Thank you to many, many people over the past six weeks

[ron_newman]

I am so grateful to the davis_square community for coming to my assistance, in many different ways, over the past six weeks:

• the Tuesday Night Gang at Diesel Cafe, for crucial moral support within the first hour after I was served with the lawsuit.
• ifotismeni, for more moral support over the following 24 hours
• thetathx1138 and rufinia, for logistical and moral support throughout this ordeal, and for close textual analysis of the lawsuit
• All of the people who told me about Popehat.com, or who told Ken at Popehat about my suit, resulting in this Popehat Signal
• moechus, for informal legal advice to me, and for later formally representing one or more 'John/Jane Doe' defendants
• juldea, for referring me to her lawyer friend who calmly sat down with me to explain the legal process and elements of a possible defense
• cdevers, for referring me to his friend Andy Sellars at the Berkman Center's Online Media Legal Network. Andy in turn referred me to my awesome lawyer, Dan Booth
• anomie666, cos, and icecreamempress, for setting up an online place where all of those threatened by the lawsuit could freely converse
• icecreamempress again, for setting up the Friends of Davis Square LJ defense fund. Also, everyone who donated to the fund. (We still need to work out how to dispense the funds collected there.)
• rufinia and freckles42, for setting up a face-to-face meeting attended by me, my lawyer, and many Doe Defendants
• firstfrost, jikamens, and genesayssitdown, for helpful advice and just generally staying in touch
(and also, Gene, for finding and linking to all those strange press releases)
• srakkt, mfinnigan, lost_ligeia, en_ki, keithn, surrealestate, and any other Doe Defendants or Doe Letter Receivers who commiserated with me over coffee last month
• the three other davis_square maintainers, cos, surrealestate, and prunesnprisms, for your solidarity in standing up to this threat
• ds_crier, whoever you are, for informative tweets and research
• rmd, for serving as a 'buffer' between Rickland Powell and the Davis Square community,
• plumtreeblossom, for standing up for free speech and not deleting Exhibit 4 and Exhibit 7 after receiving a Doe Letter
• myselftheliar, for not deleting Exhibit 5
• thetathx1138, for not deleting Exhibit 6
• bombardiette, for not deleting Exhibit 8
• sunshineyellow, for not deleting Exhibit 10
• bluesauce. for not deleting Exhibit 11
• Everyone else who did not delete their posts and comments in response to receiving a Doe Letter
• jmwolman, who provided srakkt with able legal representation
• All of the people who posted filk songs, such as this one by derspatchel, and this one by harrock, and this one by imsorrysondheim, and this one by infinitemorning, and this one by 'The Nameless Parodist' (would you like to come forward now?)
• and finally to genesayssitdown, for organizing a great victory celebration party

I've probably left some folks out. If you're one of them, feel free to send me a private message reminding me, and I'll add you to the above list.

Comments

[litia2005.livejournal.com]

Glad it's over! As a person who was not directly involved in this saga, I am really shocked that anything of this sort can happen in America and cause so much stress and pain to several good people who could have spent all this time doing something more productive for the community. There ought to be serious consequences to the initiator(s) of such a frivolous lawsuit! But what do I know...