The V7N SEO Blog is now fluid.

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Thanks.

Email I received:

Abuse,

Re:
http://www.v7n.com/forums/dedicated-server-forum/24612-dont-go-platinumservermanagement.html

v7n.com resolves to 64.34.161.180 which is owned by Peer 1 Network Inc. PEER1-BLK-08 (NET-64-34-0-0-1) 64.34.0.0 - 64.34.255.255 ServerBeach PEER1-SERVERBEACH-02A (NET-64-34-160-0-1) 64.34.160.0 - 64.34.175.255

The starter of the thread in the aforementioned link, Mr. Andrew Wetzel aka
GmailLover, is banned from several industry forums, such as webhostingtalk.com and httptalk.com, for his uncouth behavior. A search on forums such as webhostingtalk.com reveals several other companies he has defrauded in the same and/or similar manner.

One particularly shows several companies discussing the same experiences they had with Mr. Andrew Wetzel on or around the same time as seen at which is a 6+ page
discussion entitled “Beware - Andrew Wetzel aka Margaret Wetzel” started by another company that Mr. Andrew Wetzel defrauded.

There are countless number of companies that responded to that thread saying Mr. Andrew Wetzel did virtually the same exact thing that they did to us, which was signup only to bash the company and get a refund later through a reversal.

Ezzi, DedicatedNow, Razorblue.com, Hostworkz.com, Redhotservers.com, and numerous others were all defrauded by Mr. Andrew Wetzel in the same manner as stated by them self each respectively in .

We filed and won a lawsuit in Federal Court in California against Mr. Andrew Wetzel for his slanderous and libelous behavior towards our company. The outcome of the lawsuit demands Mr. Andrew Wetzel to remove his false posts wherever he made them. Mr. Andrew Wetzel never did this and his unwillingness to cooperate shall not negate the demand and intent of the court ordered actions.

Below are the lawsuit details
Platinum Server Management, Inc. vs Andrew Wetzel, ~
Case No. CV05-9026 JSL (JWJx)
Date: March 27, 2006
Judge, Hon. J. Spencer Letts

A copy of the complete lawsuit and judgement are available upon request from us or directly from the United States District Court Central District of California Western Division.

Mr. Andrew Wetzel’s false, slanderous and libelous statements are damaging our company through this web site hosted within your network. We have already contacted the site owner directly asking for their cooperation in the removal of the offending page over a month ago to no avail, no response was received either.

We will be filing a lawsuit against the owner of the v7n.com web site if this matter is not promptly resolved, and we do not want to involve serverbeach since I’m confident serverbeach is unaware of this up until now. Therefore we are kindly request your cooperation in facilitating the removal of the offending link hosted in your network within 24 hours.

If you have any other questions, please feel free to contact me directly.

Thank you,
Ethan Wolitzer
Platinum Server Management, Inc.
1-877-898-1423

What the hell? Where did manners go? The guy contacts ServerBeach, not me, threatening lawsuit, and he doesn’t have the manners to even say “please”?

Essentially, what he is asking is that I spend a few hours to investigate his claims, investigate the poster, and the poster’s other posts on other forums, and then remove it. So, he’s asking me to spend two hours of my time, free of charge, to help his company reputation improve.

If it were me, I would either have one of my attorneys make contact with the web site owner and ask politely that the web site remove the thread, or I would ask politely myself. Making demands on people’s time in a rude way is just counterproductive.

My response:

Dear Mr. Ethan Wolitzer,

As you may be aware, proper protocol in requesting the removal of allegedly slanderous material is to have your attorneys initiate the request. The request, initiate by an attorney, should of course cite specific laws to support that request.

When somebody contacts us themselves, and states, “We will be filing a lawsuit against the owner of the v7n.com web site”, it tends to carry little or no weight whatsoever.

V7N is an open forum. We encourage open discussion. We not only encourage it, but we fight anybody who would, without legitimate cause, attempt to abridge our freedom of speech.

Many, many, many people have threatened to sue V7. It’s like a monthly ritual. Would like like to venture a guess how many people have actually initiated lawsuits?

I’ll give you a hint. The number is between zero and minus one. Yeah, sad truth that people threaten to sue without following through.

V7, on the other hand, does follow through. We have initiated court action in both Federal court and state courts, and we’ve never lost. Not once. What can I say, our attorneys are kick ass guys.

I’m forwarding this email to our lead attorney, . If you wish to initiate a lawsuit against us, I would highly recommend having your attorney contact him.

And here’s a little free advice. Do not contact people with “I will sue you”. If you had simply contacted me and said something along the lines of, “could you please look into this thread and possibly remove it”, I would have been more than happy to look into it, and if I felt that you had been unfairly treated, I would have removed it.

This is just common sense. You contact somebody, asking them to spend their valuable to accommodate your request, and instead of a “please” and “thank you”, I am looking at “we will sue the owners of the v7n.com web site”. It’s extremely rude and unprofessional. It is in fact childish. It is also just plain stupid. Before you go threatening people with lawsuits, why not look up our track record. A tiny bit of research would tell you that we do not mind spending copious amounts of money on our attorneys. It’s a matter of principle.

And it’s stupid because you think that an email will get you the desired action. Email very rarely gets action. As a business professional, you ought to know this.

As it stands, you will have to have your attorney contact our attorney. Of course, if proper jurisdiction applies and a valid court order is in effect which directs us to remove the thread in question; we will comply in a timely manner.

You also lie about previously contacting me, stating “We have already contacted the site owner directly asking for their cooperation in the removal of the offending page over a month ago to no avail”.

That is just so very unprofessional. If you had contacted me, I surely would be able to recall it, being that I am very bored and useless and spend my days sitting here refreshing my email just waiting for idle threats.

The fact that I received no such idle threats from you does somewhat impugn your character, a fact I am willing to overlook if your next email contains at least 7 (seven) occurrences of the word “please”.

Normally I would only ask for four occurrences of the word please, but insofar as your first email only contains one occurrence of the word “please”, I’m afraid I’m going to have to insist on some compensatory “pleases”.

Next time, learn some manners, and then contact us.

Wishing you a good day,

John Scott

Owner of the web site v7n.com

Heh heh.

If that’s not fame and infamy, I don’t know what is!

This appeared, alongside other webmaster forum names, on a Copeac affiliate networks giveaway t-shirt.

I want one!

It is 7:04 PM in Tokyo.

Rumour has it that Darren Rowse is going to blog about V7N’s Contextual Links program. The word is that it won’t be positive, due to the immorality of selling links.

Of course, since Darren has not blogged yet, I can only guess as to the meaning of this. Two guesses come to mind.

First, could it be that Darren Rowse thinks that bloggers should not be paid to blog? Well, I’m not paying people to blog. I’m paying them to insert links into their blog posts.

Other companies like ReviewMe and PayPerPost have run into some tough criticisms for paying bloggers to essentially endorse products or services. First it was because they did not require blog publishers to disclose the fact that they were getting paid to plug the site. Later on these companies were evil because they were bringing commercial interests into the hippie love fest that is the blogosphere, and polluting it with evil commercialism.

Secondly, Darren might be thinking that blog link brokering is evil because its main purpose is to manipulate the search engine algorithms. Google is of course a non-profit organization, aimed at the betterment of humankind, and messing with Google is of course evil.

But of course Google would disagree with that. They manipulate their own organic search rankings for money.
…..

Good morning. Ok, so I’m up a bit late, but I worked late last night. Good news - Darren blogged about V7N.

What concerns me about this program is that it seems to go against the basics of good ethical blogging. I personally believe in blogging that is transparent to readers and where they are aware of what you get out of what you write. We’ve been over this ground with the PayPerPost controversies in the last 6 months and even they now have moved to a position where publishers must disclose paid reviews.

We do not ask for any opinions on the site. For example, if Google were the customer, the blogger would mention “search engine” and have it linked to Google. No opinion. No editorial. Just a link. Nothing to disclose.

Bloggers have to make a living like everybody else. AdSense pays a paltry wage, so why not supplement it with some V7N Contextual?

Who’s the victim?

Peter tagged me. So now I have to think up five things that you may not know about me. …. It’s kind of hard because I’m an open book. … And because some of my kids read my blog…

1. I hate being indoors. I hate computers, too. Alas, e-business is good so I’m stuck here, indoors and in front of a computer.

2. I cannot sing. I cannot carry a tune. I once sang at a karaoke bar and the proprietor asked me to stop.

3. My first love is philosophy. My favorite author is Bertrand Russell.

4. I have been deported from two countries - Japan and Canada.

5. In school I wrestled and played football (nose guard). I quit the wrestling team after one year because I detested being in close physical contact with members of the same sex.

Tagging: IncrediBill, James, Cricket, Jim Westergren & Joiz.

A lot of my friends are around the same age as me. Early to late thirties. I hear a lot of folks talking about being disappointed with life. I’m pretty sure I’ve muttered those words once or twice myself, but for the most part friends have me pegged as happy go lucky.

(more…)