From: "Sven" <****@*******.org> To: Subject: Unauthorized Copyright Violation Attention: You web page at http://www.io.com/~zikzak/troll_thesis.html contains material copyrighted by the website Baiting.org. You have re-printed our original content without our permission. You also have false statements regarding how you obtained this material. We will also be contacting your university to notify them of your plagiarism of our website. Please remove this "thesis" from the internet or remove our content. Sincerely, Sven Owner & Co-Creator of Baiting.org ------------------- To: "Sven" <****@*******.org> Subject: Re: Unauthorized Copyright Violation Cc: Sir: My wife Amy, author of that piece, is currently out of town doing field work. I have forwarded a copy of your message to her, and I expect she will reply to your concerns promptly. While I am not in a position to comment on the validity of your claims, I would like to respectfully request that you refrain from contacting the University of Texas at this time. My wife is longer a student there, but I would hope that you would be professional enough to not besmirch her reputation over what I am sure is a simple misunderstanding. Thank you. -------------------- To: zikzak@io.com Subject: Re: Unauthorized Copyright Violation I'm sorry if this seems a bit harsh, but I am only interested in protecting the work that is the creation of my staff. My goal is not to damage your wife's reputation, but to ensure that this error is corrected. College theses are often made available to other students/staff and in this digital age may be stored permanently. I must ensure that the work of my staff is not stolen or abused in any way. I have not contacted the University of Texas as of yet, but I will if I do not hear from your wife in a reasonable amount of time. Sven -------------------- To: "Sven" <****@*******.org> Subject: Re: Unauthorized Copyright Violation Hi. I received your message about my graduate thesis, and I'm afraid I'm not sure what parts you are referring to. I've never really reviewed the online version that my friend did for me (I don't know how to do web programming myself), but I know for a fact that, a) All sources were correctly cited using accepted academic practices. b) While I am aware of your site and did read much of it during my research, I didn't knowingly use any excerpts from it in the thesis. The one "baiting" log that I reprinted was supplied to me by one of my interview subjects and presented as her own. At the time I had every reason to believe her, but if that material is what you are referring to and was indeed inproperly copied from your site then please point me to where I can verify this. That is a very serious accusation, and if true I will take steps to correct it at once. While I still find the subject of internet trolling to be fascinating, that thesis has caused me quite a few problems in the last year. My poor husband has gotten a lot of rude mail from people who are alleging assertions that the paper never made. He has been a real trooper for continuing to have it on his site for me. Because of all this, please understand that I am skeptical of people's claims about the paper. I suspect that there are many trolls who are continuing to play their games and keep using that paper as a basis for harassing others. I find "baiting" to be a curious practice, but you guys always seemed to not be as viscious as some of the usenet people. Your targeting of pedophiles and bigots has always seemed more noble to me somehow, albeit misguided :-). Still, I am being cautious these days about who I believe. I have found that you just can't trust a lot of what people tell you on the internet. Sincerely, Amy Dhala -------------------- To: Amy Dhala Subject: Re: Unauthorized Copyright Violation Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 12:22:04 -0700 (MST) From: ****@*******.org Amy, The log in question is here: http://www.baiting.org/Logs/Jenny/959577327/ This particular log was the second in a series, the original one is here: http://www.baiting.org/Logs/Jenny/959485373/ The first part was posted on 5/27/00 and the second on 5/28/00. You paper has a date of 1999 on it which seems strange since these logs were not created until a year after that. By reading this log, I think you will see that the quote in your paper is part of the log, and it all fits together. Sven -------------------- To: "Sven" <****@*******.org> Subject: Re: Unauthorized Copyright Violation Oh my god! That is not my paper! I did NOT write those things! Ooooo! I am SO mad! And I thought one of my subjects was being really nice when he offered to make the paper a web page for me! That is just SO wrong. I can't let him get away with this. Do you know how to email bomb people? No, that's not the right way to handle this. But I'm just so... Argh! Ok, I'm really sorry. I had no idea any of that stuff was in there. I mean, he took my words and rearranged them, putting all that... other stuff... in there! That was a serious academic research project and he just turned it into some kind of juevenile prank! Why are you people so mean to someone who is just trying to understand where you are coming from? Oh, I don't mean you, Sven. I don't think you guys play that way. Is it true that all of your staff is gay like it says in the FAQ? I've always found gay people to be much friendlier than other people. How many employees do you have, and what percentage of them are gay? Ha! There I am again, slipping into researcher mode :-) Anyway, I'm in my co-worker's hotel room using her computer to write this and Cheryl has to catch a 5AM flight. So I've gotta go, but I will call my husband later this evening and see if he can take that horrible thing down right away. And again, I'm really really sorry about this! Peace, Amy Dhala PS - How hard is it to program web pages? I would like the paper, my REAL paper, to be online, but I don't trust anyone else to do it for me anymore. -------------------- To: Amy Dhala Subject: Re: Unauthorized Copyright Violation Cc: zikzak@io.com Amy/Travis/Whoever, This is getting really lame. I am getting pretty tired of the lies. Like: If this was done by a "friend" then why is it hosted on your "husband's" internet account? If you don't know how to make web pages, obviously your "husband" does. (He has a real crummy page with pictures of factories) Also, if you are supposedly at your friend's hotel room, then why were all 3 messages I received (1 from zikzak, 2 from yahoo) all from the same IP address? (24.27.42.***) Anyway, I don't really need to hear answers/lies to explain the above, I just want to make it clear that you are fooling no one. Now, on to my point. Remove the thesis from the web, or I will be forced to contact your ISP and they will remove it for me. You are in violation of US Copyright law which I have already proven. I will also contact the University of Texas to make sure this is not something in their archives and that the proper action is taken. And yes we are all gay and have sex with each other all the time. Sven -------------------- To: "Sven" <****@*******.org> Subject: Re: Unauthorized Copyright Violation You're so cute when you get angry Sven! I'm sure your "staff" appreciates you looking out for their IP rights on material of such prime social importance. Yeah, I should have cited the source. I admit that not crediting your site when I made an effort to footnote every other source used was not very fair to you. But your righteous indignation over an unintentional misuse of a few lines of a baiting log are, to put it mildly, hilarious. Are you really that full of yourself? On a final note, I am quite amazed that someone smart enough to check my mail headers and root out my name from wherever you found it (VRML list?) still hasn't figured out that the paper was never submitted anywhere to anyone for any reason. The whole thing is a hoax, you nob. I was going to send you on another wild goose chase alerting the University, but I'll settle with the time-honored closing of my kind instead: YHBT Love and kisses, Amy PS: Be sure to check for a new and improved thesis in a day or two.