Tag: Joel Watts

Today I received notice from WordPress that I was free to restore to public access my blog post in which I exposed Joel Watts as an incompetent scholar and lazy fool with respect to his efforts to argue against mythicists and even against the generally accepted nature of history itself as understood among historians. He did not contest my counter-claim to the original takedown notice within the 14 days required.

But after learning that Joel had clearly turned back his system clock to make it look like he had indeed sent me an email to try to arrange a one-to-one settlement to the dispute as required, and that he had subsequently removed the Creative Commons notice to the page that I had (rightfully) copied for critical review, I sent an amended counter-notice four days later. I asked about this and Automattic assured me that the amended counter-notice made no difference to the time schedule and that I am free to republish the post in question. Continue reading “Joel Watts Fails to Defend His DMCA Takedown Application Against Vridar”

Updated about 20 minutes after original post -- detail added to the "So why I did not find. . ." paragraph.

The only detail so far unexplained in the deactivation of the Vridar.wordpress blog is why I apparently did not receive a warning notice from WordPress itself.

The times below are in Australian Central Standard Time, my local time. (Some images may be over-size for iPad viewing but to reduce them further would make them difficult to read.)

• 2:26 AM, Tuesday June 28th, WordPress/Automattic email me notice of their takedown of my post about Joel’s nonsense.

• But being 2:26 AM I am, as usual for that time, asleep.

• Around 3 AM I wake up (as I do from time to time) and check my iphone for current news and recent blog activity.
  • If I looked at my Gmail at that time (I don’t recall if I did, but if I did then I would have ignored anything that did not look interesting — I would have ignored anything from “WordPress” since it’s usually some notice of a new product, new theme, — I’m not interested) the subject header would have meant nothing to me (what’s “DMCA”?, looks technical, some outage time?) and I would have ignored it.
  • The only thing I know for certain is that I did not take any notice of my email at that hour.

• But I did see something odd: my post on Joel’s history/science nonsense is in ‘private’ status. Maybe Tim is doing something with it. I decide to check with him later and go back to sleep.

• Once awake I check the post in “private” status, see nothing wrong with it, so restore it to “public” status.

• About 6 AM I see Tim is online and ask him about the private status of that post. I wonder if there had been a WordPress glitch. I conclude that Tim had accidentally put it in “private” status. Continue reading “Last Piece of the Vridar Takedown Puzzle”

Watch this space for a new post by Tim.

Meanwhile read Manoj Joseph’s recent comments.

On a related matter: Joel Watts has been writing quite a lot to portray WordPress.com through Automattic as diligently investigating the merit of his claim before posting a DMCA takedown notice. See Ugh – Once Again the DMCA and his various comments on James McGrath’s post, Vridar No Longer Available.

Well, if one reads the statement by Automattic that Joel has kindly posted for our benefit one can see that Automattic explained to Joel exactly what they checked. Read that second last one-sentence paragraph:

 That’s it. They explained to Joel that they had received his DMCA takedown notice and reviewed it for completeness.

It was the same when I submitted my counterclaim. I had to check off a whole lot of boxes confirming I had included everything in my statement that they required. They did not check my or Joel’s blog sites to see if my statement was true.

That is, Automattic at this stage does not investigate and confirm the validity of the claims. That is a later process and the responsibility of a court. Automattic’s job is to be sure that each party submits its sworn statements according to due process.

But there’s (much) more . . . . . Continue reading “Joel Watts, “Email Evidence” and Perjury: The Answers Are Beginning to Emerge”

One reader has posted a classic cartoon of the recent events as explained by a certain M. Joel Watts, MA. . . .  For full details of the particular post by M. Watts that this cartoon depicts, as well as the original source photographs on which it is based (they are also classics!) you must visit the original post by pithom on his blog. It includes a little webliography of recent related posts, too.

On 26th June I wrote a post exposing the incompetence and culpable ignorance of Joel Watts with respect to a particular point he was using in an attempt to lampoon mythicism.

That blog post contained a detailed, point by point criticism of Joel’s post. Whenever criticizing the works of others I habitually bend over backwards to be sure I am fair to the other side and let their own views be understood. And since Joel Watts had always had a Creative Commons license condition attached to all of his blog posts (I also have a Creative Commons license) I saw nothing amiss in quoting his blogpost in full — especially seeing it consisted of nothing but a list of 25 web links, a tweet from someone else, and no more than about half a dozen lines of typical Watts-like puerile insult. I made sure I linked to the original site, and that I identified the author, and that the views of the post did not reflect mine. After all, all of those conditions were in large measure the whole reason for my post.

Evidence for the cc licence on Joel’s page is at

https://www.dropbox.com/s/jd245jz4rwxon7u/unsettled.jpg (excerpt including address details) —

and (full page): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XkmNH86CWEE9ulHdSas5zwvfFZ7gt-7FA5F5sKyrAp8/edit?usp=sharing

This CC notice was removed from Joel’s blog only on the morning of 29th June 2013 Australian Central Time. It appears as if this was removed soon after this CC notice on Joel’s blog was publicly advertised: http://www.freeratio.org/showthread.php?p=7493335#post7493335

At no time before my blog was deactivated did I receive any notice from Joel Watts, the owner of the blog post I copied for critical discussion, or from WordPress warning me or asking me to remove or modify the post. My email account is Gmail and files can be verified and in the event of legal proceedings I would welcome such a check.

Indeed, when one began to read the comments by Joel Watts on James McGrath’s blog regarding the take-down of Vridar, he gave no indication that he had anything to do with what had happened. See, for example: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/exploringourmatrix/2013/06/vridar-no-longer-available.html#comment-945224032 As another has noticed, all Joel did until I posted that evidence was joke about his efforts to take down other blogs he did not like, joking that it was an impossible task.

If Joel really did send me a warning letter then one must wonder why he only confessed to his own involvement after I posted the evidence — did he not expect me to be able to that from the beginning?

It was only after I posted the evidence from WordPress that Joel suddenly changed his tack and began to accuse me of being responsible and even for effectively taking down my own blog!

Joel Watts did not follow the specified steps to contact me directly with a complaint about my blogpost. This was in contradiction to Automattic’s direction to complainants according to their directions at  http://automattic.com/dmca/ :

2. Contact the blogger directly. Go to the blog post in question and leave a comment with your complaint to see if the matter can be resolved directly between you and the blogger.

Joel Watts left no such comment on my blog. I received no email from him in my Gmail account and I have offered my gmail account for inspection by legal investigators. Continue reading “What Happened to Vridar? (updated with more reflections on Joel’s role)”