You have an interesting blog there with a unique perspective (http://behind-the-enemy-lines.blogspot.com/2010/10/can-crowd... as an example). Given that this is your first (visible) submission since you registered 553 days ago, I'm sure it would be the pleasure of many here if we saw your posts being submitted more often.
A goal of the the assignment is to create a site that shows up at the top of the search results for a query. I wonder if the student created the silly sounding C&D letter with the goal of generating page rank improving links back to his site from discussion in the blogsphere about the letter.
Could it be that this letter was written automatically by software using a template? Maybe they have thousands of auto-generated sites and this is an automated scare tactic they use on their perceived competitors?
That explanatory model makes some sense, but then there's the specifics where they complain about the sort order: "The listing of the dates on your monthly playlists go in ascending order rather than descending. This is just one of the many flaws of your clearly haphazardly designed website."
Hi Panos. My younger brother is in your class and I feel it is my duty to inform you that the kid has the creativity, work ethic, and street smarts to do big things, remarkably taking after his older brother. He's got my last name, and he deserves an A.
We were talking about what the legalities were for a class project like this if a student were to upload pirated content, etc. Who'd be responsible?
I'm not sure about New York, but it costs more than $8.00 in court fees to file a small claims action where I live. While it's true that people don't always act rationally with money, this seems a little too odd to be real.
I think it's probably real. Having played with similar concepts which skirt the copyright issue in similar ways, there are plenty of people out there who send out templated C&D letters to stop similar competition.
I've seen a handful of these in my career as an Search Engine Optimizer. I often ignore them since there is good chance it is a scam and the author of the e-mail may not even be affiliated with the website in question.
