My core business is developing and selling software over the internet. This is my livelihood. I have a website where I offer my software, This website also has a "Support Forum", where (existing and new) customers can ask questions about the software I write.
For a hobby, I created an automotive forum about 8 years ago. By now this has grown to be the largest forum on the internet dedicated to this specific car. The forum is moderated a bit differently than most other forums. I am the single moderator, but I don't do any active moderation. Everything is done by the members themselves. For instance, banning is done by "vote". This means that the members themselves can ban other members. This works extremely well.
A certain member that was banned, still blamed me personally for it somehow and apparently held a "grudge" against me (unbeknownst to me). A few days ago, he apparently found my business website and rallied a few friends through a conference call to "mess up" my business forum.
They posted a link to a rivaling car website in each and every thread, posted a few hundred messages with pornographic images and the usual "this is (my name) and his wife" remarks and indeed generally made a mess of the forum.
Now if this was all they did, I would have been angry, but I would have shrugged, cleaned up the forum and made sure they could never register again. But the last thing the person in question did is far more serious. He sent a PM (Private Message) to every single member on that forum (my customers) claiming he is the real author of several programs I was selling and that I stole them from him, removed/changed the copyright and am selling it as my own. And that the reason he couldn't do anything about it was because he was in a different country than I was. He also said to never do business with me because I was a fraud. Of course, this story is completely untrue and can be disproved quite easily. My forum is set up so that when somebody receives a PM, a notification is sent to the recipient by email. I have checked my logs and so far, about 80% of my (registered) customers have checked their PM and therefor seen the message. I've already received a lot of questions about it and had to explain the situation.
(BTW,it took him a few hours to do all this and he used a computer from his work at the OK State University for it.)
Now in my opinion, this is both libel and a copyright violation. But he is right about one thing: He is in another country than I am (he is in the States, I'm from Europe) so I'm unsure what to do next. I want to sue him for damages (or at the least make sure he never does something like this again) but am unsure how to proceed from here.
There were 6 persons in the initial conference call where this person rallied the others. One person immediately said he wanted nothing to do with it and left the conference call. I have this persons testimony (as email) describing the events. A second person who also posted pornographic messages and links to the other car site has shown regret, and he has put his testimony on paper, signed it and mailed that to me. In this testimony he also describes the events from beginning to end.
So I have two witnesses. I also have log files that contains the ip-addresses of these persons, and which I can cross reference to real names through my car forum.
So again, my question is: how to proceed from here? I operate a sole proprietorship and can't really afford any legal fees.
For a hobby, I created an automotive forum about 8 years ago. By now this has grown to be the largest forum on the internet dedicated to this specific car. The forum is moderated a bit differently than most other forums. I am the single moderator, but I don't do any active moderation. Everything is done by the members themselves. For instance, banning is done by "vote". This means that the members themselves can ban other members. This works extremely well.
A certain member that was banned, still blamed me personally for it somehow and apparently held a "grudge" against me (unbeknownst to me). A few days ago, he apparently found my business website and rallied a few friends through a conference call to "mess up" my business forum.
They posted a link to a rivaling car website in each and every thread, posted a few hundred messages with pornographic images and the usual "this is (my name) and his wife" remarks and indeed generally made a mess of the forum.
Now if this was all they did, I would have been angry, but I would have shrugged, cleaned up the forum and made sure they could never register again. But the last thing the person in question did is far more serious. He sent a PM (Private Message) to every single member on that forum (my customers) claiming he is the real author of several programs I was selling and that I stole them from him, removed/changed the copyright and am selling it as my own. And that the reason he couldn't do anything about it was because he was in a different country than I was. He also said to never do business with me because I was a fraud. Of course, this story is completely untrue and can be disproved quite easily. My forum is set up so that when somebody receives a PM, a notification is sent to the recipient by email. I have checked my logs and so far, about 80% of my (registered) customers have checked their PM and therefor seen the message. I've already received a lot of questions about it and had to explain the situation.
(BTW,it took him a few hours to do all this and he used a computer from his work at the OK State University for it.)
Now in my opinion, this is both libel and a copyright violation. But he is right about one thing: He is in another country than I am (he is in the States, I'm from Europe) so I'm unsure what to do next. I want to sue him for damages (or at the least make sure he never does something like this again) but am unsure how to proceed from here.
There were 6 persons in the initial conference call where this person rallied the others. One person immediately said he wanted nothing to do with it and left the conference call. I have this persons testimony (as email) describing the events. A second person who also posted pornographic messages and links to the other car site has shown regret, and he has put his testimony on paper, signed it and mailed that to me. In this testimony he also describes the events from beginning to end.
So I have two witnesses. I also have log files that contains the ip-addresses of these persons, and which I can cross reference to real names through my car forum.
So again, my question is: how to proceed from here? I operate a sole proprietorship and can't really afford any legal fees.
