I am in receipt of your threat of August 7.
As you know, I have been asking you for nearly three months to let me know exactly what sections
of which laws you believe me to be violating. In my letter of May 24 and again in my letter of July
17, I specifically volunteered to relinquish my domain name immediately if you could provide me with
evidence that I was violating any law. And yet, until your most recent correspondence, you have
offered me only the vaguest generalities.
Personally, I think that it's pathetic that when you finally see fit to answer my request, you do
so in the form of a lawsuit. This a totally irresponsible action on your part, particularly in light
of the fact that you are running up charges to your client by instigating a lawsuit rather than
offering me a simple answer to a reasonable question.
And to add insult to injury, when you finally provide me with some factual information after
nearly three months of unresponsiveness, you offer me only three days to research your information
to determine its validity. I am extremely busy right now, and will not be able to even consider your
information for a couple of weeks. I do intend to look into your allegations, and if I decide that
they are valid, I will turn the domain name over to you immediately, without the necessity of you
resorting to a lawsuit. I will commit to completing this research by no later than the end of next
month (September 2001), hopefully by the middle of the month (but I will not commit to that).
I should mention that there is one point in your filing that caught my attention and which, after
some reflection, I realize has some validity.
You say: "Also on this site Defendants include advertising, an indication that the website is
being operated for commercial gain." In point of fact, the "advertising" was a link to a site
operated by my girlfriend, and I gave her that link for free. I have been doing this for years; you
can find similar links on other pages that I have created, including:
http://www.WebFeats.com/
http://www.WebFeats.com/dfwisp/
http://www.AddisonWeb.com/
(By the way, that last site, AddisonWeb.com, is a continually-updated listing of all of the
restaurants in Addison, Texas, which I have maintained for about five years as a public service, in
a manner similar to what I'm doing with ShopsAtWillowBend.com. One noticeable difference between the
two websites is that, unlike you, the Town of Addison has not threatened to sue me for trying to
steer business in their direction.)
But even though the link you objected to was non-commercial in the sense that it provides me with
no revenue, I can understand your objection to it, and I have removed it. I will not place any
advertising of any kind on the site in the future, commercial or otherwise (unless your client
wishes to place an ad, of course).
If you do decide to proceed with litigation, I hope that you are honorable enough to inform the
Court that the objection you raise in that particular paragraph is no longer operative. If the Court
issues an injunction based on information that you submitted that you know to be inaccurate, I feel
that you will be guilty of gross and material misrepresentation.
Earlier today, I took the precaution of registering the domain names WillowBendSucks.com,
WillowBendMallSucks.com, ShopsAtWillowBendSucks.com, TheShopsAtWillowBendSucks.com, and - to cover
all the bases - TaubmanSucks.com. I will not create websites at those domain names unless you
proceed with litigation against me, in which case those websites will contain detailed descriptions
of the litigation for the benefit of anyone on the Net who wishes to follow along. As an individual
with incredibly limited resources, I have found this to be an effective technique when I feel that
an organization whose resources are considerably greater than mine is trying to take advantage of
me. I first successfully used this technique to encourage payment from a client who refused to pay
me for services rendered. As part of our settlement, that site is no longer online - but you might
be interested in viewing a similar site I created at WebFeats.com/Caravan.
I am very hopeful that you will not force me to use those domain names - despite the current
unpleasantness, I remain a big fan of The Shops at Willow Bend, and I would much prefer to devote my
creative energies to attracting business to the mall, rather than to exposing it to public
ridicule.
Again, the bottom line is that I am unable to respond to your complaint by today, but I have
committed to responding by the end of September. If you feel that it's necessary to proceed with
litigation rather than waiting a few weeks to see if the problem can be resolved amicably, then I
guess you'll do what you feel you have to do.
Hank Mishkoff
