries to peddle.
This is Part 4 of the “Cleaning Up the ‘Chan v. Ellis’ Mess” commentary series. If you have not read Parts 1, 2, and 3, you should do that first and then come back here. Everything will make more sense to you.
Linda and her lawyer, Elizabeth W. (Betsy) McBride through their irresponsible choices and actions wasted many people’s time, energy, and resources over all this. Although a lot of unintended benefits and priceless relationships were formed along the way through this two-year ordeal, none of this had to happen. Hindsight is often 20/20. I cannot say for certain that even with all the knowledge and experience I gained in the last two years, that if I had a chance to go back and redo the February 2013 hearing all again, that I could have prevailed. I think my chances would have improved significantly with what I know today but, perhaps, there was never really any way out of this for me except by going through it.
The Truth About Representing Myself Without a Lawyer
An important point I want to make is that I have never regretted representing myself at the February 2013 hearing. I would have done a number of things differently but reading over the transcript, I did the best I could with what I had. My lawyer, Oscar Michelen, did an excellent job prepping me via Skype and it was extremely helpful. However, what I desperately needed and regretted from that day was an extra pair of hands to help with the props, exhibits, refreshments, lunch, paperwork, exhibits, etc.
There is a famous saying in legal circles, “A man who is his own lawyer has a fool for a client.” And yet, I am the “fool” who still does not regret representing myself “pro se” at the February 2013 hearing.
There is no one who knows ELI better than me. There is no one who would have fought as hard as I did to get the many important points into the court record as I did. There is no one who would have prepared as much as I did. Quite simply, no Columbus lawyer I knew could handle the depths and complexity of ELI and didn’t have the inner fire I did.
Both Oscar Michelen and Bill McKenney told me more than once that I did a very good job for a “pro se” defendant in laying the groundwork for a successful appeal. It was high praise coming from both men. Bill McKenney has mentioned to me more than once that I should consider becoming a lawyer. I chuckled at the idea and just took it as the compliment it was meant to be.
There are parts of the transcript I cringe to read but overall, I was satisfied with my performance given the circumstances and my relative inexperience in arguing in a trial. Some might say it is easy for me to say NOW that I have no regrets in representing myself because of our unanimous legal victory. But the truth is that I have maintained that “no regrets” position in representing myself the last two years. Even if I had not achieved a full win, none on our team could fully accept that we could ENTIRELY lose given the many layers of defense arguments we had including the First Amendment and Section 230 of the CDA. We believe we submitted very good legal briefs and Linda’s team had a very tough fight to keep the permanent protective order in any form much less keeping it entirely intact.
The Truth About My Calling Linda Ellis’ “Employee’s” Girlfriend
Linda Ellis seems to like tell the story of how I allegedly called her “employee’s” girlfriend. The “employee” that Linda refers to is John W. Jolin. First off, I do not believe that John W. Jolin is an “employee” in the traditional sense. But that is what she testified to in the lower court regarding John. I believe that John W. Jolin is actually an independent contractor for Linda’s business, Linda’s Lyrics. In a colloquial sense, he would be her “employee”. I don’t have any evidence one way or another (only a gut reaction) but being a small business owner myself, most small business owners much prefer to hire independent contractors instead formal employees if at all possible. I believe this is also the case with Linda’s Lyrics.
Dealing with formal employees entails much more responsibilities for the business owner such as dealing with payroll taxes and employee benefits. In any case, even if Linda made that “error” in testimony, it could easily be defended as her use of “employee” was not a legal definition but one that was colloquially used. As you can plainly see, I have a good sense of what a colloquialism is. For Linda, it appears to be an abstract concept like the word CONTEXT. CONTEXT appears to be a foreign concept to Linda and that will be her undoing when people shake their head in pity.
Pointing out that Linda’s reference to “employee” might simply be a colloquialism is my gift to her as a counter-argument to my own belief of his legal employment status. I bring this up to illustrate the point that I do pay attention to details and I do have a sense of CONTEXT unlike what Linda has shown towards me, April Brown, or ELI, in general.
Regarding the issue of whether I actually “called” John’s girlfriend, the answer is a conditional “YES” although I testified on the day of the hearing that I didn’t call her. Now before anyone screams PERJURY, the fact of the matter is at the time I was testifying, I absolutely believed I didn’t “call” her. In fact, I was so caught off-guard by the screenshot provided, I was truly dumb-founded. In my mind, I was desperately trying to figure out how my Google Voice number appeared on John’s girlfriend’s phone when I had no recollection of even having her phone number much less calling her.
The trouble I had was that John’s screenshot clearly showed my Google Voice number on her smartphone! Unlike Linda’s other court exhibits, this screenshot didn’t require much context. Either my Google Voice number was there or it wasn’t. If I had believed John made up or forged the screenshot, I would have stated it right then and there and accused him or Linda of creating or fictionalizing the screenshot. However, I couldn’t in good conscience do that because I didn’t believe anyone forged it. I believed John’s screenshot was legitimate and that it displayed my Google Voice number on her smartphone. John even provided a cell phone bill with a detailed log showing my Google Voice phone number and that the call was for one minute.
From a legal argument perspective, the case was about me allegedly “stalking” Linda, not “stalking” John’s girlfriend. Bringing up the notion that I might have “scared” John’s girlfriend with a one-minute call with my Google Voice number sounded “stalky” but it was not any proof whatsoever that I “stalked” Linda whatsoever. It was Linda seeking a protective order that day, not John’s girlfriend. Even the judge said as much.
As I was saying, I was caught off-guard trying to figure out how my Google Voice number ended up on their cell phone bill and cell phone display. The best theory I had at that moment was that my Google Voice number was spoofed. After all, Linda had earlier claimed that she received a “threatening ELI letter”. If she had actually received a letter that appeared to be from ELI, I would claim it was someone impersonating me or ELI. Likewise, it seemed to me that the best explanation that I could come up with was that someone spoofed my Google Voice number.
I cross-examined John and asked why he thought there was only one occurrence of my number and that one occurrence was for only one minute. He stated that he wouldn’t know. However, what I wanted to do with that question was to inform the court that if someone wanted to “stalk” his girlfriend, why only make one random call for one minute? It was a mystery that would not be solved for some time.
There was also the nagging technical irritation I had for some time that when I make outgoing calls from my cellphone, my “true” cell phone number is displayed in Caller ID, not my Google Voice number. At that time, I wanted all calls I made to display my Google Voice number but because I didn’t know how to make it happen. I finally learned how to do it in 2014 with my cell phone but in February 2013 when I testified, I didn’t know how it could be done with my cell phone.
For several years and to this very day, when I call anyone whether they be friends, business associates, supporters, vendors, or clients, people see my “true” cell phone number on their Caller ID, not my Google Voice number. The only people who see my Google Voice number on their Caller ID nowadays are the few Canadian contacts I have or when I text message anyone. I force my calls through Google Voice when making Canadian calls because calls to Canada are free using Google Voice, not because I want my Google Voice number to show up on their Caller ID. People see my text messages from my Google Voice number because I like that app better for sending text messages than traditional text message apps.
The issue of my Google Voice number showing up on John’s girlfriend’s phone bothered me because of the technical issues involved. Because I didn’t know how to force my outgoing calls to display my Google Voice number at that time, It was a huge mystery to me. The court exhibit John provided was not particularly important as this was largely hearsay evidence and it was not direct evidence I “stalked” Linda in any capacity. Nevertheless, I wanted to solve the mystery. By the time of the February 2013 hearing, it had been some time since I had conducted any online research on Linda & John (which largely consisted of Google, Facebook, and county government websites).
There were Google and Facebook searches that I did on a couple of family members out of sheer curiosity. I eventually remembered one evening when I was doing a Facebook research on John and he linked to his girlfriend’s page. I clicked to view her Facebook profile. Her Facebook profile was different than most Facebook profiles in that she published her personal phone number and it was visible to anyone who had a Facebook account.
What I recall seeing was an icon and a hot-link on her phone number on my Google Chrome browser. It turns out that Google Chrome browsers have a Google Voice “click-to-call” feature and the ability to make phone numbers into “live clickable links” that will automatically activate Google Voice to making a phone call for you.
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Using my friend Greg Troy’s business website as an example, this is how his business phone appears in a Firefox browser. Notice how there is no clickable link on his business phone number.
And when I view the same exact page with Google Chrome browser, this is what appears. Please notice that his business phone number is now a live clickable link.
Even with what I know today, I would not normally assume that clicking someone’s phone number within a Google Chrome browser would automatically activate a Google Voice application on my computer. I would assume that clicking the phone number might take me to another web page. And yet, if you have the Google Voice Chrome extension installed and “clickable numbers” feature enabled, clicking anyone’s phone number on a web page will initiate the Google Voice call using your Google Voice number.
The biggest difference I remember from the current set of sample screenshots and what I saw onscreen two years ago is that I remembered an icon next to the live clickable phone number which triggered my curiosity.
Given that both Linda, John, and his girlfriend are inclined to think nefarious thoughts about me, they somehow speculated that I saw their Facebook timeline and “secretly plotted” to make a timely “stalky” phone call while he was allegedly out of town. The truth of the matter is that I don’t recall being able to read their Facebook timelines and if I did read it, it was of no particular significance to me.
The truth of the matter was there was no nefarious move on my part whatsoever to intentionally call (much less “stalk”) anyone whether it be Linda, John, or his girlfriend. If I had anything to communicate directly to Linda or John, it would be very easy to do. Quite simply, the Google Voice call was a weird, untimely accident stemming from an innocent mouse click not knowing that I would activate the “Click to Call” live-link feature.
As most people know, any cell phone connections automatically default to a 1-minute minimum when shown on a cell phone bill. It was likely a 5-second connection when I discovered the mishap and disconnected.
This is Part 3 of the “Cleaning Up the ‘Chan v. Ellis’ Mess” commentary series. In Parts 1 and 2, I revealed how we recently discovered that many court exhibits Linda Ellis provided were of poor quality, flawed, altered, and incomplete. I believe it was a sneaky, intentional act by Linda to shield or skew certain facts that she did not want the lower court to see or know. Her lawyer, Elizabeth W. (Betsy) McBride did not do herself any favors by failing to vet her client’s so-called exhibits. The ELI support group saw her performance in the court transcript, the legal briefs, and her strange attempt to interact with us on October 7, 2014, and, of course, the very poor showing of her oral argument.
Through strategic concealing, cropping, obscuring, and altering the photocopies of the original forum posts by Linda, the true context of the forums posts were greatly skewed against me. Because I didn’t have access to my computer or the original posts in the courtroom, I was forced to make do with the poor quality, cropped, altered, and deceptive Ellis exhibits.
Since the Georgia Supreme Court decision went unanimously in my favor, Linda has once again embarked on a campaign to smear my name by, once again, providing out-of-context material to the general public through her postings throughout the Internet. I am directly challenging and calling out most of her false, incorrect, or exaggerated assertions.
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The Truth About My References to Marietta, Georgia
Linda continues to assert that my sometimes veiled and cryptic references to Marietta, Georgia is an indication that I might be following, visiting, or “stalking” her home in Marietta. In the lower court, Linda presented this as her “evidence” that I might be “stalking” her. Surprisingly, compared to her other exhibits she submitted as “evidence” against me, this particular exhibit is relatively intact albeit hard to read.
The true, easier-to-read version screenshot is here:
Read plainly, there is nothing sinister about this online discussion. Robert spoke with me on the phone and I told him I was on a date with my girlfriend traveling to Georgia Rib (restaurant) for a Valentine social event. Because it is common knowledge to many ELI regulars (as well as those who receive her Linda Lyrics demand letters) that Linda is based in Marietta, Robert posted an “inside-ELI-humor” remark that would get a reaction from regular ELI users. As expected, a regular ELI user did respond: April Brown. My subsequent “inside-ELI-humorous” reply with the “Roswell Down” reference is plainly directed towards both April and Robert who could easily understand that “inside-ELI-joke”. If Linda had not chosen to read the ELI Forums, it would have no significance to her whatsoever.
The ELI Forums is full of “inside-ELI” remarks that have nothing to do with getting the attention of the subject we write about. And yet, because of Linda’s own paranoia and the lower court’s lack of understanding of ELI, her exhibit was considered “evidence” of me “stalking” Linda in Marietta as if she “owns” the city and I have no legitimate reason to be in or traveling to/through Marietta.
I want to, once and for all, clear up misconceptions, misinformation, and insinuations by Linda that I might have “stalked” her in Marietta, Georgia.
1. Marietta, Georgia is a large suburb in Cobb County, Georgia. According to Wikipedia, the city has a population over 56,000. It is considered one of the largest suburbs in the Atlanta Metropolitan area and covers over 23 square miles. In plain terms, a lot of people live there and it covers a wide area geographically. It is much larger than most people realize.
2. I lived in Marietta from 1997 to 2000, a full 3.5 years. Although I traveled a lot, I lived and worked in Marietta. I also bought a small home as rental property. A tenant lives there that I visit from time to time to inspect the property.
3. Marietta has organizations that hosts many businesses, stores, attractions, events, and social and cultural events. I occasionally attend them with or without my girlfriend.
4. More recently, one of my Georgia lawyers is William J. McKenney. He is a long-time friend and associate of my New York lawyer, Oscar Michelen and that is how Mr. McKenney came to my appeal case. I have met with him a number of times personally in the last two years and plan to keep touch with him. The irony isn’t lost on me that Linda traveled to Columbus to hire a lawyer to represent her. And I then, in turn, traveled to Marietta to have Mr. McKenney represent me. There was no subtle, sinister message towards Linda at all. Although I admit I was amused at how it might have outwardly looked to her and her cohorts.
5. Roswell Rd (GA-120) is a major 30-mile travel thruway between North Fulton County and Marietta/Cobb County. There may well be over 100 subdivisions and hundreds of businesses in that 30-mile stretch. When I am in North Fulton County, I sometimes have a need to travel to or through Marietta using Roswell Rd (GA-120). Likewise, if I am in Marietta or Cobb County, I sometimes have a need to travel to or through North Fulton County. Unfortunately, Roswell Road (GA-120) is the shortest route (albeit an unpleasant one due to the numerous traffic lights).
6. Linda’s subdivision is only one of 100 subdivisions that are scattered off of Roswell Rd (GA-120). This large residential area is known by the locals as “East Cobb”. It is a 15-20 mile stretch that covers dozens of subdivisions off of Roswell Rd (GA-120).
7. Despite one snarky post to do a “paparazzi” video, it has never come close to ever happening. I have no intentions of ever visiting Linda in her subdivision. But even if I did have a need to drive into the subdivision for any reason, she does NOT own all the streets or all the homes in that subdivision, nor am I “stalking” her.
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The Truth About “Threatening” ELI Letters
Linda makes mention of alleged “threatening” ELI letters she received. During our February 2013 hearing, when I cross-examined her about it, she said she didn’t have the letter(s) with her. That seemed odd to me because she managed to have photocopies of other heavily cropped, obscured, and altered forum posts in her hands. And yet, a “threatening” ELI letter, she conveniently didn’t have.
The truth of so-called “ELI Letters” is that there is really no such animal (or at least the way Linda makes it sound). There are letterheads from my corporation (Intrepid Network Concepts Inc.) that I use to write formal letters to respond to ELI-related issues. ELI is not an official legal entity. It is a privately-owned website under the management of myself and my corporation. When I do respond on behalf of ELI, I generally use my corporate letterhead using a distinct font and style along with my full name and signature. There are many examples of my published letters on behalf of ELI published on Scribd:
Assuming that I give Linda the benefit of the doubt and that she did receive a letter she BELIEVED was from ELI, I would want to scrutinize it closely in its entire presentation, content, and appearance. If she did receive any “threatening” ELI letters, they would have to be forgeries or impersonated letters. As far as I am concerned, not a lot more needs to be said until she produces something more substantial than an unsubstantiated assertion.
In my last post (Part 1), I began the “Cleaning Up the ‘Chan v. Ellis’ Mess” commentary series. My legal adversary, Linda Ellis, has caused a mess for many people with her reckless, irresponsible choices which was supported by other poor choices by her lawyer, Elizabeth W. (Betsy) McBride.
After two years, I finally went back into the ELI Forums archive to find the original, unblemished version of the forum posts that Linda Ellis submitted as court exhibits. What I found was both distressing and upsetting to me. It showed not only how poor quality her court exhibits were but how much was left out altogether misleading the lower court. I believe it was an intentional act by Linda to shield certain facts that she did not want the lower court to see or know. Betsy did not did herself any favors by failing to vet her client’s so-called exhibits. She is going to get some blowback from what Linda did.
Through strategic concealing, cropping, obscuring, and altering the photocopies of the original forum posts, the true context of the forums posts were greatly skewed against me. Because I didn’t have access to my computer or the original posts in the courtroom, I was forced to make do with the poor quality, misleading, and deceptive Ellis exhibits.
In my last post (Part 1), I directly confronted and called out Linda’s false assertions within the WXIA TV interview. I am now continuing to directly challenge and refute the other false assertions she is making about me (out of context) on her Facebook page and other websites.
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The Truth About Me Allegedly Posting “Death Threats”
Linda has more than once accused me of making “death threats” against her. Her assertion largely comes from two poorly photocopied forum posts submitted as court exhibits. The first one is the “Hearse Song” Exhibit. It contains the “Hearse Song” YouTube video along with the print lyrics beside it. The title of the forum post is:“Ellis – Get Ready – WE ARE COMING AFTER YOU!”. It is the 7th post within an extended online discussion (I will come back to this later.)
“Hearse Song” exhibit post with lyrics overlay.
In the “Hearse Song” Exhibit that Linda provided, the first point I want to make is that I wasn’t the person that posted it. It was April Brown, author of “Poetic Justice”. This one simple point is clearly seen even in the modified court exhibit. Even if it had been a veiled “death threat” (which it wasn’t), I didn’t post it plain and simple.
The second point I want to make about this exhibit is that you see lyrics next to the YouTube screenshot. It implies that the original forum post contained visible lyrics, hence, conveying a written message of death. You will see below that the actual forum post was far less “threatening”.
Original “Hearse Song” post plus a follow-up post for context purposes.
The original, untouched forum post of the “Hearse Song” did not have any text or lyrics whatsoever. It contained no lyrics, text, or comment, only April’s lone post of the “Hearse Song” YouTube video. I included, in my screenshot, one of April’s follow-up posts to show the proper context. As you can see by April’s comments, April was angry that Linda was trying to go after the California author who had received the $100,000 demand letter.
“Linda Ellis and Johnny Boy – the gift that just keeps on giving. They just had to revisit the famous author. Just couldn’t drop it. They just had to try one more time to get him to pay their extortion demands. Had they left him alone, the A-Team might have just limped along waiting for another high profile person to get really pissed off and go public. Now, thanks to Linda and John our fight back campaign just got the boost of high octane we needed. Linda, you simply do not posses the ability, the cash or the integrity to go up against Mr. Big. Your history is so tainted, your words so revealing and your tactics so unscrupulous that now the world will finally hear the truth about Live Your Dash and You! little missy.”
April was certainly angry at Linda but at no point is April even hinting anything violent or physical against Linda, much less a “death threat”.
Another complaint Linda made was the title of the forum post “Ellis – Get Ready – WE ARE COMING AFTER YOU!” which was actually the 6th carryover title from the original first forum post.
Below is the first three posts of that forum discussion. I wish I had a copy of it at my original hearing but I didn’t know what Linda had as “evidence” beforehand. My team and I never imagined I would be dealing with highly modified, cropped, obscured, and incomplete screenshots. I naively assumed that any screenshot of forum posts presented to the lower court would have been reasonably clear and complete and that most of them would speak for themselves as NOT being physically dangerous. Again, I was quite naive.
As you can see, April was the originator of the discussion thread “Ellis – Get Ready – WE ARE COMING AFTER YOU!” and it was concerning Linda hiring Atlanta lawyers to issue a $100,000 demand letter to the California-based author. April expressed her anger by naming a forum topic the way she did. But if you read the first three posts and all the subsequent posts, the discussion is far tamer and largely surrounds others reactions to the $100,000 demand letter. No physical threats of any kind were express much less a “death threat”.
The next forum post relating to the “death threat” assertion is Linda’s Exhibit where I make a comment about Linda being “dead” right. As you see, the word “dead” is in quotes. It is a figure of speech being “dead” right.
.
Compare the exhibit version to this one, the uncropped version of that forum post.
Once again, you can see that Linda conveniently leaves off the quoted text written by April which my post was responding to.
“Just when I thought I might get a good night’s sleep.”
It had nothing do do with physical threat or violence much less a “death threat”. And yet, Linda considers all of these disparate forum posts as “death threats”.
As a final comment on Linda’s “death threat” assertions, Justice Keith Blackwell rather astutely observed that Linda’s poem is often associated with “death and a tombstone.” I need not say anything more regarding the issue of death as it relates to Linda.
https://vimeo.com/108666514
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The Truth About the “Cult Leader” Title
I find it both amusing and sad that Linda seems to think that calling me a “cult leader” might actually convince someone that I am one. It is true that I have referred to myself as a “cult leader”. Does it really need to be said that it is meant as a “tongue-in-cheek” title?
In any case, I did write a commentary on my “cult leader” status on January 11, 2015 titled “Can I Convince You I Might Be a ‘Cult Leader’?” However, what I left out is where it actually came from because I forgot when I first used that title. In looking through my computer files, I came across a rebuttal letter from June 2012 that I wrote to Seattle attorney Timothy B. McCormack in response to his unsolicited, unwelcome letter to me and Oscar Michelen regarding his views and remarks about my opinions of recording telephone conversations as a defense tool against overly aggressive collection calls from copyright extortionists.
As some might expect, I wrote Timmy an unhappy and snarky rebuttal letter to him in my own “unique style”. I disrespected him so much, I didn’t print the letter out to waste a perfectly good envelope and postage stamp to send the letter to him. I efaxed the letter to him and posted my rebuttal letter (from June 2012) online for everyone to see. The one paragraph, out of the 17-paragraph letter, that Linda really enjoys and shares with others:
“You should realize that creating and managing an online cult such as ELI is actually more challenging than one where you physically meet and interact with my followers. My dazzling, hypnotic, persuasive, and entrancing words and prose are somewhat masterful I must confess. I can convince the most intelligent, self-determined, and self-motivated person to blindly follow any public suggestion I might make.”
Although that whole communication between me and Timmy McCormack had NOTHING to do with her whatsoever, Linda has “adopted” this one paragraph from that 17-paragraph letter to share with others. She can knock herself out with it. In many ways, it would really be cool if it was true. Alas, I know my influence is relatively low. I am not delusional in that regard.
By now, the people who care already know about my team’s victory in the Chan v. Ellis appeal. I haven’t written a formal announcement here. But I did one on ExtortionLetterInfo.com (ELI):
This post begins a mini-series of articles to clean up the factual mess Linda Ellis began two years ago.
My team knew there would be some public commentary and remarks following the court decision but I didn’t expect that TV reporter, Jon Shirek from WXIA, an Atlanta TV station, would contact me that same afternoon and ask me for a recorded interview. I also didn’t know that Linda Ellis would be contacted for her side of the comments. That was my own ignorance and experience with TV news. Honestly, I was tired and unprepared. But I knew that I had to do the TV interview because it was relatively important. I did get through it although so much of what I said never aired. I imagine the same happened with Linda.
From what I can tell, Jon tried to be fair to both sides and he was attentive and good with subsequent follow-ups. There wasn’t much more that I could reasonably ask from him. However, what was extremely disturbing to me and my team was that Linda, once again, was asserting “facts” that were demonstrably untrue.
3. I posted her family member names and the location where they worked.
Additionally, she released to WXIA a heavily-cropped 1-minute excerpt from the 33-minute, 9th Episode of “The ELI Factor” with my co-host Robert Krausankas ostensibly to make me look bad and prop up her claims about me threatening her physical safety.
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The Truth of the 1-minute Video Rant
It goes without saying she selected the most “offensive” rant from that video and claimed that I was making physical threat TO her because of my animated rant into the camera. And yet, for nearly the entire episode I am addressing my comments to Robert or the general view audience, not Linda individually. It was meant for public viewing although it had very limited viewership.
Essentially, I had a lengthy warning and disclaimer that the episode would contain open rants and profanity as well as a concluding statement with a public apology where I said I would likely password-protect the video because of the profanity. In fact, at the beginning of the video, I even instruct people to turn the video off if they felt they might be offended by what I said.
And yet, Linda watched the entire show at least once. In fact, she had to watch over 20-minutes to get to that 1-minute rant that she selectively recorded to convince others that I was making a threat to her physical safety. And yet that episode was NOT for her! I didn’t record that episode for her at all. It was for me, Robert, and my viewers. She was not the intended audience. Remember, it was the 9th episode of an Internet mini-series. Despite what she might believe, not everything on ELI is about her.
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The Truth of Posting a Photo of Linda’s Home
Next, I want to settle the issue once and for all WHO and WHY the photo of her home was posted on ELI. First, let me say that Google provides the Google Street View and Google Earth services freely to anyone who has access to the Internet. They provide both the photo and hyperlinks to millions of commercial and residential properties (not just personal homes) worldwide.
Secondly, Linda wants to insinuate that the photo of her home was posted with dark, sinister motives. And this is what she and her lawyer Elizabeth W. (Betsy) McBride submitted into evidence:
Compare the court exhibit to the true screenshot since January 13, 2013.
I did not get served until around February 16, 2013. There was NO Google Street PHOTO posted at time I was served. In fact, it was a good month BEFORE I was served with a lawsuit. In January 2013, the Google Street Photo post was changed to show that underlying Google link to that photo because of her complaint to Eapps (my web hosting provider at that time). We didn’t have to remove the Google Street View Photo but we did in January 2013.
Notice all the WHITE SPACE in the court exhibit. Compare that to the true screenshot that includes the full comments and context of that post. Robert was investigating Linda’s reported business, Kindercare Learning Centers, Inc. which listed the Preakness Ct. address. Robert clearly and plainly lists a link to Cortera.com of where he retrieved that information. It led Robert to identifying a peculiar type of building for a daycare center.
Robert comments:
“and why in the world would a KinderCare center have the same address…is she running a daycare there as well…hmmm pet rescue/rehab, nursing home and daycare center…along with the trolling operation..”
It was known by ELI that Linda had commendable interests in animal rescue and caring for her elderly mother. But Robert (as all of us did) found it peculiar that a Daycare Center would be a residential address.
Please note the topic discussion title: Re: The $100K Bryan Baer / Linda Ellis Lawyer Extortion Letter!
Robert’s post of Linda’s Google Street View photo was clearly part of a much larger discussion of her $100,000 demand letter against a California-based author. But all of that was conveniently and intentionally obscured by Linda where her lawyer, Betsy, did not vet that exhibit at all. I did not have access to my computer and I didn’t get the exhibit in advance to be able to research and refute it publicly until today. (Side comment: Once the hearing was completed, neither side was able to submit new evidence which is why I didn’t bother to post this earlier.)
Nevertheless, even with the court exhibit version, anyone can plainly see it was “BuddhaPi”, not Matthew Chan that made that post.
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The Truth of Posting Linda’s Family Information and Financial Information
Next, I want to show the court exhibit Linda provided.
The court exhibit is largely intact but with drawn emphasis on portions of the exhibit favorable to Linda.
As you can plainly see, no information was given about her family members besides Linda and her husband’s name and age (public information). “Roswell Downs” was not revealed (at that time) to be her subdivision. And “Planters” and “Kipling” has no significance in itself. The “MEE Museum” had no public significance either until Linda herself revealed it in court records. Even if I had posted and revealed everything, it is undisputed that it was all publicly available information gleaned from Google searches, social media searches, and county government databases.
I did write an “open letter” but I never knew if she truly ever saw or read it until the day of our hearing in February 2013. I did “threaten” her in the sense I would publish publicly-available information but there was no threat of physical violence or personal safety.
This all ties back to Linda’s misleading on-air statements (and elsewhere online) that I had posted information on her family members, where “they” worked, and releasing “personal financial information”. At long last, the full context is finally shown and explained here.
As a side comment, Linda has actually forced out into the public eye the very personal information she prefers to stay undisclosed through her own foolish and irresponsible choices, actions, and personal comments against me. I honestly wanted to leave this alone but even after the court decision, she has taken to the court of public opinion. And so, here we are again at it. What a time and energy suck this is.
I was planning on leaving all of this alone until she decided to recklessly post misleading public accusations and complaints about me of things I did not do. Or certainly, not the in the proper context of how and why I did it. She has forced all this information into court records through court testimony, exhibits, transcript, oral argument, and the entire appellate process. It would have been much better if she had just left it all alone.
This ends Part 1 of “Cleaning up the Chan v. Ellis Mess”. Read Part 2.
As we enter February 2015, the anticipation of the decision from the Georgia Supreme Court on my appeal grows with each passing week. Based on our estimates, the time for their decision is fairly imminent. By imminent, I would be surprised if we didn’t get a decision by the end of March 2015. As we wait for the decision, I wanted to take some time revisit notable comments made by a legal/lawyer blogger in support of my case.
On October 10, 2014, Seattle attorney Venkat Balasubramani wrote a legal commentary titled, “When Does Online Criticism Become ‘Stalking’?” on law professor Eric Goldman’s Technology & Marketing Law Blog. I’ve been an occasional reader of Professor Goldman’s Technology & Marketing Law blog because I have both a personal and professional interest in both Technology and Marketing Law. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that my case was a topic of interest for them.
As a matter of disclosure, I have never met or communicated with Venkat Balasubramani or Eric Goldman. I have no relationship with either of them. As far as I know, Venkat has no particular inclination to be biased towards me or my legal adversary, Dash Poet Linda Ellis. It appears his interest in my case is entirely professional and his comments reflect that.
Given this, I carefully read his impressions of my case. And while Venkat does not explicitly state how many or which of the court documents he actually read, it certainly appears he did a much deeper reading than most people who have written about my case. Venkat also appeared to have watched the oral argument video of my case with the Georgia Supreme Court.
I give extra weight to Venkat’s legal commentary because he appears to be an experienced lawyer that doesn’t have a vested interest in the outcome of my case one way or another.
Venkat does an excellent job recapping ELI’s history, my background, and the events that led to the original hearing.
This is an online harassment dispute. Ellis, the plaintiff/petitioner, is the author of a poem called “The Dash”. She has achieved some degree of public figure status through the poem’s notoriety. The poem is about a person who speaks at a funeral, and Ellis encourages people to recite (but not publish) the poem. According to Chan, the defendant/respondent, Ellis also engages in scorched-earth copyright enforcement tactics, sending threat letters and extracting settlements from a wide-ranging group of people or entities who post or publish her poem without permission. In other words, she is alleged to be a copyright troll.
Chan runs the “Extortion Letter Info” website. He’s a Georgia businessman involved in a range of ventures. Receipt of a demand letter from Getty prompted him to start the ELI site, which has become a clearinghouse of sorts where people discuss, strategize, and vent about copyright enforcement campaigns. In 2012, after receiving information from a Seattle businesswoman about Ellis’ collection efforts, Chan added a forum to ELI titled “Linda Ellis/Linda’s Lyrics/Dash Poem Forum”.
According to Chan’s brief, one of Ellis’ employees sent a DMCA notice targeted at a document that Chan posted to Scribd. Ellis then sent an “abuse notice” to ELI’s web host, saying that ELI had posted harmful content about (or directed to) her.
This resulted in Chan having to change hosts, and Ellis sent an additional message flagging supposedly abusive content posted to ELI. This abuse notification was not as effective as the earlier one, because the new web host stood firm. Ultimately, Ellis sought a protection order under Georgia’s anti-stalking statute based on several different posts to ELI. She obtained an initial order ex parte, and after giving an opportunity for Chan to weigh in and conducting a (what one party described as a somewhat harried) hearing, the court made the order permanent.
The totality of the evidence in support of Ellis’s request for the protective order consisted of posts to ELI. Some of the posts were by Chan and others were from third parties.
Venkat astutely observed the “strange” involvement of Seattle attorney Timothy B. McCormack. Any conflict that the Dash Poet had with me had nothing to do with him. McCormack’s issues and complaints with me is entirely removed and separate from those of the Dash Poet. The only commonality is that both don’t like me or the ELI Forums very much for the public dialog and exchanges that occur between its readership and participants.
The court also considered the affidavit of a Seattle-based lawyer, who strangely weighed in on Chan’s supposed dangerousness, but then went on to author an amicus brief in support of Ellis. (I wasn’t really sure what the deal was here, although my uninformed guess is that the lawyer and Chan had tangled in the past, in correspondence or via email.)
Venkat gives his opinions on the content where the Dash Poet claimed I was “dangerous” to her.
Chan was admittedly antagonistic towards Ellis. He obviously disagreed with her tactics and had also apparently been paid, by one (or more) of the recipients of Ellis’ letters, to engage in a PR campaign to force Ellis to back down. Chan pushed some buttons. His posts did state a vague intent to engage with Ellis offline, but it’s tough to characterize any of them as truly threatening, or even intending to invade Ellis’s personal space:
A couple of posts from Chan did intimate that he had information about Ellis, including potentially unflattering information:
Chan mentions Ellis’s mailing address, but only in the context of wondering whether her letter-writing campaign is funding her mortgage payments on her house (with a commenter speculating about why her home shares an address with a day care center). The general tenor of his posts is that he has the ability to uncover information about Ellis from various sources, and he encourages others to do the same. None of the discussion is unrelated to her tactics or overall campaign–it may be personal, but it’s only personal because Chan doesn’t like Ellis’s style of copyright enforcement. There’s no dispute that Chan never met Ellis in real-space, followed her in real-space, or called her. (There is one post where Chan alludes to being in the same part of town as Ellis, but the two never crossed paths.) Nor is their any dispute that any of the ELI commenters engaged in these acts.
After sharing his opinion on the allegedly “dangerous” content, Venkat comments on the permanent protective order.
The court issues a permanent order against Chan, in part based on Chan’s supposed violations of the (ex parte) temporary order. Chan appealed. By request of his counsel, the appeal was transferred from the Georgia court of appeals to its supreme court. (Prof. Volokh participated as amicus on behalf of the EFF and Aaron Caplan, a law prof at Loyola who has written a bunch on how these types of ex parte no-contact orders can raise First Amendment issues.) The trial court’s order is striking in its breadth:
I am cautiously optimistic that the Georgia Supreme Court will formally recognize the merits of my arguments that the lower court ignored and disregarded. Nevertheless, I also understand that appeals are always an uphill battle for any appellant. Given this, it is reassuring to read Venkat’s assessment of the problems of the protective order.
It’s fairly obvious that this order has little chance of surviving unscathed. Three of the most glaring problems are: (1) even assuming some posts by Chan did make Ellis reasonably fearful for her safety, there is no basis to remove the other posts; (2) banning Chan from talking about Ellis in the future is a prior restraint; and (3) Chan is not responsible for the comments posted by others and neither the content of these posts nor his failure to remove them should form the basis of liability to Chan (nor should he be required to remove their posts).
Venkat provides further analysis by asking some very important questions that I believe the Georgia Supreme Court will acknowledge and answer.
More broadly, the order raises a question about what is enough to constitute a threat under the Georgia statute. Is a threat to cause her non-physical harm sufficient? Given that it is a stalking statute and references “safety,” one would think the answer would be no. Perhaps someone who engages in repeated one-to-one contacts or physical conduct can run afoul of the statute by communicating statements that are ambiguous threats, but there wasn’t any course of conduct or repeated contact here. Threatening to harm her business interests or her reputation should not suffice. Does disclosing Ellis’s personal information change the analysis? Given that her information is publicly available, the answer here should be no as well. (As a sidenote, the cases would give Chan and ELI wide berth from a defamation standpoint to characterize Ellis’s tactics as trolling or extortionate.)
As I have stated, the Dash Poet played the “frightened female and mother” card to garner sympathy from the local court. It absolutely worked. Venkat picked up on that undertone presented by the Dash Poet’s lawyer during oral argument.
The oral arguments of both sides really highlight their different conceptions of what it takes for online speech to be considered threatening. Ellis’s argument also implicitly raised the question of whether her gender should factor into the question of whether the speech is considered threatening. (This has come up a lot recently in discussions about the types of online harassment women face.) Without mentioning it specifically, Ellis’s lawyer took the tone that “taken in context, of course these are threatening.”
Venkat brought up a case I had not previously known about but is especially appropriate for those who would be accused of criminal “cyberstalking”.
The case also brought to mind US v. Cassidy, where a judge said that a federal stalking indictment based on online commentary could not withstand First Amendment scrutiny. As in Cassidy, Ellis is somewhat of a public figure and the posts are clearly spurred by Chan’s disagreement with Ellis’s tactics. There’s also no personal relationship between the parties.
Venkat doesn’t specifically mention Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act but it seems implied. He also seems unconvinced that I was inciting or advocating illegal actions towards the Dash Poet. (I wasn’t, not even close.)
It’s also interesting whether someone who operates a website (such as Chan) should be held responsible for the actions of his commenters that he allegedly encouraged. In other words, can Chan somehow be held liable for encouraging others to harass and stalk Ellis? Is he guilty of stirring up a so-called digital lynch mob? I’m not exactly sure how someone would tee up this type of a claim, but Chan was careful about what he encouraged others to do and it seemed clear his speech did not cross the line into illegal advocacy. The factual basis for such a claim was slim, or non-existent. Not to mention that First Amendment concerns counsel a close look at the factual underpinning of any liability in this scenario.
Venkat shares his thoughts regarding using certain laws to inappropriately reign in speech allowed by the First Amendment.
I’ve mentioned in passing that anti-stalking laws are often used to squelch criticism, and this is a good example. Ellis’s complaint is that Chan (and his commenters) are talking about her in ways they should not be. In fact, one of Ellis’s qualms seemed to be that Chan’s site ranked highly in search results, and as a result, people searching for Ellis online would be more likely to see the critical statements about her on Chan’s site. Ellis’s lawyer (or perhaps amicus who argued supporting Ellis) likened Chan’s actions to spray painting an epithet on a high school kid’s locker, or to a “virtual cross burning” [yikes .. strained analogy alert!].
I confess it was nice to read Venkat’s comments about Seattle attorney Timothy B. McCormack. Venkat doesn’t state McCormack by name which of the Dash Poet’s lawyer in the oral argument he is referring to: Elizabeth W. McBride or Timothy B. McCormack, but he does refer to “amicus counsel”. Neither lawyers were very credible but McCormack was the least credible of the two lawyers. The oral argument rarely showed the facial reactions of the Georgia Supreme Court Justices but I can promise you that most of their incredulous facial reactions went towards McCormack’s many outrageous assertions and arguments.
Ellis’s lawyer seemed oblivious to the First Amendment interests at play, trying to cast Chan as some sort of ringmaster, directing a circus of harassment towards Ellis. Although it’s always tough to judge from oral argument, it seemed like the justices picked up on the First Amendment issues at stake, and on the many problems with the trial court’s order. They had some tough questions for Ellis’s lawyers.
Overall, reading Seattle attorney Venkat Balasubramani‘s article on my case was validation of many important points I made in the lower court. However, the lower court chose to listen to the Dash Poet’s emotional arguments and ignore the true context of the posts in question as well as the First Amendment, in general. I am looking forward to reading the Georgia Supreme Court’s decision when it is released.
Win, lose, or draw, this has been an educational and life-changing experience and case.
It appears clear that Robert has chosen to publicly stand alongside me, April Brown, and Greg Troy in speaking out and fighting back the Dash Poet smear propaganda that was first directed at April in an effort to dissuade her from releasing her book, “Poetic Justice”, and myself for my outspoken support of April.
Weeks ago, the Dash Poet released a group photo of us in an attempt to embarrass or shame us into silence. That clearly did not work.
Given the good-looking, fabulous foursome we are (the Dash Poet calls us “cyberbullies” because we speak out about and against her nasty copyright extortion habits against unknowing victims), I thought I would share our happy photos when we all met and hung out as a group for the very first time in Atlanta on October 7, 2014.
This last photo is the four of us with the ELI Legal Team!
We are not these “faceless” people behind the keyboard. All four us (April, Robert, Greg, and I) are all intelligent, quick-thinking, independent-minded, outspoken entrepreneurs who have chosen to band together as a team to take action, fight, and stand for a common cause using our respective talents and skill sets.
Thanks to the Dash Poet’s legal actions and public attacks against me since 2013, the ELI Team has never been stronger, closer, or formidable.
Greg Troy, of CABALaw.org, has come out with his most informative post yet relating to our favorite Dash Poet, Linda Ellis, and her smear campaign against me and April Brown, author of “Poetic Justice”. The succinct title of his recent post is “Who is Stalking Whom?” Of course, none of the information Greg provided would be necessary if the Linda’s Lyrics / Dash Poem Letter Forum on the ExtortionLetterInfo.com (ELI) Forums was not ordered taken down by court order (now under appeal).
In the absence of that valuable resource, Greg decided to shed some light into the history of what is currently an online war with me, Greg, Robert Krausankas of Copyright-Trolls.com, and April Brown on one side and the Dash Poet using an “anonymous” account named “Good Prevails” on the other.
Greg’s article largely speaks for itself. However, I did find some interesting nuggets from all the screenshots Greg captured and shared. It appears that on the day that the Dash Poet conducted a “cyber-strafing run” on Greg’s various business online accounts, she made a total of 12 hits to his Google+, YouTube, Twitter, and WordPress accounts. There were two Google+ posts, two YouTube comments, one Tweet, two Facebook posts, and five WordPress comments. Based on the time-stamps I saw, it occurred approximately from 3:25pm to 3:40pm (15-minute span) using mostly cut-and-paste types of posts, nearly all of them included her 60-second clip of my online rant from the 9th Episode of The ELI Factor and her snide and snarky remarks.
Prior to this incident, some of us suspected that the Dash Poet was posting “anonymously” using the handle “Good Prevails”. This is in keeping with her prior pattern of online behavior. However, we never had “proof” it was actually her, just a strong suspicion. However, if you look at Greg’s WordPress screenshot, it clearly shows the IP address (162.235.197.19) of the commenter and the “Good Prevails” email address (goodprevails11@gmail.com) that is typically hidden. (Note: Click on image to magnify.)
IPLocation.net is a nice online tool that queries six IP address databases and reports on approximately where the IP address originates and the Internet Service Provider (ISP). When I input 162.235.197.19, the screenshot to the left was the result that was displayed. I think the screenshot speaks for itself. Nearly all of the IP address databases report that the IP address that WordPress recorded from Greg’s website came from Marietta, Georgia with AT&T as the ISP. (Note: Click on image to magnify.)
(UPDATE: This Facebook screenshot was provided after release of the first version of my article.) In this screenshot provided by Greg, we see the Dash Poet makes no efforts to disguise her identity with these two posts on Greg’s business Facebook account with, of course, her links to her YouTube clip of me. The whole idea is that she wants to “expose” his clients to Greg’s association with me.
Does anyone else besides me find her wording amusing? The words used in her Facebook posts to Greg certainly doesn’t sound much like those coming from a poet, does it? (Note: Click on image to magnify.)
Next up, we have Greg’s screenshot of his Twitter account, that clearly identifies the Dash Poet herself along with a photo! I don’t think it gets much more clear that it was her. (Note: Click on image to magnify.)
When you look at the big picture and see someone making 12 posts and comments across someone’s business web accounts, you have to wonder what exactly is the point and how will that serve her? Is this supposed to be a hint or a veiled threat to Greg to beware his decision to publicly be my friend and supporter? If that is the case, she is late to the party. I already forewarned him. Greg already knows an awful lot about me and yet, stunningly, he is still a loyal friend, supporter, and volunteer.
My guess is that the Dash Poet won’t like this very much. It must be very perplexing to her why I have such strong and loyal support. Some might say, there is no accounting for bad taste in friends or it might be my “cult leader” status and influence on people! *wink* I try not to think too hard about it. I am grateful for the smart and capable people who lend their names to be my friends and supporters.
Admittedly, the information and screenshots Greg provided are largely circumstantial evidence. However, we are not in a court of law trying a criminal case. We are dealing with a civil matter using common sense. It is clear to us that it has been the Dash Poet herself all along cyber-strafing Greg’s online accounts (within 15-minutes) as well as bouncing through the interwebs leaving her “stalkie-talkie” comments about me.
She has long been riding the horse that I am a “stalker”. She has been riding and grinding that horse so hard, you would think she was a nympho trying to kill the horse. Well, as Greg asked, “Who is Stalking Whom” here? She goes into April’s “Get Poetic Justice” Facebook page and leaves her inane marks there. She bounces around the interwebs “seeding” her pathetic, out-of-context clip of me, making a fool out of herself. And now, she wants to cyber-strafe Greg’s accounts in the hopes Greg might back down?
Also for a poet, she certainly has a way with words.
“Dude work must be slow since you have so much time to spend defending your best friend, stalker. This is free speech and I KNOW how you are an advocate, so I’m sure it will be left here. Screenshot taken so after you delete, we can show you how much you believe in free speech. Here’s you (sic) good good buddy in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch…”
Apparently, her lawyer didn’t explain that free speech doesn’t mean you get to invade someone else’s online accounts with their unwanted speech. It means you stay on your fucking side of the fence or you go to a place where the public is allowed to make such speech, not on someone’s privately-owned website. Greg has the absolute right to kick anyone out off of his website. April was the only one that allowed the Dash Poet’s drivel on her “Get Poetic Justice” Facebook page. Although admittedly, April wanted to show the world the idiotic behavior by the Dash Poet.
It’s kind of funny how the Dash Poet “threatens” to take screenshots of her comments to Greg’s business website but it is Greg who has HAPPILY taken his own screenshots and disseminating it to whoever wants to see them or report on them.
I highly recommend everyone interested in this “online war” to read Greg’s post, “Who is Stalking Whom?” You decide for yourself.
