Deception
posted by max on February 01, 2007 at 08:21:06 PM
Well folks,
Sorry to update on such a sour note, but now that the whole Sega thing seems to have blown over, I was hoping to hold off an update until the new moderation system was finished.
It seems that your favorite site in the world "How to prank a telemarketer" has caused YTMND to be part of some legal turmoil.
I can be contacted by phone at XXX-XXX-3792, removing my call will not make this right. We will conduct an audit to see how much advertising you have sold since my content was posted and ask for an percentage of advertising revenue.
-tommabe.com
============
I couldn't tell if Tom Mabe's website sent me this email or he had just transcended the need for a name and now goes by tommabe.com. Either way here is my response:
Dear Tom,
I can't say how relieved I was to receive your letter, I am such a big fan. I'm real sorry to hear no one is buying your CD, but thanks for letting me know a clip from a radio show makes up the entire content of your work. It's good to hear you are working with CNN and I have to agree, you are certainly a troublemaker; your shitty phone call has been clogging up my website for months. It's also good to hear you won't be badmouthing me on CNN, as I am extremely concerned with how my website is portrayed to the public. Luckily, the ads on the site that plays your clip average around $3 a day total because they are hidden. This means your site has made roughly $120 in the last four months.
The MP3 clip on the site is roughly 2,379 kilobytes large and has been viewed roughly 6,194,201 times. What this means is that since the site with your work was put up, I've transferred 14,736,004,179kB of your phone call, giving you quite a bit of advertising. That's almost 15 terabytes over four months which comes out to a little over $2000 at the market rate of hosting. Deducting the advertising revenue, it looks like you owe me roughly $1880 US dollars. I'll have my people send you an invoice.
I also noticed you give away the same clip used on YTMND on your own website as a preview for people to buy your CD. I guess if someone else who is giving you credit gives it away, it isn't acceptable, but if you give it away it's considered good for business. Thank you for teaching me this valuable business lesson. I now see how hurtful to your career it has been to have millions of people hear your work.
Surely if you've employed a lawyer at this point, he would have told you sending threatening forewarnings from such a prestigious email address as "TomMabe3@aol.com" is a wise decision. It's not clear to me how you will be conducting an audit on my revenue, but I'm fully willing to work with you through this and figure out how much money you owe me.
Eagerly awaiting your "legal muscle",
-Max
Sorry to update on such a sour note, but now that the whole Sega thing seems to have blown over, I was hoping to hold off an update until the new moderation system was finished.
It seems that your favorite site in the world "How to prank a telemarketer" has caused YTMND to be part of some legal turmoil.
From: TomMabe3@aol.com To: legal@ytmnd.com Subject: How do you want to pay me? Body:My name is Tom Mabe and you have a call of mine on your site that has been there for weeks. "Crime Scene" (It's a telemarketing call). People are not buying my CD because you are giving it to them for free! CNN is doing a special with me regarding this type of stolen content. As you may know CNN has dubbed me troubleshooter/troublemaker. I will not give you any free press by naming your company but will approach you with legal muscle that could cost you.
I can be contacted by phone at XXX-XXX-3792, removing my call will not make this right. We will conduct an audit to see how much advertising you have sold since my content was posted and ask for an percentage of advertising revenue.
-tommabe.com
============
I couldn't tell if Tom Mabe's website sent me this email or he had just transcended the need for a name and now goes by tommabe.com. Either way here is my response:
From: max@ytmnd.com To: TomMabe3@aol.com Subject: Re: How do you want to pay me?
Dear Tom,
I can't say how relieved I was to receive your letter, I am such a big fan. I'm real sorry to hear no one is buying your CD, but thanks for letting me know a clip from a radio show makes up the entire content of your work. It's good to hear you are working with CNN and I have to agree, you are certainly a troublemaker; your shitty phone call has been clogging up my website for months. It's also good to hear you won't be badmouthing me on CNN, as I am extremely concerned with how my website is portrayed to the public. Luckily, the ads on the site that plays your clip average around $3 a day total because they are hidden. This means your site has made roughly $120 in the last four months.
The MP3 clip on the site is roughly 2,379 kilobytes large and has been viewed roughly 6,194,201 times. What this means is that since the site with your work was put up, I've transferred 14,736,004,179kB of your phone call, giving you quite a bit of advertising. That's almost 15 terabytes over four months which comes out to a little over $2000 at the market rate of hosting. Deducting the advertising revenue, it looks like you owe me roughly $1880 US dollars. I'll have my people send you an invoice.
I also noticed you give away the same clip used on YTMND on your own website as a preview for people to buy your CD. I guess if someone else who is giving you credit gives it away, it isn't acceptable, but if you give it away it's considered good for business. Thank you for teaching me this valuable business lesson. I now see how hurtful to your career it has been to have millions of people hear your work.
Surely if you've employed a lawyer at this point, he would have told you sending threatening forewarnings from such a prestigious email address as "TomMabe3@aol.com" is a wise decision. It's not clear to me how you will be conducting an audit on my revenue, but I'm fully willing to work with you through this and figure out how much money you owe me.
Eagerly awaiting your "legal muscle",
-Max
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LOST is a student project. The aim of LOST is to show how 7 million people connect to one
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You know what's funny? Given some of the people who hang around here, the photo you replaced HTPAT with (go there, you know to want to) would probably get higher ratings than the original site. Course, I kinda feel bad for the Dilberts of the world who just got e-mailed the link to it on their coffee break, and they go there and see THAT on their work computers. Then again, anyone dumb enough to go to YTMND on their work computer deserves what they get.
:) great job Max, most likely some prankster doing this. Surely if they wanted to do something about this, they would contact you more formally, instead of a letter from TomMabe3@aol.com.
Nah, dont delete it, you arent doing anything wrong. If you wanna delete it just for the sake of deleting it, go ahead, cus I sure am tired of this lame site.
One other point, and then I'll hang up and listen. If this was such an albatross, why not kill the site at any other point? Or figure out some way to move it to some other server? I find the pretext of "Tom Mabe" and his mighty, mighty AOL e-mail driving this off the site a little ... suspicious. Dude, it's your site, kill it or don't, but a probably fake e-mail shouldn't be the catalyst. Unless you did up the e-mail to give yourself the out to kill it, but again, why bother?
IT'S A HOAX IT'S A HOAX IT'S A HOAX IT'S A HOAX IT'S A HOAX IT'S A HOAX IT'S A HOAX IT'S A HOAX IT'S A HOAX IT'S A HOAX IT'S A HOAX IT'S A HOAX IT'S A HOAX IT'S A HOAX IT'S A HOAX IT'S A HOAX IT'S A HOAX IT'S A HOAX IT'S A HOAX IT'S A HOAX IT'S A HOAX IT'S A HOAX IT'S A HOAX IT'S A HOAX IT'S A HOAX IT'S A HOAX IT'S A HOAX IT'S A HOAX IT'S A HOAX IT'S A HOAX IT'S A HOAX IT'S A HOAX IT'S A HOAX IT'S A HOAX IT'S A HOAX IT'S A HOAX IT'S A HOAX IT'S A HOAX and an obvious one at that. You just fell for the trap.
i rarely read the news here, but that response is the greatest thing ever, i would blow my load if i ever get a chance to write a response letter half as bad *ss as that one. although i hope now the f*cking how to prank a telemarketer site gets pulled, not because of the legal muscle just because im tired of seeing it at the top of the list every f*cking day, WE NEED A RETIRED SECTION.
Max pwned him. For the few that could not read, if Max deletes the site, Tom will still take legal action even though he is not going to win. So stop posting "Delete the site before Tom attacks" type comments. Even if it was deleted, Google just refreshed their cache recently, you can easily get the website from that.
Now THAT is how you respond to a complaint. I can honestly say that I had never heard of Tom Mabe until that site, and only know who he is because of it. Would he rather have people not know who he is and have no chance of buying his CD, or have people know who he is and maybe decide "Hey, this is pretty good. Maybe I'll go check out some more of his work." In my opinion, he should be happy he has gained so many "critics".
Tom Mabe here, your favorite douchebag. where do I start? I think we all have been spoofed or there's one more possibilty that I'm looking into. I'm a fan of this site and I'm a upload whore. Just check out YouTube.com and my site. I have no plans or desire to threaten legal action for Max making more people aware of my little call. Yes, I'm tired of it too. I'm very impressed with the person who sent out the gay porn from my email address. My father-in-law emailed me back, "Dude, what else you got?"
Everyone telling max it's fake, I'm 99.9% sure he already knew while he was writing that reply. I mean, sure, he's awesome, but he's also bright enough on his own to have figured it out, and probably wrote such a letter to counter the hoax and deliver some pwnage. And to me, that's still pretty epically righteous.
I appreciate that, but maybe you're looking out for your interests just a little bit more. I mean you shouldn't be asking people to come down here and pay the freight on something they paid, it still ain't good enough, I mean you think that's right? I mean maybe you're doing your job but why you gotta stop me from doing mine? Cause if you're willing to go through all the battling you got to go through to get where you want to get, who's got the right to stop you? I mean maybe some of you guys got something you never finished, something you really want to do, something you never said to someone, something... and you're told no, even after you paid your dues? Who's got the right to tell you that, who? Nobody! It's your right to listen to your gut, it ain't nobody's right to say no after you earned the right to be where you want to be and do what you want to do!... You know, the older I get the more things I gotta leave behind, that's life. The only thing I'm asking you guys to leave on the table... is what's right.
you got to be f*cking retarded to think that email came fro tom mabe. It was some pissed off little kid that wanted telemarketer ytmnd deleted. Even the phone number he gave was bullsh*t; its the same as the tommabe.com customer service line. Why the f*ck would tom mabe tell you to reach him through customer service? Shouldn't even have wasted time writing a response, but it was hilarious nevertheless.