The Video Professor 16

The Video Professor 16 were 16 people who posted their truths about the Video Professor business on ToW. In the same time frame, they and other people posted hundreds of plausibly reasonable critical comments here (deleted) and here.(baleeted) Still, you've got to wonder what these people expected from a company that makes its money by filling late-night television with lurid and stupid advertising.

Whining consumers trolled

Now you know.

The Video Professor organization sent out their lawyers to troll the people who complained (not giving a shit about the compaints being valid) on all three sites. Scherer, the "Video Professor", claimed that they only wanted the names because he thought Justin Leonard (owner of infomercialscams.com) must be inventing the complaints; if not, the Video Professor's competitors must be posting them, because he sure as hell never did nothin' wrong. He also said "We have never sued a customer and we never will sue a customer", claiming he just wanted to contact the whiners to return their money, give them each a big hug, generally kiss and make up, and maybe have some secks.

Scherer might have been confused or had a change of heart because they forced at least one guy who complained to the Denver Post to sign a promise "never to say anything about Video Professor in the future."

Wikipedia Makes Its Users BEND OVER AND TAKE IT

To prove a point about their legal separation (in theory) from the rubes who do their volunteer labor, the Wikipedia gave all requested IP addresses to the Video Professor's troll lawyers without even a token fight. "Wikipedia" here would logically mean the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) but Jimbo and company don't say "the Wikimedia Foundation" until late in the discussion; can't let the "editors" know too much. If you read the tl;dr thread, the WMF's pet lawyer, Mike Godwin, takes credit for some kind of action. He then claims it is too sekrit to talk about, so you'd have to be some kind of fucking idiot to believe they really did anything.

Smaller Sites Say NO!

The two smaller sites, despite having fewer resources and much lower page rankings, refused to rat out their contributors (although only this one was unequivocal about it from the start).

Wanted Dead or Alive: Flagrantly Defamatory Anonymous

The lawyers decided to concentrate on a single whiner. On behalf of Scherer, they gave this one high praise as "the most flagrantly defamatory anonymous poster on Wikipedia" and demanded that Comcast hand over related "identifying information" (this also proves that the WMF's claimed sekrit cloak-and-dagger "action" meant nothing). Comcast refused, even though the lawyers "left two telephone messages with Comcast to determine whether the subpoenaed information will be produced timely." With syntax like that, maybe Comcast just never managed to unscramble their sentences.

External Links

• Denver Post article

• "Video Professor Goes after Critics"

• "Comcast protects its users, Wikipedia surrenders."

• Whining on one site the Video Professor went after

• Whining on the other site they went after

• Detailed table of the exact sentences the Video Professor wanted to sue people on one site for—un-fuckin'-believable!

• Moar whining

• Thread on Jimbo's talk page, where concepts, protests, and questions go to die

• Second "Wikipedia surrendering users info without a fight" thread

• The main thread on ToW.

• "You have been sued" notice from infomercialscams.com

• Lawyer for VP tells the court that he "has left two telephone messages with Comcast to determine whether the subpoenaed information will be produced timely" and incidentally has a lot of trouble with grammatical expression.

• Video Professor shows no sense of humor over pathetically bad parody article

The Video Professor 16 is part of a series on Wikipedia Visit the Wikipedia Portal for complete coverage.

Featured article August 1, 2008
Preceded by Censorship	The Video Professor 16	Succeeded by YouTube View Fraud