Encylopedia Dramatica's Ryan Cleary Arrested, split from older ED topic Options

[Greaser]

Ryan has been arrested by Scotland Yard, working in conjunction with the FBI.

[EricBarbour]

Ryan's mother Rita, 44, said her son suffers from agoraphobia and attention deficit disorder and had not left his bedroom for four years.

Earlier this year, the mother of two was fined £100 for allowing her older son to grow cannabis at their home after plants worth £4,300 were seized.

Mrs Cleary, who is on incapacity benefit, claimed her son needed the drugs to ease his epilepsy symptoms.

Speaking at the family's home in Wickford, she said Ryan was an introverted boy who 'lives his life online'.

She added: 'He has a history of mental problems.

'He left school at 15.

'He has stayed in his room for the last four years in front of his computer.

'He is bright, but does not have any social skills.'

The teenager attended Heath School, in Stanway, Colchester, a school for children with special needs, and is said to have constantly spoken in 'computer jargon'.

In short, the stereotypical hacker. Or Wikipedia admin.

[Silver seren]

Question: Is it not true that DeGrippo sent a takedown notice to ED.ch's ISP and that, in order to avoid it, they changed servers?

Because that's what I heard and, if true, it shows proof that they are a copyright violation, since they worked to avoid being taken down as one.

[carbuncle]

Question: Is it not true that DeGrippo sent a takedown notice to ED.ch's ISP and that, in order to avoid it, they changed servers?

Because that's what I heard and, if true, it shows proof that they are a copyright violation, since they worked to avoid being taken down as one.

You have a funny idea of what "proof" means.

[lilburne]

Question: Is it not true that DeGrippo sent a takedown notice to ED.ch's ISP and that, in order to avoid it, they changed servers?

Because that's what I heard and, if true, it shows proof that they are a copyright violation, since they worked to avoid being taken down as one.

You have a funny idea of what "proof" means.

It probably equates to anything that hasn't been printed on shithouse paper.

[Daniel Brandt]

Question: Is it not true that DeGrippo sent a takedown notice to ED.ch's ISP and that, in order to avoid it, they changed servers?

Because that's what I heard and, if true, it shows proof that they are a copyright violation, since they worked to avoid being taken down as one.

No. You do not understand how Ryan worked. He simply ignored DeGrippo's notices. He may have responded with an insult or two for the sake of lulz, but basically he ignored her. His ED.ch servers are in the U.S. but he owns the IP address block.

[May 24 2011 12:46:21] <Ryan> all abuse reports goto me
[May 24 2011 12:46:24] <Ryan> directly
[May 24 2011 12:46:26] <Ryan> we own that IP space
...
[May 24 2011 12:50:39] <Ryan> armucat, legality is not an issue
[May 24 2011 12:50:41] <Ryan> you don't seem to understand
[May 24 2011 12:50:45] <Ryan> we own our own address space
[May 24 2011 12:51:03] <Ryan> the only higher authority than us people can go is to ARIN
[May 24 2011 12:55:36] <Ryan> we face no legal issues in america
[May 24 2011 12:55:37] <Ryan> lol
[May 24 2011 12:55:43] <Ryan> we are not child porn
[May 24 2011 12:56:03] <Ryan> dmcas are worthless because i send counter dmcas, if they want to go further than that they need to take us to court
[May 24 2011 12:56:15] <Ryan> 99% of dmcas are bullshit anyway
[May 24 2011 12:56:20] <Ryan> satire etc
[May 24 2011 12:56:28] <Ryan> they cant bring libel against us either

DeGrippo owned the old ED.com address block also, but since her legal instrument (Edrama LLC) is registered in the U.S. and her street address is in Kalamazoo, Michigan, she was more vulnerable. In ED.com's later days, they were responding to DMCA requests somewhat more responsibly than Ryan did. Ryan is in the UK, and is more protected against U.S. civil actions, if only because it is expensive to hire those UK dudes who wear those funny white wigs.

If you don't own your address space, the DMCA goes to your hosting provider. Depending on the mood they're in, they may knee-jerk and pull the plug on your entire site just because that's the easiest way to respond. WR is in that position, and so are 99 percent of all websites in the U.S.

As far as ED.ch's survival goes, there are two issues right now. One is whether Ryan will be able to continue administering the ED.ch servers, and the other is whether the other sysadmin, someone named "garrett", has sufficient privileges on the servers, and sufficient access, and sufficient resources and motivation, to administer ED.ch in Ryan's absence.

[Jun 22 2011 07:18:34] *** garrett changes topic to "ED Status: Still alive. | We know shit is fucked up, we're working on it. | RIP Ryan ;-;"
[Jun 22 2011 07:18:46] <Beefcake> HHHHNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG
[Jun 22 2011 07:18:58] <garrett> same
[Jun 22 2011 07:19:11] <garrett> i dont think i can backup the forum dbs without access to the box
[Jun 22 2011 07:19:16] <garrett> or at least a panel of some sort
[Jun 22 2011 07:19:27] <Beefcake> isn't root enough?
[Jun 22 2011 07:19:32] <garrett> i dont have root
[Jun 22 2011 07:19:38] <Beefcake> oh
[Jun 22 2011 07:19:57] <Beefcake> can't we contact Ryan some way
[Jun 22 2011 07:19:59] <Beefcake> ?
[Jun 22 2011 07:20:14] <garrett> ...
[Jun 22 2011 07:20:20] <garrett> Yes, lets waltz into scotland yard
[Jun 22 2011 07:20:28] <garrett> and ask if we can talk to an international crime suspect
[Jun 22 2011 07:20:32] <garrett> about a forum issue

[Silver seren]

That's pretty hilarious, actually, that Ryan getting arrested has essentially frozen them from actually taking control of the IP block.

In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the police actually used that to scope out ED.ch and anything else Ryan was involved in. I mean, they are investigating his connection to LulzSec and ED.ch is one of the first places to look, since he is the hoster for it.

This post has been edited by Silver seren:

[SB_Johnny]

Can someone catch me up here? Was Ryan (the arrested guy) in charge of ED?

Just trying to understand this thread... apologies for my lack of omniscience, of course!

[Tarc]

Can someone catch me up here? Was Ryan (the arrested guy) in charge of ED?

Just trying to understand this thread... apologies for my lack of omniscience, of course!

Yes.

Brandt has masturbated at least 3 times today in celebration, too.

[Daniel Brandt]

Brandt has masturbated at least 3 times today in celebration, too.

At least that's healthier than sucking in cans of butane.

Actually, here's a more informative article.

What would we do without British journalism?

[EricBarbour]

What would we do without British journalism?

Haw. Haw haw haw.

We'd huff less butane, I suppose.......

Here's another Daily Fail article about Ryan Cleary. This one doesn't have the ugly watermarks on the photos. Oops.

The Daily Mail gets more sleazy and stupid every day.....amazing.

[Sololol]

What would we do without British journalism?

Haw. Haw haw haw.

We'd huff less butane, I suppose.......

Here's another Daily Fail article about Ryan Cleary. This one doesn't have the ugly watermarks on the photos. Oops.

The Daily Mail gets more sleazy and stupid every day.....amazing.

The Daily Mail: Making American journalism look classy, one day at a time.
I feel the slightest twinges of embarrassment for the various government security chiefs who have to point to this guy as the firewall-hacking master criminal.

[lilburne]

So when did he make these regular visits?

Before Christmas.

[MaliceAforethought]

So good to see governments spending their time going after "master" criminals. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/confused.gif)

[Milton Roe]

So good to see governments spending their time going after "master" criminals. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/confused.gif)

"The Lulz Security Hacking Group." (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/confused.gif) For anybody who has read ED, the name itself has some lulz.

The rest is so archetypical that it might have been written as satire by somebody on ED:

The mother of the teenage computer geek accused over a series of hacking attacks revealed last night how he threatened to kill himself when she tried to confiscate his beloved computer.

Rita Cleary said her son Ryan had not set foot outside the family bungalow since Christmas and had his food left outside his bedroom door. He cut himself off from the outside world, leaving his room only to visit the bathroom.

But when Mrs Cleary attempted to cut the jobless 19-year-old’s internet access, he responded by saying he would slit his wrists.

I suppose there's a lulzworthy article in considering what happens when you go from living like THAT in your embryonic hideyhole being fed by your mother while you spend all your time jacked into the net, to being in a lock-up where you need to worry about getting your realworldass stretched by Joe Streetpunk, and your entire access to electronics consists of sometimes being able to make collect calls from the day room wall-phone, whilst Joe looks at the back of your neck.

If ED weren't such an essentially cruel site, all this would be more horrifying. As it is, I have to say that some of it should count as inpatient therapy for an addict. It's horrible but has to be done. And considering what ED would say about anybody else it happened to, all you can do is suggest that they write up an article about Ryan getting butthurt, then post it on Uncyclopedia, where it really belongs. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/wink.gif)

[Daniel Brandt]

The Cleary household is either rather clever at gaming the system, or is entirely screwed up, in my opinion. Before Ryan was a household word, his brother Mitchell and mother Rita were in court after police seized 39 cannabis plants and three large jars of cannabis. This happened last March. The attorney for Mitchell and Rita said that both of them "claimed incapacity benefit of £94 per fortnight and that they both suffered from agoraphobia, a fear of public or unfamiliar places." Mitchell smoked canabis to "ease the symptoms of epilepsy."

It worked then with Mitchell, but Mrs. Cleary might have trouble this time. Even if Ryan makes bail, I presume that he won't be allowed to go online as a condition of that bail. And if the UK authorities seem too lenient, there's always the possibility that the FBI will get pissed off and file for extradition of Ryan to the U.S. There appears to be evidence of Ryan's DDoSing and/or hacking that falls within U.S. jurisdiction.

You could also argue that even if Ryan needs psychiatric help, he sure as hell wasn't getting enough of it in his bedroom from his cat. He might be better off anyplace other than his bedroom, even prison. That's particularly true if the court makes sure that he has no Internet connection in his bedroom as a condition of bail or probation or whatever.

I think Mrs. Cleary had her chance already, and by now she is part of the problem.

[Milton Roe]

The Cleary household is either rather clever at gaming the system, or is entirely screwed up, in my opinion. Before Ryan was a household word, his brother Mitchell and mother Rita were in court after police seized 39 cannabis plants and three large jars of cannabis. This happened last March. The attorney for Mitchell and Rita said that both of them "claimed incapacity benefit of £94 per fortnight and that they both suffered from agoraphobia, a fear of public or unfamiliar places." Mitchell smoked canabis to "ease the symptoms of epilepsy."

You could also argue that even if Ryan needs psychiatric help, he sure as hell wasn't getting enough of it in his bedroom from his cat. He might be better off anyplace other than his bedroom, even prison. That's particularly true if the court makes sure that he has no Internet connection in his bedroom as a condition of bail or probation or whatever.

I think Mrs. Cleary had her chance already, and by now she is part of the problem.

If you read between the lines, you might consider that Ryan has been after the pot store lately, as well. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/fear.gif)

I mean, come now. Have none of you ever heard of people smoking so much pot that they just sit around at home all day playing with their toys, and never go out and do anything at all?

I've heard of it. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/hrmph.gif) It's an EXTREMELY rare side effect of cannabis use, but it's been reported in the medical literature. Yes it has.

[Somey]

I've heard of it. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/hrmph.gif) It's an EXTREMELY rare side effect of cannabis use, but it's been reported in the medical literature. Yes it has.

Bummin'?

I guess I wouldn't be surprised to see an article about that in JAMA, but you'd think it would be enough just to listen to some old 60's albums. Or maybe stay overnight in a frat-house a couple of times...

Anyway, I can sort of see why people of this sort would want to target large companies like Sony or even some of the larger ISPs, but when you go after the government, especially if it's your own, innocent civilians have to pay for that. That's money that could go to much better purposes, even though it often goes towards worse purposes like it usually did during the previous decade. Besides, there are better ways to stick it to the man, aren't they? But I guess those all require you to leave your bedroom... Damn, life sure is complicated these days.

[Daniel Brandt]

As far as ED.ch's survival goes, there are two issues right now. One is whether Ryan will be able to continue administering the ED.ch servers, and the other is whether the other sysadmin, someone named "garrett", has sufficient privileges on the servers, and sufficient access, and sufficient resources and motivation, to administer ED.ch in Ryan's absence.

Update: The details of what happened are unclear, but Garrett and Joepie91 had to abandon the server that was associated with Ryan Cleary. After a week of tinkering, things now seem relatively stable on a new box. For anyone who has copyright issues with content that is currently available on Encyclopedia Dramatica, the good news is that this new box is located in the U.S. It appears to be a dedicated server housed in a data center, and the box itself is owned by a web hosting provider that is obligated to operate under U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act provisions.

The Encyclopedia Dramatica watchdog site, josephevers.blogspot.com has identified this new provider and has just published information about how to file DMCA requests against specific content on Encyclopedia Dramatica.

[Somey]

It seems this may have had some effect - the ED home (and I'd assume, catch-all) URL is now just a simple static HTML page, saying they need a new hosting provider (and, of course, "donations" for same), one that "is able to host our kind of content."

There's more info on the ED forums, if you're willing to risk loading pages from there - if you do, be sure to read the comments too, of course. It looks like the DMCA request came from Sherrod DiGrippo herself, who apparently still claims copyright on the name.

[The Joy]

It seems this may have had some effect - the ED home (and I'd assume, catch-all) URL is now just a simple static HTML page, saying they need a new hosting provider (and, of course, "donations" for same), one that "is able to host our kind of content."

Please let it be Wikia. Please let it be Wikia. Please let it be Wikia! (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/laugh.gif)

[Daniel Brandt]

It looks like the DMCA request came from Sherrod DiGrippo herself, who apparently still claims copyright on the name.

Somey, it's "DeGrippo" not "DiGrippo". As long as Somey is naming names, Ms. DeGrippo's complaint ended up in the lap of Garrett E. Moore, who is 22 years old today. I haven't seen it, but I suspect that the complaint was fairly broad in scope, and not just about the domain name. Mr. Moore is the main man behind ED, now that Ryan Cleary is grounded due to strict bail conditions. He says he will have ED back up within a few days.

Mr. Moore is from Zanesville, Ohio and has also lived in Florida. Now he lives near Lansing, Michigan with his fiancee, Karen Rose Shinaver.

Here is Mr. Moore with a cute bow in his hair.

At the moment Mr. Moore is laughing at the possibility that Ms. DeGrippo has only seven days left to sue him. It probably won't happen, because Mr. Moore doesn't have any money. But if the two ended up in court, it would be interesting to hear Mr. Moore's attorney argue that the new ED is not doing anything different than what Ms. DeGrippo was doing since the original ED started in late 2004. True enough, but while this is a valid ethical argument, it is no doubt irrelevant in any potential DeGrippo vs. Moore civil case.

Mr. Moore has Anonymous and Anonops connections. However, he's not a trigger-happy DDoSer with his own botnet like Ryan was. Remember Ryan? That was only a month ago. How time flies when you're a basement-dweller having fun!

[EricBarbour]

The ED forums were always full of stupid, but this post-GV version is epically stupid.

I suspect their "community" is getting more hostile than ever. If this is the cream of Anonymous, toss em' all in jail, please!

[Daniel Brandt]

Encyclopedia Dramatica's seething satire is back

This is an article in a new online publication, and it was written by someone who went to journalism school. That means she used first and last names of people when this information was available. How quaint and refreshing!

I don't like that old December 2005 Jimbo quote about me that she repeated needlessly, back when Jimbo was talking out of his rear end and telling the press that Seignethaler brought it on himself, but I guess I have to take these things in stride.

[Silver seren]

Blerg, and it's given them more incentive to go and bug the talk page again.

I'm currently in an RSN discussion asking whether the Daily Dot is reliable. It probably is, however, once they make a freaking staff page, and I don't have a problem with that. It'll be nice to have a reliable site that actually covers internet topics.

However, Eordogh's article has spawned sections like this, which I can't even take seriously. In fact, I think i'm going to go and say specifically that.

But, yeah. It's all very tiring. I don't have a problem with expanding the coverage in the article on ED.ch if we have the sources for it, but lay off on minimizing Oh Internet. It gets really annoying after a while.


Edit: On a separate not, I seem to have pissed off Meepsheep, even though I don't remember ever interacting with him. But my ED.ch article is actually slightly insulting now, which is an improvement. Anything to make it less sad and pathetic like it was before.

This post has been edited by Silver seren:

[EricBarbour]

I seem to have pissed off Meepsheep, even though I don't remember ever interacting with him. But my ED.ch article is actually slightly insulting now, which is an improvement. Anything to make it less sad and pathetic like it was before.

Yes, I will say, the current version is good (meaning not completely moronic).

Wasting your time worrying, though.
I can see how this will end.....ED will disappear, and several online douchebags will go to jail.
And yet another perfectly good Wikipedia article will be obviated.

This post has been edited by EricBarbour:

[Michaeldsuarez]

And yet another perfectly good Wikipedia article will be obviated.

I'm currently working on rewriting that article. Do you have any suggestions or concerns? Silver_seren has already offered assistance.

Brandt, would you feel comfortable being mentioned in Wikipedia's Encyclopedia Dramatica article? Are there any inaccuracies or misrepresentations within the Daily Dot article that you're concerned about? You didn't have any say in how your old Wikipedia article was written, so I believe that it would be best to allow you to have a say in this before being included in that article. There is currently a discussion on whether the Daily Dot article is reliable. What's your feelings on its reliability?

This post has been edited by Michaeldsuarez:

[Detective]

I'm currently working on rewriting that article ... Silver_seren has already offered assistance.

Surprise, surprise! (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/tongue.gif)

You didn't have any say in how your old Wikipedia article was written, so I believe that it would be best to allow you to have a say in this before being included in that article. There is currently a discussion on whether the Daily Dot article is reliable. What's your feelings on its reliability?

Mike

You do realise that WP is a Wiki that anyone can edit. Whatever you put is subject to ruthless and arbitrary editing. And there's no guarantee you'd be able to revert, if a few editors decide to WP:OWN the article. Daniel Brandt's view on the reliability of the Daily Dot may not have much effect on anything!

[Silver seren]

Brandt, would you feel comfortable being mentioned in Wikipedia's Encyclopedia Dramatica article? Are there any inaccuracies or misrepresentations within the Daily Dot article that you're concerned about? You didn't have any say in how your old Wikipedia article was written, so I believe that it would be best to allow you to have a say in this before being included in that article. There is currently a discussion on whether the Daily Dot article is reliable. What's your feelings on its reliability?

I was going to ask whether adding information about Brandt was a due weight issue on the talk page, but asking him here probably is better.

@Detective: Between Michael and I, I think we'll be able to keep the information neutral. The community may hate him and that makes them often forget they're writing an encyclopedia, but it shouldn't be too difficult to tell when someone is trying to skew the information.

[Milton Roe]

Brandt, would you feel comfortable being mentioned in Wikipedia's Encyclopedia Dramatica article? Are there any inaccuracies or misrepresentations within the Daily Dot article that you're concerned about? You didn't have any say in how your old Wikipedia article was written, so I believe that it would be best to allow you to have a say in this before being included in that article. There is currently a discussion on whether the Daily Dot article is reliable. What's your feelings on its reliability?

I was going to ask whether adding information about Brandt was a due weight issue on the talk page, but asking him here probably is better.

@Detective: Between Michael and I, I think we'll be able to keep the information neutral. The community may hate him and that makes them often forget they're writing an encyclopedia, but it shouldn't be too difficult to tell when someone is trying to skew the information.

Note how respectfully Brandt is being treated here. "An armed society is a polite society" (Heinlein).

Note to Wales and Friends: Civility is not the same as respect. As the military demonstrates, the two are sometimes barely nodding acquaintences. And it isn't more civility that either the internet or Wikipedia needs. Rather, it's some attention to matters of respect. Respect requires memory and reputation, and an anonymous username system is handicapped in letting people acumulate reputations, right from the get-go. So there's a place to start.

Civility (ala Robert's Rules of Order) is what we do in order to keep from wasting time insulting each other, when we'd be better off debating facts. Sometimes, as in congress and the courts, civility has to be enforced as a rule. Respect, however, cannot be granted as a social right, and it cannot be enforced nor dispensed, any more than love. The best one can do is construct a social system that allows it to be freely given by grace, or earned, or both. This requires memory in the system, and a way for reputation to grow. Wikipedia is presently a system which allows respect to only a few individuals outside itself, and then only due to the threat of nuclear net reprisal. You might want to rethink the wisdom of that. Especially since you haven't seen the worst of what continuing this game under such rules can do to you.

[Daniel Brandt]

Brandt, would you feel comfortable being mentioned in Wikipedia's Encyclopedia Dramatica article?

The DailyDot article is at least as reliable as most Wikipedia articles — which is to say, I don't want my name in the article. It was clear that with the DailyDot article, my name was going in regardless of my wishes, because Garrett and Zaiger were on my case and she had already heard their side of the story. At the time, my ED.ch bio was featured in summary form on the ED.ch home page, complete with a picture of a very mean-looking old man that purported to be a picture of me. But it wasn't a picture of me. It was Zaiger's impression of how he thought I looked. I don't know whose picture it was.

(The reporter logged into the ED.ch chatroom and said she was a reporter, and asked for some quotes about the reappearance of ED. That's how it started. I didn't know she was writing something until I got her email, and it wasn't until later that I noticed the chatroom log.)

That's why I accepted her email invitation to respond to their charges. Otherwise, I would have preferred to be left out of that article too.

I must say, giving someone the right to reply is a credit the the DailyDot reporter. That's not something one sees very often when it comes to Wikipedia.

[Silver seren]

I find it funny that the article doesn't discuss the recent host/server change because Degrippo's DMCA notice got them to be dropped.

Of course, that would prove a lot of the negative things people are saying about ED.ch, so they can't discuss the truth of the matter in such an article.

[Michaeldsuarez]

Brandt, thank you for sharing your feelings. Unfortunately, I can't prevent you from being mentioned in the Wikipedia article, but I can prevent misinformation from becoming a part of that article. What I really need to know is whether any of the claims presented in the Daily Dot article are inaccurate. Do you have anything to say about the alleged harassment of Garrett's fiancée? How do you feel about the claims that you contributed to the end of the original ED? Did you offer advice on how to file DMCA to ED's opponents? Did you have anything to do with the suspension of ED's PayPal account? Your insight will help me separate fact from suspicion. I don't want too much weight to be placed on suspicion.

[Daniel Brandt]

Brandt, thank you for sharing your feelings. Unfortunately, I can't prevent you from being mentioned in the Wikipedia article, but I can prevent misinformation from becoming a part of that article. What I really need to know is whether any of the claims presented in the Daily Dot article are inaccurate. Do you have anything to say about the alleged harassment of Garrett's fiancée? How do you feel about the claims that you contributed to the end of the original ED? Did you offer advice on how to file DMCA to ED's opponents? Did you have anything to do with the suspension of ED's PayPal account? Your insight will help me separate fact from suspicion. I don't want too much weight to be placed on suspicion.

You have yet to establish that my name will appear in any article that is written. If my name appears in a future Wikipedia article about ED, and I feel that I've been described inaccurately or unfairly, I will object on the Talk page for that artilcle.

Yes, I'm a "banned" editor, and there was a time when any attempt to clarify inaccurate or defamatory information about me on Wikipedia, by way of a comment on a Talk page, would result in my comment getting immediately deleted by some Wikipediot admin — merely because I was banned.

Do they still do this on Wikipedia? Does Arbcom support this? Does the BLP policy say anything about this? That could get interesting.

It would be premature to address the questions you raise until an article appears that contains objectionable information about me.

[Michaeldsuarez]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopedia_...and_vigilantism

Is this satisfactory?

[thekohser]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopedia_...and_vigilantism

Is this satisfactory?

Kind of funny that you'd use that link to ask that question. Are you not aware that hours from now, that link could feasibly point to a section that says nothing more than "Brandtz is teh gay!" and is illustrated by a picture of a badger?

Michael, you do understand the nature of Wikipedia, right?

[Daniel Brandt]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopedia_...and_vigilantism

Is this satisfactory?

Moore also accused Brandt of harassing his fiancée at her workplace.

CODE

[May 24 2011 00:10:29] <garrett> Hello!
[May 24 2011 00:10:35] <garrett> Daniel Brandt dox have been updated.
[May 24 2011 00:10:42] <garrett>     Power word: Daniel Leslie Brandt
[May 24 2011 00:10:42] <garrett>     Age: [redacted]
[May 24 2011 00:10:42] <garrett>     DOB: [redacted]
[May 24 2011 00:10:42] <garrett>     Height: 6'0"
[May 24 2011 00:10:42] <garrett>     Weight: "Some extra baggage"
[May 24 2011 00:10:44] <garrett>     Address: [redacted]
[May 24 2011 00:10:47] <garrett>     Company name: Public Information Research
[May 24 2011 00:10:50] <garrett>     Company address: [redacted]
[May 24 2011 00:10:53] <garrett>     Company phone number: [redacted]
[May 24 2011 00:10:55] <garrett>     Known e-mail addresses: [redacted]
[May 24 2011 00:11:04] <garrett> just putting that out there
[May 24 2011 00:11:16] <Xero> nice

By the way, the height and weight are arbitrary guesses from a fake Myspace page put up in my name in 2006, presumably by some Wikipediot.

Just several minutes after this IRC chat happened, I began receiving new spam emails. These were in the form of "Welcome to our mailing list" emails, and most of them had an unsubscribe link. I proceeded to unsubscribe as many as I could. One of them offered up the IP address of the party that had signed me up for the list. I did a reverse lookup on that IP address, which was 69.16.222.138. This is what came back: kaeroseen.wks.liquidweb.com. (It no longer reverse resolves to that. But the slightly modified domain of kaeroseen.liquidweb.com still forward resolves to that same 69.16.222.138.)

I knew already that this was the nick for Karen Shinaver, who is a sysadmin at Liquid Web Inc. in Lansing, Michigan, and I knew that she was a close associate of Garrett's. She had been on the ED.ch chatroom.

I complained to the management at Liquid Web that Ms. Shinaver, or someone using her company shell account, had signed me up for mailing lists so that I would get email that I didn't want. They investigated and a few days later said that it was against company policy to sign up people on mailing lists without their consent. They added that they would handle the matter internally.

I wasn't happy with this, but I dropped the issue. I never telephoned her employer trying to get her home address, but it doesn't surprise me if someone else tried this. In any case, Ms. Shinaver was complicit in the harassment of me. Either she let Garrett use her shell account on equipment owned by her employer, or she did it herself.

Twice I've had Mormon missionaries knock on my door because someone in the chatroom thought it would be funny. And I have to let the answering machine pick up my phone because I was getting crank calls.

My interest in emphasizing Ms. Shinaver's role is also motivated by my desire to geolocate Garrett more precisely. I feel that it would be worthwhile for the FBI to interview him, because he has friends in LulzSec. Now that it has been established that Ms. Shinaver is his fiancée, all the FBI has to do is flash a badge at Liquid Web in Lansing, Michigan, and get her home address. Then they'll be able to find Garrett and ask him about his role on Anonops, Anonymous, and possibly LulzSec. They could also track him down by looking for school and other records in Zanesville, Ohio, and then perhaps locate one or both parents. But they're probably too lazy to do that.

Remember, Garrett, you don't have to talk to them. But if you do, you shouldn't lie to them because that would be a felony.

[Silver seren]

*sighs* And now it's gotten sad again.

I mean, there's "showing that he sees this website as no more than a collection of poorly written attack articles"...I mean, that's pretty much what I think, yeah.

And this just made me laugh.

"he accuses ED of organizing a raid, despite the fact that we are a mere encyclopedia. It is also noteworthy that he does not call out the numerous attacks made against ED on that talk page, as he would with any other subject."

Of course ED has never been involved in a raid, everyone there are upright internet citizens.

[EricBarbour]

Well, I've been watching ed.ch for a few hours.
It goes up and down like a yo-yo. So does their forum.

What are they running it on now, a Commodore 64?

[Daniel Brandt]

Well, I've been watching ed.ch for a few hours.
It goes up and down like a yo-yo. So does their forum.

What are they running it on now, a Commodore 64?

The only servers we know about are the connection between Hetzner in Germany (85.10.206.54) and CloudFlare based in California. Garrett is claiming at least one additional server between the actual content and Hetzner. My guess is that there are about 100 hops total, involving at least one additional non-U.S. country besides Germany.

If you request a page that isn't cached at CloudFlare, or the CloudFlare cache has timed out and has to be freshened by them, then the packets have a long and treacherous journey before you see the page. Also, there may be content on the requested page that is not cached by CloudFlare, since it only caches relatively static content. If that's the case, the page cannot be delivered until that content is fetched. When everything is perfect for the page you requested, then CloudFlare sends it to your browser. If a router somewhere drops a packet, it has to be requested again. Every packet has to make it before CloudFlare delivers the page to your browser.

That's what I believe is happening, but it's mainly a guess. Why do they do this? They want to be so clever that no one can ever find the server that hosts the content. And even though the two main controllers of the content are Zaiger in Massachusetts and Garrett in Michigan, they want to be able to say that the content is not hosted in the U.S. and therefore U.S. laws are not relevant. Note Garrett's response to this CDA complaint: "Additionally, no one cares."