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The Blog Herald threatened with legal action from Blog Power

The Blog Herald threatened with legal action from Blog Power

Topping off a wonderful week, I’ve recieved threats of legal action from Brett Oggle, the promoter of the Blog Power software (his media release here), Brett claims that the software does not encourage content theft and that users are encouraged to use “authorized RSS feeds” when using the program to get content for their blogs. I’ve removed the post on the basis only that it would be unfair to the new owners to inherit legal threats of this nature.

I make no further comment on the matter but I’d encourage others in the blogosphere to share their opinions on a piece of software that (in his words) “quickly and easily lets anyone search and locate keyword-related RSS feeds and post them automatically to a blog.”

The correspondence as follows:

Mr. Riley,

You will remove all mentions of my name, companies, websites, references, and negative comments from your website, specifically this page:
https://blogherald.com/2005/06/13/the-power-of-content-theft-297-and-you- to-can-become-a-professional-thief/

Within 14 days of today, or you will receive a $250,000 libel lawsuit by certified mail, delivered by an oficer of the court. My attorneys are drafting the necessary documents now.

Sincerely,
Brett Fogle
Options University
www.optionsuniversity.com

and his subsequent response:

Take it down, or I’ll sue.

People are looking at our options company, and someone searched my name and
saw this defaming article, which reflects poorly on me.

If people misuse blo power, that’s out of our control. It can and should be
used with authorized RSS feeds or your own content.

See Also
Google Lab

And I’m not ‘stealing’ anything, so watch your accusations.

Your call, but you’ll have to defend the suit either way and my lawyers
don’t go easy.

I suggest you take care of this, or notify the responsible parties.

Brett

You be the judge!

View Comments (10)
  • I’m sure it doesn’t encourage content theft any more than file sharing networks encourage the sharing of copyrighted movies and songs. He’s full of it and he knows it. Hopefully this page will get indexed and people doing a search on his name will see that he is scum. Too bad you can’t stick around and fight this one Duncan :P

  • As they say in my neck of the woods: if it walks like a splog-generating tool, and talks like a splog-generating tool, then it probably is a…

    BTW, the press release says his name is Brett Fogle, not Oggle. :D

  • I’ve had to threaten people who have swiped my RSS content before. One person even replied to my email and confirmed what tool they used :)

    Apparently, no one told them it wasn’t ok to do so.

  • Man, that’s rotten. This is gonna give him a lot of negative publicity and he’ll probably ask you to prune this post as well. But what kinda democracy doesn’t allow you to tell the truth about a service…

  • I’m curious what your response was to warrant the second e-mail, Duncan, or was it simply a follow up b/c you did not reply?

    @Cary – ROFL!

  • What a jerk.
    This is the kind of thing that is done is Singapore to limit free speech.
    One can only say that it is a reflection on this person’s character that he would rather threaten the use of lawyers and financial ruin, rather than defend his position and software himself.

  • Do I have this straight….With this software, someone (anyone) can take my RSS feed, add all my original and copyright protected content to their site, and benefit from readers, ad revenue, and higher search engine ranking? Without my permission?

    I know this can be done already, but is that what this software is really designed to do? If so, Napster comes to mind.

    What I hate about the press release is these two statements: “Who has time to create hundreds of pages of content, add relevant links, comb the Web for still more link partners and then ping the search engines to let them know new content’s been added? I demanded a total hands-off solution!�

    “If you can cut and paste, you can be up and running in minutes,� Fogle said. “In fact, we have reports of sites being indexed within hours and getting top 10 major search engine rankings in just days, as opposed to months with many current SEO techniques.�

    My problem with those statements is this…I am one who has taken the time, energy, and effort to publish original content and grow an audience. If this is truly a software solution that allows someone to take my energy and put it to use on their site…it’s wrong. If I have this right…this software makes it easier for someone to take my stuff and succeed from my sweat.

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