An apology

Please Note. This blog was sold and changed hands AFTER this page was written. The products mentioned in the following paragraphs were discontinued BEFORE the sale of this blog took place and will remain discontinued. Any correspondence received regarding anything in the following paragraphs will be forwarded to the previous owner.

In September 2009 I became embroiled in something that was ill advised.

I became aware of a very negative review of Twitter Rocket written by Allison Reynolds of the Secret Woman’s Business Network. I reacted badly to this and, because the review included what I considered to be too much information about the product, I issued a DMCA takedown notice.

The review, and the blog hosting it, was taken down by their host. With hindsight, I shouldn’t have issued a DMCA takedown notice. A DMCA take down notice is not the correct way of dealing with a negative review, it’s a legal recourse for copyright infringement. A negative review doesn’t constitute copyright infringement

The review, and the blog hosting it, was taken down by their host. However, because there was no copyright infringement, I had to issue a retraction and the blog went back up.

I was furious and reacted badly.

I had already set up a number of Twitter accounts to test and promote my product. Using those account IDs I posted comments on the review blog and other blogs owned by Allison Reynolds to discredit her and her review. Allison detected many of the comments and deleted them. This was and is against Twitter’s terms of service and because of this all of those Twitter accounts were permanently suspended within a matter of days.

Because of the damage that was done to my product as a result of having my test Twitter accounts permanently suspended I again retaliated.

A few blogs were configured, to replace the lost Twitter accounts, to promote my product and to discredit Allison Reynolds and her review. I was not alone in doing this but I was in control of what was taking place.

All of these blogs have been permanently deleted.

Any domains associated with these blogs will be left to expire and will not be renewed by me or anyone acting on my behalf.

At this time I spoke with Twitter about my account. They informed me that my product was infringing their trademark and needed many changes. I changed the name of the product, made many changes to it in accordance with the discussions I had with Twitter, my account was reinstated and everything was back to normal.

I withdrew my product.

However. I continued to react badly to the original situation and continued to attempt to discredit Allison Reynolds, even though I had withdrawn and retired the product in question.

I turned my attention to the products that she promoted, in particular the Immediate Edge.

I wrote an article entitled Immediate Edge Smackdown on my personal blog where I spoke negatively about Immediate Edge. I invited people to comment on my post. The negative comments were written by me in an attempt to discredit the product.

I was wrong to infer that the Immediate Edge was in any way involved in gambling or adult sites.

I then wrote an article on Upstart Blogger entitled Immediate Edge Exposed. This post was a false competition. I claimed to be giving away 2 tickets to an Immediate Edge seminar in Melbourne Australia with all the trimmings. This post was purely link bait. I didn’t have any tickets and there was never a competition.

Finally I wrote a blog post entitled How not to sell your ebook online. In this post I made a regrettable personal attack on Allison Reynolds, referring to her as crazy cat lady. I made some unkind and cruel remarks about her for which I unreservedly apologize.

There was no justification for these actions. Driven by a desire for revenge I acted improperly and unprofessionally.

Shortly after all of this occurred I contacted Ed Dale to make things right as it was made clear that Allison Reynolds was preparing to release the true story of the events described above.

Ed and I worked together on a reconciliation agreement. This statement forms part of that reconciliation agreement.

To Ed and Dan, to everyone involved with Immediate Edge, and to Allison, I unreservedly apologize for the actions that I have undertaken over the course of the past few months that have caused harm or distress.

I realize and fully admit that I attacked The Immediate Edge, Dan Raine, and Ed Dale personally for no other reason than they were people and sites that Alison mentioned on her blog. For that I am sorry, they didn’t deserve it.

I am very grateful to Ed, Dan and Allison for giving me the opportunity to make this apology, to draw a line in the sand and move forward positively.