 Mark Edmonton Age: 35 Posts: 1807 |
Time has come to address the pressing issue - What are we going to do about Nikki Catsouras aka Porsche Girl Car Crash Pictures?
Hate to bring this upon everyone; I just wanted to share what exactly is happening behind the scenes:
As you may know, Porsche Girl brought a lot of attention to Alberta Stars. Search Engines send us on average 100 people a day who are searching for Nikki Catsouras or related terms. Because we are one of few website who have content relevant to the search term, it results with those hundreds of people going right for the Porsche Girl thread. Back in beginning of December when Nikki Catsouras’ story was featured on 20/20, we got an average of 9000 extra people a day to our website – those were again the ones looking for pictures of Nikki Catsouras.
Following 20/20 feature, I have received many ugly messages. My email address can be easily looked up – which I have posted should anyone need to get in touch with me regarding website issues so I can help them out. This was abused by many ill wishers, and I was subjected to countless threats and death wishes.
To be fair, I have also received many emails of support thanking me for keeping my head straight and doing what’s right, not what people with money command. On December 13, I was contacted by Mr. Dayu Yang from Reputation Defender Inc. For those of you who watched the video with 20/20 feature on the Porsche Girl, you may have noticed that Nikki’s father hired that company called Reputation Defender to remove all traces of Nicole Catsouras from internet. What Nikki's dad was trying to achieve is understandable. Their family was being harassed with the pictures in a seriously distasteful manner (none of us condoned that behavior, though).
Mr. Dayu Yang from Reputation Defender Inc. left a message through Contact a Moderator feature. I have responded to it through the system, but it doesn’t look like Mr. Dayu Yang came back to read the response. On February 02 2008, Mr. Dayu Yang left the same message for me through Contact a Moderator form again. That is why I’m assuming he never got my previous response.
I’m not going to post what exactly the message contained, but in general it was a request to remove images. The request has been written in a tone of a request and does not contain any threats or abusive language. It is very polite, simply describing the situation of The Catsouras and kindly asking for consideration to understand the family and remove the thread form our system.
Naturally, an average website owner would take any such thread down upon first letter form lawyers – before cease and desist letter comes. This would be an easy solution – I’d remove the thread, The Reputation Defender Inc. guys would be happy and would send The Catsouras’ another bill for $250 000 for successfully getting rid of one popular page with the Porsche Girl stuff and the life would go on. Except that by doing so this website would become what every other website on the net is – the puppet on the string. We at Alberta Stars pride ourselves on being a free thought community where censorship has no place. Even super gory websites like Ogrish censor all material related to the Porsche Girl and remove it on the spot banning everyone who touches it. Alberta Stars is one of the latest beacons of true freedoms of expression on internet. A place where “No Censorship” policy actually takes life and is not just a text line. Are we going to stand behind our freedom of speech and fight for it even though we’re against a monster with more money and power or shell we just bow down and give up without fight to avoid the defeat?
The positive is that the request for removal was polite. The negative is that all The Reputation Defender Inc. cares about is the Catsouras’ money. Nikki’s dad has already spent a fortune on those guys and they are most happy to collect more form him. Another negative is that the request was nothing more but a cut and paste text.
What do you think we should do? KEEP? REMOVE?
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