BCSE Attempt More Spurious Legal Threats And Intimidation (Updated)

Readers may remember that the BCSE previously tried to discredit me and intimidate me into silence by inventing a new legal theory of copyright.

This claim rather badly backfired, because:

1. I wasn't so silly as to take their word for it,
   
   
2. I had already checked my facts on what copyright law permitted, and
   
   
3. It was rather easy to demonstrate that the BCSE were and are flouting actual copyright laws on a significant scale.
   

You can read about that here: one, two, three.

Let's Try Something Else...

Well, the BCSE are today trying a new one. On their forum, they have put up a "sticky" (i.e. permanently visible) post claiming that I have been attempting to "hack" or "hijack" their website. Roger Stanyard goes on to write:

An examination of our server logs shows clear evidence that he has been using software to search every single section of our website, and have made numerous attempts to access the restricted areas of both our website and forums - the logs show him are responsible for hundreds of failed password attempts and consumption of a massive amount of our bandwidth. - http://www.bcseweb.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?p=3795#3795

And accordingly, Mr. Stanyard goes on to explain, he has taken advice from "legal counsel", who have told him to inform my ISP, block my access, and tell the police. Ouch! Of course, those "server logs" are not put up for you or anyone else to verify...

Now, given the BCSE's previous pronounciations on copyright law, I'm inclined to believe that Stanyard's "legal counsel" is probably Stanyard himself, or failing that, his budgie. Certainly it's hard to believe that it's somebody with legal training! My budgie, though, tells me that Stanyard would probably end up having to answer questions about wasting police time.

Anyway, the BCSE sent the same to me in an e-mail. Here is the reply I sent them:

Dear Mr. Lowe / BCSE Committee,

This e-mail contains misdirection and misinformation.


The fact:
* I employ a program which downloads a full copy of your website.


Your misdirection and misinformation:

* Said program makes no attempt to guess any passwords. ("failed password attempts").

* Said program makes no attempt to "hack". In fact, it doesn't even include such a facility - it is merely a program for downloading web pages.

* Said program makes no attempt "to log into the private areas". (Of course the program gets served up with a number of password forms when it tries to view protected content, but it makes no attempt to actually guess a password or perform a log in).

As such, your claim to have found "clear evidence" "literally hundreds of failed password attempts" is false.

My ISP has not troubled itself to be in touch and so I assume that it takes your attempt to intimidate me with further spurious legal threats about as seriously as I do.

I will be grateful if you would add this response to your forum.

Kind regards,
David Anderson

I do not know whether the BCSE actually know that they are misdirecting, or if their IT manager (which according to their website is Ian Lowe) is simply incompetent at reading log files.

Either way, though, it's clear that they rushed to publish something on their website to discredit and/or threaten me (and report me to my ISP) without troubling themselves to check out the facts.

And that's one more piece of evidence about the way the BCSE do business. Each time this happens to me, I'm going to ask my readers: "And do you think they've done any less of a hatchet job on any of the other non-Darwinists they give you their 'research' on in their website?"

Maybe one day some of the BCSE's core will wake-up and say: "Hmmm. We were wrong about that one too. I wonder how much else we could be wrong about?" Until then though, "BCSE Revealed" presses on...

Update: Instead of publishing the above e-mail as requested, Ian Lowe added some new falsehoods to Roger Stanyard's original claim. Amazing. (http://www.bcseweb.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?p=3814#3814) Notice what Ian says: "he claims that he was 'only' taking a complete copy of our website, including the forums, once a day, every day - as if that makes it okay!!!" Now, you've read the e-mail above. Can you find anything resembling what Ian says in it? (I don't take a copy daily, by the way - or even close. I'm on a limited package with my Internet Service Provider, and if I downloaded anything like as much data as Ian suggests, I would use up my monthly allowance within days). Can you find the word which Ian puts in quotes? ("only"). Can you find any word connected with "day", "daily" or "every"? Is Ian being even remotely truthful?


I'm glad again to demonstrate again what's going on here - the BCSE continues to invent words, meanings and slurs out of thing air (for more of which, see here)... which is of course, precisely what "BCSE Revealed" exists to document. And to that sort of thing, I blow (blog) one big fat raspberry.

David Anderson
bcse-blog at dw-perspective dot org dot uk