On the morning of 9/30/2002, I received a flurry of email from one "Scott James Strohmeyer", a person I think I met once for a few minutes several years ago. The messages were sent to me, to two different "abuse" addresses at my employer, and, apparently, to the complaint department at Earthlink. They were DMCA infringement notices, alleging that my personal web site (all of it, apparently) made illicit use of his intellectual property. Here's one of the letters.

Scotty, as he signs himself, apparently took exception to my link to someone else's web site, a page that paints a very unflattering portrait of him based on his physical and legal altercation with former girlfriend Petra Verkaik.

Unfortunately for him, I've actually read the DMCA, so I knew that his threat was empty and his notices were fake. He didn't identify any specific IP that I was "pirating", he didn't inform my actual ISP (Earthlink hosts the other guy's site), and most importantly, he didn't send the letter by physical mail with a real signature on it.

It's true that an ISP or other service provider can choose to accept electronic infringement notices once they have a signature on file (eBay's VeRO program, for instance), but Earthlink isn't my ISP, and the guy who runs Munitions.com doesn't have Scotty's signature on file.

I informed him of these errors, and asked him to send the signed letter required by the law, so that I could file a signed counter-letter to keep my site online, and then nail him to the wall. Infringement notices, you see, contain phrases like certify under penalty of perjury, and with his obviously false claims, Scotty is guilty, guilty, guilty. I haven't heard from him since.

Scotty's domains, referenced in the notices, are www.alphamodels.net, alphamoney.com, and alphainteractive.com. I suggest avoiding them.

– 2002/10/06