Benjamin Chapi sent this legal demand that his name be removed from the Rhyolite Software list of unwelcome domains.
Mr. Chapi's name is present because it is the administrative contact for the domain name Smartresponse.net. This is the whois entry as of August, 2003.
Mr Chapi's domain name, Smartresponse.net, is in the Rhyolite Software list because of this unsolicited bulk mail. See also the public record of unsolicited bulk mail involving Smartresponse.net. See also the other public record of unsolicited bulk mail involving the apparently associated domain Pagematic.com. Check also 3kserver4.com, auto-responders.net, autocontestadores.com, followup101.com, and followupmailgold.com.
I do not know whether a copy of public information such as whois data is illegal in the EU, although I doubt it. More to the point and as I'm confident that Mr.Chapi knows, since Rhyolite Software does no business in Europe, his demand is ridiculous.
After the initial mail message. Mr. Chapi telephoned me from the United Kingdom to press his case. At one point he said that my listing of his domain name caused him to get "hate mail." He felt that someone took the domain name smartresponse.net and his name from the Rhyolite Software list of unwelcome domains, searched for and found Mr. Chapi's AOL mail address, and then sent some "hate mail." I told Mr. Chapi that if he was really receiving terrible hate mail, I would reconsider the listing of his domain name. He sent a copy of a message that said:
Subject: Death to all spammers!!
From: ...
Ha Ha
See your ridiculous story on http://www.rhyolite.com/
What a complete tosser you are!!
Next time I'm passing on the AI, I'll drop in and put some dog-shit
through your front door!!!
Not only does is that hate mail seem tame as such stuff goes, it looks like mail from someone who knows Mr. Chapi from nearby. "Tosser" is not a common insult outside the United Kingdom. How many people who don't live nearby know what the "AI" might be? In sum, I was not convinced. Of course, even that mail is intolerable and whoever sent it should be punished.
Four and a half months later (although Mr. Chapi felt it was six months), he telephoned me again. I believe he said many of the same things, although my recollections of the previous calls are unclear. He said that by listing the smartresponse.net whois entry I am somehow bringing him disrepute and causing him to receive postal hate mail. He would like me to remove his "personal information" including his home address and telephone number. I doubt any hate mail he is receiving has anything to do with these web pages. It seems more likely that someone has taken offense to one of his enterprises such as Venister Home Business Classifieds, Best Debt Consolidation Loans Online, or what seem to be multi-level marketing efforts. See also his articles on promoting web sites at webpronews.com".
During this telephone call, Mr. Chapi asserted that the account in unsolicited bulk mail that trigger the listing of his domain name in the Rhyolite Software list had been canceled before the bulk mail was sent. It seems that Mr. Chapi was already shutting down his auto-responder business because of abuse.
During this telephone call, I promised Mr. Chapi that I would review these pages. As far as I can tell, they contain no errors. However, it does no harm to censor his mail and postal addresses in copies of the public whois data. I cannot help noticing that the new smartresponse.net whois record has been changed to say that the domain name is owned by a Clive Brian (or perhaps Brian Clive) at an address that sounds close to Mr. Benjamin Chapi's, at least from 5000 miles away.
To end the telephone call, I had to be impolite and hang up. Mr. Chapi seems to share the notion with some other people that repeition must eventually bring success. I tend to be irritated and bored by endless repetitions of assertions, requests, and demands.
Other questions are answered in the list of objections about entries in the Rhyolite Software list of unwelcome domains.
Contact vjs@rhyolite.com but not this spam trap.
