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FUGLY under Siege
I had an uncle who told me that "you won't know who your real friends are until the sh*t hits the fan" - and now that it has, and now that I do, I kinda regret not paying more attention to his drunken ramblings.
Anyway, a huge THANKS to all the fans who sent in s-mail addresses to bail us out of our NIC-problem (see below). The site was down for a couple days as we switched servers, couldn't get e-mail for about week after that - but when we did, we got a whole slough of "use my address" mails.
Though it would be way out of character to get misty-eyed and start gushing platitudes, we're truly, deeply thankful to all the dedicated fans who've helped us over this hurdle.
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Every once in a while, it happens. FUGLY tweaks the nerves of small-minded folks with nothing better to do with their time than go on a vendetta against free speech.
... actually that happens quite often.
Most of the time, we get semi-coherent e-mail that makes vague threats of litigation from people pretending to have an understanding of the law. This isn't a problem for folks who remain anonymous - in order to bring suit, they'd need to have an address to send a summons - and in order to that, they'd need to retain an attorney.
That attorney would then explain a few things to them about the Fair Use provision of the Copyright Act, loads of precedents in which satire was a successful defense, and that niggling little First Amendment, have his secretary show them the door, then laugh his ass off and e-mail our URL to a few of his friends.
And our dear little Hitler would stamp his feet, then round up a group of his cronies and take it out on whatever minority he'd have found another excuse to beat up anyway.
But sometimes, about once a year, they're a bit more irksome.
This time, someone - probably Big Hank or some Goth kid who's not as self-assured about his mascara than he generally proclaims - reported to the InterNIC that the address we've used to register the domain is bogus. The turd they mailed us must have came back as undeliverable.
The NIC, who's not particularly concerned that making their business records public is acutely useful to those who would use harrassment and threat to silence the opinions of others, was less than amused:
research@netsol.com writes:
Network Solutions has reason to believe that some of the information provided by you in your Agreement for the domain name(s) is unauthorized, specifically, the Registrant mailing address.
Domain Name Registrant
Da Big Cheez
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, DC 10023
Well, duh!
Network Solutions hereby requests that you to submit a modification to the subject domain name registration(s), correcting the listed administration and billing contact information.
Network Solutions' Business Affairs Office must receive your confirmation, in writing, that all information in your Agreement is accurate by 4:00 p.m. (EDT), June 11, 1999. This notification should be faxed to my attention at (703) 742-8706.
L. Johnson
Business Affairs Office
And so, FUGLY needs three addresses to placate the suits.
We're hoping that a few of our fans out there have a few addresses to spare. Post office boxes, mail drops, vacation properties, etc. Overseas locations, especially in countries where mail is hideously expensive, are certainly preferable.
If you're a fan of the site, or are passing fond of your freedom of speech, and would be willing to receive nuisance mail, send an address to:
freaks@fugly.net
You certainly aren't expected to read the mail that shows up there - but you can if you'd care to.
For our part, we just need a valid address to shut up the suits and score yet another victory against the Neo-Nazis.
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