CHANGES TO AN OLD POST, BY REQUEST . . . In February, 2004, I did a post about the infamous federal judicial decision that's filled with hidden references to Talking Heads songs. The post included both the complete decision and all the Talking Heads allusions I could find. In the early days of this weblog, it quickly became my most popular post, especially after Boing Boing linked to it.

Unfortunately, not everyone was happy with the post. As it turned out, there was a guy mentioned in the federal decision who apparently wanted to forget it. Thanks to my post, searches for his name made the old judicial decision turn up on my weblog.

After nearly three years of receiving emails from this very unhappy reader, which included threats of litigation I didn't take very seriously, I've finally decided to amend the post in a way that should solve the problem. Although my unhappy reader wants me to remove the post entirely, I took a less radical approach and simply removed two letters from his name everywhere it appears in the decision.

Except for that change, the opinion remains as exactly as it's printed at 825 F.2d 835. Perhaps it's not much of a change, but it might eventually take care of the name-search problem. I hope it does.

Comments

[Ed Poll]

Evan, why did you wait 3 years to address his concern? Why now? Is it the holiday season?

[Evan]

Ed: I was always willing to address the concern, but in doing so I wanted a release from the guy, as I explained in the linked post, since there was much talk about suing me into oblivion. We had some negotiations about this, but they didn't get anywhere, and I decided just to forget about it and let him sue me if he wanted. In my opinion, he didn't have a legal leg to stand on. Time passed, no lawsuits materialized, but his emails continued, and some of them have seemed to me lately to be rather frantic and nuts. Although in my opinion he's wrong about it, he seems to have concluded that my post on this weblog has ruined or is capable of ruining his life and that of his other family members. I received an email from him recently and it was bothering me one morning when I was running, and I realized that I could make this simple change in the post -- omitting a few letters in a name -- that might take care of the search problem. Given the frantic nature of the emails, in addition to my conclusion that I'm legally in the right, I don't care so much about a release anymore. Of course, the Internet being what it is, with caches and all, my changes to the post might not take care of the problem for awhile, but eventually it should take care of it entirely, and hopefully the emails will cease. This is all a long way of saying that the squeaky wheel gets the grease.