Taking Legal Action ~ Evidence Help

I just worked on a case where a blog was subpoena'd for racist comments. Then the ISP's were all subpoena'd. It's scary what information is given up. So I'm sure something can easily be done about this.

Use proxies or random wifi access points folks. Your anonymity is not safe ;P

Bring them to court by saying that they have used the events name, and ofcause spread the word about the fake rumors

Why don't you just out-seo them? Do a link wheel and sub-wheels, start inter-linking and getting a lot of link juice flowing. Then you will push their sites down and not have to worry about it. As for the ticket phone # just start a new one?

prstorm blast them on all google pages 999 times
use xrumer and other spamming tools to overload spam linking to their site
that should get rid of them pretty quick

rudy's advice on researching your enemy was priceless.


if you think you can have a civil conversation with these people, go for it...

if not, meet with your client ASAP and devise (and share the costs of) a plan to stop them

your lawyer should have already couriered a letter to them with appropriately threatening language

arent these guys worried about their reputation? if not, remind them that you'd enjoy creating a website dedicated to recounting their juvenile, illegal methods and keeping it at the top of search engines.

best of luck

Been away this weekend and just got back. I just want to say thank you all very much for your excellent advice. Only been a member here a few months and have to say that this is a top class community!

I have taken on board what everyone has said and agree with many of the comments.

I am meeting with the event owners tomorrow to discuss how they will tackle the problem. Our local radio station and sponsors have now requested that the website be taken down for mis-use of trade marks. These sponsors are big organisations with legal departments and have a lot of clout.

Also our local radio station has offered to give a whole two weeks free promotion with presenters running competitions. The local newspaper is doing a half page press article on the event. All this publicity is free and will soon dissolve the rumours. Ticket sales are already doing well.

We have sent copies of our correspondance with the offending company to all involved with the event and can safely say they well never get another job in our region.

We are a better company than them and certainly more professional. We have decided now to focus on promoting the event, investing in some SEO (although this is a little late) and focus on us doing our job well instead of focusing on a legal fight.

Thanks again BHW members.

You really should get a TV commercial and a few radio announcements. Then announce that the event is in fact being held as scheduled and warn people that anything they see on the web to the contrary is incorrect information. This should be done as quickly as possible, if for nothing else to help the performers and all the others to be protected from some of their losses. Trials and hearings can sometimes take years to hash out.

UPDATE: Today the offending company has backed down due to our legal threats. They have now re-directed their website to ours, removed the offending links on social networking sites, taken down there ticket line and gave us an ensurance that nothing will be edited again on the wiki page.

What a result!

Thanks Everyone

Dont worry nothing is gonna happen

Thanks MCMSinger.

We only have two weeks until the event now and ticket sales are doing better than expected. We are going to concentrate on promotion and focus on making the event a success in the short term.

The impact of their campaign against us will not be fully measurable until after the event. At that time we will be instructing our solicitors to take legal action and recover any losses we can prove.

By redirecting their website to ours we can now measure the number of hits they were achieving and will be able to use our conversion rates to calculate loss. Also we have all the stats on hits to our website and can measure the number of hits we lost through the Wiki listing. We are starting to build a picture of actual loss and this we will use.

I have read everyone's advice here and although it is not expert legal advice I feel that the BHW members have given me fantastic support. I only hope I can give something back to the community in the future.

What I love most about your story is the fact that their attempt to undermine your efforts and ruin this event will result in it having the biggest turnout ever.

Plan accordingly!

Been there and learned good seo costs 5% what lawyers do and the results are generally better. Trying to explain this stuff to lawyers is beyond time consuming to say the least. Make small threats you mean and follow them up. It worked. You already won. Have a good event.

PM me site link.

of course you can sue them. the only problem is that you really have to show or present your evidences that they are the REAL cause of your lost sales not just any other factor.