Update (III): Late tonight (6/18/13), I learned that serial
copyright violator Bill Schmalfeldt intended to claim copyright on a Scribd
document I have linked to in this post and another document I used in another
post. Of course he knows the claim is
bogus. I have uploaded .pdf copies of
the posts in order to facilitate my telling of the news of what he said to my
readers and to criticize what he wrote, without forcing them to risk viruses
and other malware, given his association with the criminal hacker Neal
Rauhauser. This is all covered under
fair use. Further, we also know that
Bill will not actually sue to take them down as the statute requires. He might threaten, but all of his threats are
empty. He once said “I don’t make
threats, I make promises.” Maybe so, but
those promises have been repeatedly broken.
He just wants to get a few days of taking them down for annoyance sake.
So I have segregated those
documents to a separate Scribd account, in case he tries to gulag that
account. So if you want to see what he
desperately doesn’t want you to see, go to this account. I have also appropriately updated the link in
the post.
This is a busy week in my
personal life, but soon we will discuss further how Bill Schmalfeldt repeatedly
violates the copyrights of others.
Apparently it is “copyright for me but not for thee” when it comes to
him. And indeed he interprets his own copyrights
in such a manner that would infringe on freedom of the press—a right he pretends
to care about.
We now resume the original post
as is.
---------------------------------------
This is the latest post in what I half-jokingly call The Kimberlin Saga®. If you are new to the story, that’s okay! Not everyone reads my blog. The short version is that Kimberlin has been harassing me for over a year, his worst conduct being when he attempted to frame me for a crime. I recognize that this might sound like an incredible claim, but I provide video and documentary evidence of that fact; in other words, you don’t have to believe my word. You only have to believe your eyes. So, if you are new to the story, go to this page and you’ll be able to catch up on what has been happening.
Update: Bill Schmalfeldt is driven to talk to himself. See below the fold.
Update (II): I went through and spiffed up the post in general to read better and look better, and to add a few details. And I added a few more thoughts at the end.
Update (II): I went through and spiffed up the post in general to read better and look better, and to add a few details. And I added a few more thoughts at the end.
Hoge filed a second peace order
against Kimberlin and in that case, Judge Jones found that electronic harassment could not support
a peace order as I reported, here.
By then, Hoge had filed for another peace
order against Schmalfedt and Judge Green followed Jones' lead and dismissed the
case without hearing evidence.
In my February post, I accused
Schmalfeldt of lying about receiving notice.
I said Schmalfeldt had tweeted out a link to the post on Hoge’s blog asking Schmalfeldt (and others) to
cease all contact and Hoge just forgot to have that evidence with him. Schmalfeldt, for his part, accused me of lying
about him lying.
Well, today the evidence of his notice
was submitted and not even objected to. The
court wasn’t asked to rule on whether he lied or not, but since previously
Schmalfeldt claimed he hadn’t received notice and today the court found he did,
you can draw your own conclusions.
It is also worth noting that
Schmalfeldt was also subpoenaed to produce documents related to his relationship with Brett Kimberlin and his relationship with Breitbart Unmasked. But I repeat myself. He refused to comply with that, a fact that
Hoge’s able counsel exploited repeatedly to show that Schmalfeldt
didn’t respect the law.
So the case was pretty
straightforward from there. Barnes established
that Schmalfeldt had been told repeatedly to stop contacting Hoge and despite
being told by numerous people (including a judge), he just kept going, even up
until last night. The judge found the
conduct to be harassment, comparing it to junk mail, and granted the peace
order. For the next six months, Bill
Schmalfeldt will be prohibited from contacting Hoge by any means. He can talk about him—that is his First
Amendment right—but he can’t actually contact him.
And time will tell if this will also
lead to criminal charges. It might be
the case his troubles have just begun. He
really shouldn’t have tweeted to Hoge last night. It was a dumb thing to do.
Of course sharp eyed readers will
be wondering about Kimberlin. Kimberlin
did indeed show up today, this time dressed in regular street clothes. He plainly understood he couldn’t fulfill any
official role in the hearing, given that he is categorically excluded from
testifying in Maryland (something I will talk about another time). Also you might remember that we had the appeal
of Hoge v. Kimberlin a few weeks ago and I haven’t reported on it yet. That is because we have not had a decision
yet. So, strangely, even today we have
no decision from the judge on the subject despite getting a ruling on
Schmalfeldt. I will let you know when I know.
Still the good guys won one
today. And from now until the day he
dies, you can say that Bill Schmalfeldt is a man who was finally adjudicated to
be a harasser. As if you needed more
proof than this.
And if you want to read the order
itself, I direct you to Hoge’s
blog.
Update: For pure schadenfreude, it is hard to beat Schmalfeldt’s self-reporting
on the matter. I would never link to his
site for fear of viruses and the like (he is associated with the criminal
hacker Neal Rauhauser, after all), but you can read the post, on scribd, here.
First, it is filled with all
kinds of martyrdom hyperbole. Oh noes! This is the end of Twitter! As the title to his "article" says: “Maryland Circuit Court
Ruling Could Shut Down Twitter, End Online Journalism.” Except the judge said nothing of the
sort. He simply said that under Maryland
law, when a person asks you to stop contacting them, and you don’t, you run the
risk of violating the harassment statute.
Schmalfeldt can write all day long about
Hoge. He just can’t communicate with
him.
Nor is journalism dependent on contacting
the subjects of a story. Yes, of course,
there is nothing wrong with a journalist trying to contact his subjects for a
chance to defend themselves—within the limits of the law. But, first, Schmalfeldt very often doesn’t do
that. For instance when he falsely
accused Seth Allen of stalking Brett Kimberlin—and in turn falsely accused me
of helping Seth Allen to do said stalking—he never contacted Seth or myself
beforehand. And even when I corrected Schmalfeldt’s
errors after he had defamed me—indeed after it was clear that Brett Kimberlin
was not even accusing Seth Allen of stalking him—he never corrected them. His knowingly false accusations against myself and Seth Allen remained on his blog for months even though his own reporting showed they were untrue. What do you call that folks? Legal malice, as pure as you are ever likely to see it. You can read about that, here.
Second, as I suggested above, his
right to contact ends when the law forbids it. How
far does Schmalfeldt think he can go to get his comment? Can he call someone repeatedly at four in the
morning? If you disconnect your phone, can
he knock on your door? If you don’t
answer the door, can he break it down and accost you on the toilet demanding a
comment?
Rational people recognize that
his right to pursue the truth is limited by the law, which in turn is often
designed to vindicate the right to privacy.
You are allowed to tell a person to leave you alone. And if that person is a journalist, that
journalist can simply say, “Mr. Hoge could not be reached for comment for legal
reasons.” If you feel the need to elaborate, do so, but by no stretch of the imagination is it absolutely necessary to contact the subject of a story.
And that is pre-supposing Schmalfeldt
is a journalist. Journalists search for
the truth. Schmalfeldt
doesn’t even pretend very hard.
So contrary to this picture...
...he has not been “silenced.” He has just been forbidden from contacting
one guy. He can write all he wants to about him (within the limits of free speech such as the rule against defamation, threats and so on). He just can't contact him.
The article is also filled with inaccuracies. For instance, he writes:
The article is also filled with inaccuracies. For instance, he writes:
Judge Thomas F.
Stansfield ruled that using the popular social media‘s “@ Reply” feature was
the same thing as sending a direct message.
Except a “direct message” is a
specific term in twitter, denoting a private message through their
service. Basically it is the same as an
email, except it can only be 140 characters. The judge did not equate a mention with a
direct message. Instead he merely said
that mentions were a form of communication directed at a specific
recipient. That is, if I write “@wjjhoge
is a meanie head!” that is a message sent directly to him. Anyone who knows how twitter works knows this
is true.
He also claims that he only made
such “mentions” for a limited purpose: “I’ve only used it to respond to lies
Hoge tells about me on his blog, because Hoge does not allow me to correct his
lies in the comment section of his blog.”
This is provably untrue. For instance, on February 22, he wrote “I
wonder what @wjjhoge got by way of payment [to file charges against him]. Something to comb out the poop flakes from
his beard? Hah. I kid. I’m a
kidder. I kid that way.”
Indeed just last Wednesday, he
wrote in a series of tweets addressed to Hoge: “I would just as soon forget [Hoge's] bulldog father fornicated with his billygoat mother and gave birth to this
genetic mistake.” Yeah, doesn't that sound like journalism?
And this is one of many tweets
where his only purpose is to insult and there isn’t the slightest pretense of
answering an accusation or any form of journalism involved. In all frankness, he is not being even slightly
honest about what he was actually saying in his article.
And notice the self-contradiction
in this quote:
Flame wars have just
been deemed illegal... Any person who
finds a journalist’s questions to be ‘annoying’ can now demand that the
journalist stop all contact and then file criminal charges against the
journalist if he or she continues to pursue a story.
No proper journalist would engage
in a “flame war” about the subject of a story and then pretend to write
objectively about it.
But I left for last the most hilarious
part of his defense: the fact he wrote about himself in the third person. I carefully edited all of those quotes so I didn’t
show how they appeared in his piece. He
literally refers to himself as if he is a separate person, as follows:
“It’s not hard to
imagine that once the word of this ruling gets out, anyone engaged in a ‘flame
war’ with someone on Twitter could march down to the court house and take out
criminal charges against the person who wrote the offending Tweet,” Schmalfeldt
said. He said he believed this would have the effect of ending freedom of
speech on Twitter.
It all reminds me of a line in
the movie Braveheart when Stephen the Irishman came to their camp, openly
speaking to the sky:
Stephen:
[laughs, speaking heavenward]
Him? That can't be William Wallace. I'm prettier than this man. [Heavenward]
All right Father, I'll ask him. [To William] If I risk my neck for you, will I
get a chance to kill Englishmen?
Hamish:
Is your father a ghost, or do
you converse with the Almighty?
Stephen:
In order to find his equal, an
Irishman is forced to talk to God.
So like the heavily insane Irishman
of Braveheart, Schmalfeldt is driven to talk to himself. But I suspect it is because no one else will
talk to him.
And of course all of this is
incredibly hypocritical. As regular
readers know (and I detailed here)
for almost a month I was forbidden by a peace order from writing about Brett Kimberlin. I had never contacted Kimberlin—except by
mail to serve process as required by law (and after being advised by the court that I was allowed to do so)—but Kimberlin had claimed that merely
writing about him on the internet to
a general audience was the same as writing to
him, in part because he set up google alerts to tell him when someone wrote something
about him and he found some idiot judge willing to go along with that. The judge held that merely saying something
bad about Kimberlin on the internet was tantamount to inciting violence against
Kimberlin—even though I specifically and repeatedly stated that I wanted Kimberlin to only face legal consequences for his actions and specifically and repeatedly made it clear I did not want to see any violence come to him. But in the mind of the judge, merely reporting (truthfully) bad things about him was enough to constitute incitement. And in doing so the judge ignored binding Supreme
Court precedent by name with the now-famous line “forget Brandenburg.”
That, my dear friends, would have
been a serious threat to freedom of speech—to say that you cannot write anything
negative about anyone else without being charged with incitement.
That principle, applied
broadly would be the death of journalism. It means
that Jeffrey Skilling could suppress journalists writing about his malfeasance. Indeed, by that logic,
Richard Nixon could have enjoined Woodward and Bernstein from their famous
reporting on him and perhaps even arrested them as I had been. And did Schmalfeldt raise a peep in criticism
of that ruling? No. In fact, it was shortly after that, that
Schmalfeldt joined Team Kimberlin.
Consider for instance a passage
from Andew Hamilton’s closing argument in
the Zenger trial. This was one of
the seminal cases regarding freedom of the press in colonial times. In the Zenger trial, a newspaper man in
colonial days named Peter Zenger wrote articles accusing the governor of
wrongdoing. He was then charged with
seditious libel and wasn’t allowed to raise truth as a defense. Hamilton brilliantly put his finger on the injustice
of it all:
Men [in power] who
injure and oppress the People under their Administration provoke them to cry
out and complain; and then make that very Complaint the Foundation for new
Oppressions and Prosecutions.
In other word, the tyrant
oppresses the people. The people cry out
in complaint. And then under this rule
against seditious libel—where truth is not allowed as a defense—the very fact
they complained becomes a new justification for additional oppression. “How dare you complain about how I am
crushing you under my boot? For this, I
shall crush you more.”
And that was precisely what
Kimberlin was doing. First he got my
wife and I fired from our jobs and then he tried to frame me for a crime. And then when I dared to complain about what
he did to me, he used the machinery of the state of Maryland to use the fact I complained
against him—true or not—as the basis of a new oppression, of even having me
arrested on false charges.
Of course regular readers know
that after I got that unconstitutional order lifted that the very same evening,
I
was SWATted. Regular readers also
know in the past that Bill
Schmalfeldt has threatened to SWAT Mr. Hoge in the past, so that I have
concluded that while Brett Kimberlin didn’t personally SWAT me, I am certain he
ordered it done. So the question is,
will Brett Kimberlin put out the order this time and punish Mr. Hoge for his
victory? Will Hoge be SWATted?
Update (II): I am using Tae Kim's first name now for two reasons. One of which is that he has apparently been hired by Shoq to intimidate an ex-girlfriend if I understand the story correctly. By leaving out his first name, I realized, I was potentially impairing others from making connections that might be relevant.
Another point raised by friends on twitter is that Schmalfeldt's theory that we could just block him is defeated by his own behavior. I told Zoa Barnes to bring this up and she did, but she made the simple point that Schmalfeldt has used so many different twitter identities there is no way to effectively block them all. My metaphor is that its like whack-a-mole.
Meanwhile on Twitter today, Schmalfeldt first had a very hilarious meltdown. And then he protected his account, meaning that the only people who can see his account are people he allows to see his account. But that was not before I caught him in another lie and called him on it:
Just how stupid does Schmalfeldt think his readers are, lying about how twitter works on twitter? pic.twitter.com/HpAZ1led6f
— Aaron Worthing (@AaronWorthing) June 14, 2013
I mean who on twitter doesn't understand that if you mention someone you're sending them a message? pic.twitter.com/MJGCNiTSRp
— Aaron Worthing (@AaronWorthing) June 14, 2013
I am sure many non-twitter-users won't understand this. But who on twitter is confused by this? pic.twitter.com/FBE0M2MPUw
— Aaron Worthing (@AaronWorthing) June 14, 2013
Seriously, lying about how Twitter works on Twitter. Exactly who does he expect to fool?
And finally the account of @occupyrebellion has suddenly been removed from Twitter, under suspicion that s/he/it deleted the account. So that is one less raving lunatic off the internet:
(Source.) But there have been threats by people on the internet to unmask once and for all this account. In which case, her troubles may already have begun.
My wife and I have lost our jobs
due to the harassment of convicted terrorist Brett Kimberlin, including an
attempt to get us killed and to frame me for a crime carrying a sentence of up
to ten years. I know that claim sounds fantastic,
but if you read starting here, you will see absolute proof of these
claims using documentary and video evidence.
If you would like to help in the fight to hold Mr. Kimberlin
accountable, please hit the Blogger’s Defense Team button on the right. And thank you.
Follow me at Twitter @aaronworthing,
mostly for snark and site updates. And
you can purchase my book (or borrow it for free if you have Amazon Prime), Archangel: A Novel of Alternate, Recent
History here.
And you can read a little more about my novel, here.
---------------------------------------
Disclaimer:
I have accused some people,
particularly Brett Kimberlin, of
reprehensible conduct. In some cases, the conduct is even
criminal. In all cases, the only justice I want is through the
appropriate legal process—such as the criminal justice system. I do not want to see vigilante violence
against any person or any threat of such violence. This kind of conduct is not only morally
wrong, but it is counter-productive.
In the particular case of Brett
Kimberlin, I do not want you to even contact him. Do not call him. Do not write him a letter. Do not write him an email. Do not text-message him. Do not engage in any kind of directed
communication. I say this in part
because under Maryland law, that can quickly become harassment and I don’t want
that to happen to him.
And for that matter, don’t go on
his property. Don’t sneak around and try
to photograph him. Frankly try not to
even be within his field of vision. Your
behavior could quickly cross the line into harassment in that way too (not to
mention trespass and other concerns).
And do not contact his
organizations, either. And most of all, leave his family alone.
The only exception to all that is
that if you are reporting on this, there is of course nothing wrong with
contacting him for things like his official response to any stories you might
report. And even then if he tells you to
stop contacting him, obey that request. That
this is a key element in making out a harassment claim under Maryland law—that
a person asks you to stop and you refuse.
And let me say something
else. In my heart of hearts, I don’t
believe that any person supporting me has done any of the above. But if any of you have, stop it, and if you
haven’t don’t start.
Scmalfeldt is forced to talk to himself?
ReplyDeleteMan, you guys are merciless.
It does seem to present an Eighth Amendment issue ...
Delete