Open Letter Responding to William Irvine of AboveTopSecret

Mr. Irvine,

Given your recent opine on the subject of websites that seem to "mimic" AboveTopSecret, I would like to offer six points of my own in response to your recent statements.

First, allow me to remind you that you do not have "members" or "users": you cater to people and people have free will. I'm sorry that this disturbs you, but I, nor anyone else, am on the internet to please you; I am here to please me. I will do what I wish, as I wish, where I wish. If you don't like it you can ban me from your website, which you have already done. It is interesting that I rank as a "Solid" contributor in your opinion, and yet my posting privileges have been permanently removed. Why not just ban me outright, or is there a concern for people asking questions as to why a "Solid" contributor would rank a post ban? One cannot help but wonder.

Second, no one is concerned about your profit margins except for you. You have created the electronic equivalent of a grocery market cork board. Just as that grocery store does not own the content placed upon that cork board, you do not own the thoughts of your users. Sign of the Times, Godlike Productions, and AmKon have all received DCMA notices, ridiculed you for them, and then ignored them. Most of us still don't attribute your links because your copyright is indefensible in court. I had a sitting administrative law judge take look at it, and neither of us were impressed. I have violated your "exclusive" copyrights and if you would like to test these facts, please come sue me. I welcome the opportunity to waste your precious ad revenue in a court of law. Other conspiracy websites are not your "competition": they are places where free speech continues outside of your heavy handed moderation. You view them as competition for "valuable clicks", but we do not and nor will we ever. You must come to grips that your business model is a failure, and that it will never amount to anything more than the 21st century equivalent of a mom-and-pop convenience store.

Third, AboveTopSecret is a glorified news-aggregation website. It has no staff reporters and generates no original content beyond insipid and factually incorrect user commentary which is, nine times out of ten, a parroted comment from gleaned from another website or blog. Your attempts to "brand" conspiracy theory as your province will continue to fail because, nearly 10 years after starting this adventure, you still do not appreciate the niche of society you are attempting to profit from. Free speech does not fit within a corporatist paradigm because contrary opinions will not be tolerated. Your site offers free speech in the same manner in which George Carlin suggests Americans have freedom of choice: paper or plastic, smoking or nonsmoking. Predetermined choices provided by the proprietors is not freedom of choice. AboveTopSecret is moderated in exactly the same fashion.

Fourth, your administrators and moderators are ignorant goons. I know you like to think different, but they are a bunch of humorless, soulless, morons that wouldn't understand cleverly worded sarcasm if it gave them a blow job. Supporting free speech requires not only the toleration, but the open, willing acceptance of dissenting, and even offensive, opinions.

Fifth, you are not who you pretend to be and no one is fooled. We have vetted your professional bio and your resume is more bloated than that of a recent college graduate. Moderation of the Kodak and Playtex forums may not be construed as building brand loyalty. One might even go so far as to suggest that your repeated failures within the corporate world were what lead you to buying a stake in ATS and turning it into the conspiracy theory WalMart that we know today.

Sixth, your repeated attempts at creating hoaxes to drive interest to your website only continue to reveal your dishonesty and profit-centered focus. This includes but is not limited to: WhispersInTheDark (I and II), SERPO, and the O'Hare UFO hoaxes. We have ample documentation of your deceptions, and would be happy to formalize it for public peer review should you so desire... but I'm betting that you don't.

There is nothing that we can do to prevent your continued public rants regarding your claims of poor sportsmanship. As one corporate warrior to another, suck it up: it's a dog-eat-dog world and you picked the wrong dogpound to stake your claim. I may not like the content at SHTF411.com, but I support their efforts and will contribute there regularly: perhaps I can help fix that content issue they have.

Sincerely,
Me, A Free Thinker