Identity theft.

[elfs]

I have been the victim of identity theft.

If you go to my old website, http://www.halcyon.com/elf, you'll see a single directory, and in it a redirect to another website. That is not me. Whoever it is, they took the old alt.sex FAQ and reproduced it precisely, registered my name with Yahoo to get my email address, and used that to get a domain name registry. And he's using it to sell porn. Bad porn, at that.

All of this would have gone unnoticed but for one detail: they had the earnest chutzpah to email catherine yronwode, the original volunteer who took over hosting the FAQ when I left halcyon, demanding that she take down "his copyrighted material!"

The faq is available under the OSDL (now called the Free Documentation License)!

I'm seething right now, but this man has made a mistake: I have done business as Elf Sternberg, and I will have notarized affidavits from two publishers stating that I am and have always been Elf M. Sternberg, official maintainer of the alt.sex FAQ. And I may not be rich, but I can afford a lawyer when I need one.

What was this guy thinking, anyway?

Comments

Motivations

[nbarnes.livejournal.com]

Who would steal Elf Sternberg?

...

Well, ok. The identity, the public presentation of Elf M. Sternberg, via his writing and whatnot, is pretty specific. It's really not just smut, there's a whole... I dunno, kinky geek slut intellectual chic thing that goes with 'Elf Sternberg'. If he just wants to hawk bad porn, aren't there better identities to hijack that don't come with as much baggage?

Re: Motivations

[(Anonymous)]

I'd trust smut I thought came from Elf (not to be badly written, not to be bad, not to take my credit card number, not to give me "Join the Crew") over and above the general mass of the stuff. It's not like there's so little porn on the Internet that getting an endorsement for yours doesn't make a difference.