Few people can lie as well as former Assistant United States Attorney Sean Hoar, now with Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith LLP in Portland, Oregon. I went into a settlement conference with him 4 years ago thinking that there surely must have been some misunderstanding on his end that led him to charge me with Internet Stalking for content posted by other people on websites I own, but what I found was someone that would have made a great used car salesman had he not pursued a legal career. Every word that came out his mouth was spoken like he really believed his bullshit. I mean, it was a long time ago, but it sounded something like "you ran websites that people posted malicious information on, that information caused substantial emotional distress to people in other states, and that is internet stalking."
The problem with his argument and the charge was that as a service provider I am protected by the Section 230 Communications Decency Act. Section 230 states "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provide" (47 U.S.C. 230). So, even if someone were to abuse my services to inflict substantial emotional distress on someone in another state in violation of the internet stalking statute, and even if I knew about it, that would not make me a stalker. Think of how easy it would be for you to threaten to kill someone on Facebook and then imagine trying to charge Mark Zuckerberg with a crime for your cyberstalking. That is how absurd his allegation was. He even indicted me on it as if it were a ham sandwich, but eventually agreed to dismiss it knowing that he had no case.
Speaking of threats, that is what I ended up pleading to. Threatening a person that had threatened me first and called in a bogus 911 call accusing me of holding hostages at my mother's home. If anyone should have been charged with a crime it should have been that person, but for the sake of publicity he went after me. I even retracted the threat and he still charged me. Went after my business as if it were illegal even though it was not. Despite Mr. Hoar's claims it is protected by the First Amendment, which makes me wonder where he went to law school and how he graduated. One thing we can agree on though, is that some of the activities that my stalker engaged in were legal, specifically the aggregation of publicly available information, including my address. Kind of like how I have a legal right to research where Mr. Hoar lives, works, and to publish it.
Mr. Hoar, that name might explain his issues right there. He must have had a rough childhood growing up with a name like that. I bet people kept calling him by his last name exclusively until he either told on them or kicked their asses. His line of work makes me think he told, but his vindictiveness, history of speeding tickets, and hunting permits makes me think he must have snapped somewhere.
Funny note: He emailed my stalker (uploaded as .pdf) saying that he would use all his extraterritoriality treaties to bring my sites down and it took months for them all to come down. That was only due to a hard disk failure on one server and my inability to pay the hosting bill on the other. The fact is that the sites were legal here and abroad. To enforce an extraterritoriality treaty the sites would have had to be illegal in both this country and the one they were hosted in. Even then, like this site, they used free speech friendly hosting known for not working with such government efforts
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