posted by max on January 10, 2006 at 07:28:35 PM

I received this email from Neil Bauman (Eric Bauman's father and "Executive Vice President of Ebaum's World Inc.) earlier today, followed shortly after by a second email with only "Please feel free to post this if you have the gonads.".

I strongly suggest you read more to see the most magical email thread I have ever been involved in.

From: "Neil Bauman"
<neil@ebaumsworld.com>
To: <legal@ytmnd.com>
Subject: Cease and Desist
Date: Tue, 10 Jan 2006 16:01:53 -0500

To Whom It May Concern:


Please be advised that several of your forum soldiers have decided to personally visit our corporate offices. The pictures they took while trespassing on our property were proudly posted on your site. In addition some of the postings on your forum literally threatened murdering Eric Bauman. You have now officially crossed the line. You can consider this formal notification that we have initiated a criminal complaint with several agencies including the FBI Cyber Terrorism Unit. I realize that most of your entire website is comprised of pathetic, pimply-faced maladjusted pre-teens whose parents don't love them, and their best Saturday night date takes AA batteries. Be that as it may, you have now become a criminal threat. There a lot of people now monitoring your site. I strongly suggest that there are no more unauthorized "visits" to our office. There will be severe penalties for failure to heed this warning. The forum banter on your site means nothing to us or anyone in the world for that matter, but your threats of bodily harm and property damage cannot be ignored. I was afraid that the FBI and police departments would not be responsive. I was pleasantly surprised to find the contrary.

Interestingly, no individual or corporate entity has approached us with any question or problem regarding the content in question. This is true lunacy! There is this big dispute over a piece of content that we received a signed release for. Do you have any idea how foolish and immature you look through this? Of course I am referring to the real three dimensional world where real people live and work. You and your forum obviously live in very dark places where they don't teach spelling, grammar, logic, reasoning…etc. Well, that being said, we don't care how you advertise your stupidity, but eBaum's World Inc lives in the real world, and we are very tolerant and sensitive to the underprivileged and the mentally challenged. We will however use any and all legal remedies to ensure our safety. The police and FBI are taking this very seriously. I will leave you with this challenge, if any member of your forum or anyone any where wants to challenge our policy, simply come out from under your rock and call me on the phone, or schedule an appointment. I would be happy to discuss any problem with any credible individual. Of course I am assuming that these "kids" are capable of meaningful dialogue. We have received hundreds of calls, but alas, zero meaningful dialogue, only weak pranks. Judging from the posts I have read from your site I am confident that no one possesses the aforementioned skills necessary to pull that off. The first guy you sent in here probably soiled his pants when he couldn't answer the simplest question and literally ran out the door…LOL. I don't think he is a candidate for Mission Impossible. The police have already contacted him and our lawyers will have fun with Ben and his parents. The invitation stands. BTW, the FBI told me that the operators and facilitators of your site are more liable than they think; they also assured me that nobody from your site would come out from under their rock to talk. They likened your forum to terrorists who always stay under ground. Is that the way you envisioned your forum at its inception? How pathetic. I look forward to your reply.


Neil J. Bauman


Executive Vice President
eBaum's World Inc.
neil@ebaumsworld.com
Office:585-292-0069
Fax: 585-292-0722

=====

Upon receiving this I could hardly believe it was real, as it would be somewhat surprising to see an "Executive" of a company act in such a way. I immediately called the office of eBaum's World Inc. and left a voice mail for Neil. This is the letter I received some time later.

From: "Neil Bauman" <neil@ebaumsworld.com>
To: <support@ytmnd.com>
Cc: "'Eric Bauman'" <ebaum@ebaumsworld.com>, "'Jason Martorana'" <jason@ebaumsworld.com>, <wlevinson@culleymarks.com>
Subject: Phone Message

Dear Max,

My assistant informed me that you called our corporate office to verify the correspondence titled Cease and Desist was in fact sent by me.it was. I would like to have any kind of meaningful communication with you or anyone representing your site. As stated in my earlier note, we have never been formally contacted by anyone regarding the questioned content. I am easily accessible during normal business hours. Feel free to contact me if you are capable of exhibiting a nominal use of some professionalism. I have had a great deal of contact from several of your loyal followers. That contact was far from meaningful or professional. In a short time you will be held accountable for the deeds and threats that were aimed at our site and our people. Obviously you have lost possession of your Yiddish cup. We are not about to be physically threatened by you or anyone else. If you thought this was a joke, you are very misguided. I am not one to be trifled with. How dare you and your brethren make death threats against our personnel? There is no veiled threat here, just your wake up call. You had the ability to stop this early in the game and choose not to. That strategy will prove to be a serious mistake in judgment on your part. Soon you will be contacted by Federal Investigators. Have a great day.

Neil J. Bauman
Executive Vice President
eBaum's World Inc.
neil@ebaumsworld.com
Office: 585-292-0069
Fax: 585-292-0722


He even CC'd his lawyer. You would think a lawyer would tell his clients that isn't in their best interest to write such emails.

=====
And my response:



Dearest Neil,

I appreciate every email I get, but yours holds a special place in my heart!

If you had been paying attention, for the last three days I have been deleting hundreds of users, sites and posts with pieces of your personal information.

I'm done.

I don't think you understand the extent of this situation. People have been attacking me and my ISP just for making public statements NOT to attack you. You obviously overestimate my involvement, but I guess you have to be paranoid when you are so widely hated. These users who are attacking you are doing so on their own accord.

You may think that because you steal your content via "submissions" you hold no liability to the content you host. The fact is, I run my website as a hobby. I have a full time job so I can pay my rent, I can't pay moderators. I generally try not to be involved in sleazy practices, both in business and in my personal life. It amazes me with the history of your site and the massive amount of internet users that can barely spit your name out in disgust without following it with an expletive that you still don't get it.

I am not a part of this. I run a website where (some) people spend a lot of time and effort CREATING things to entertain others. You run a site where you TAKE and REBRAND things to host them without citing credit. How long do you think you can hide behind your "submission" technique?

I think we both know there is no possible way the majority of the content owners from which you steal can beat you on the civil level. This is due to the fact that you are a sleazy businessman that practices underhanded techniques and has a team of lawyers, while the people who are creating the "crazy" content you so masterfully profit off of have NOTHING. These people don't have lawyers, they probably earn very little if nothing off their works. Do you think if this Lohan issue went to court either side would win? No, we both know it would go nowhere, and this is why you still have it up. These kids don't want your money, they want the general respect any person should give. When someone spends the time to create something, regardless of their content sources, they just want to be cited. Fuck, is it really that much of a big deal?

Ebaumsworld Inc has a notorious reputation for being non-responsive and trying to make everything an uphill battle every step of the way. Last night I spent an hour on the phone with your hosting company, explaining the steps I was taking to try and prevent further damage from happening and explaining that I was willing to help out however I could. This morning I received a phone call from your office about a content issue on forums.ytmnd.com and how someone had posted your addresses. I explained that I had already deleted the posting earlier that morning. As a webmaster I can understand the major privacy invasion this entails and as I told your host, I want nothing to do with it.

Let this be an example of how angry the community (and not just on my website) is at your practices. I didn't put these kids up to these charades, they choose to do it on their own free will. I made public statements warning people of the legality of these issues and how it just isn't worth it to harass people in this way, and they still visited you. Do you really think so many users of my website would be so angry if someone from this community HADN'T spent the time to make that image? Do you seriously think these people are delusional enough to actually make this big of a deal over nothing?

I'm not sure of your legal background, but in my experience sending a letter degrading and demeaning the very community you steal and profit from isn't a valid way to send a legal notice, nor is using "LOL" in a sentence. This is not the way the "executive vice president" of a company acts. You sent a cease and desist but never explain what it is you want me to cease or desist doing?

I will help the FBI and local authorities out any way I can and I will provide them with any possible information they could need. I'm even willing to take a lie detector test, how about you? I have no quarrel with eBaumsworld. That being said, here is my challenge to you:

How about you stop hiding behind the money and privilege of a legal team paid for by PartyPoker popups and admit you and your employees are engaging in profiting from theft and purposefully going out of your way to make sure content creators don't get credited for their work? Who is the person that claims they made the work in question. If they signed a consent and release form why not make the information public?

I tried to be amiable. I tried to offer you my help in ending the entire thing and you did nothing but insult me, when I think it's obvious I have had nothing to do with this. I'm done with you. I will continue deleting things that break my terms of service, but beyond that, expect nothing. Here is my final offer: tomorrow at midnight I will delete anything with the term "eBaum". I offer to do this for you if you remove lohanfacial.html from your website.



Lovingly,

-Max

Sole proprietor, YTMND.COM