Schillings are making secret threats again

Craig Murray - Iraq Mercenary Boss Hires Schillings To Block My New Book Schillings are a firm of libel lawyers dedicated to prevent the truth from being known about some deeply unlovely people. They managed temporarily to close down this blog (and several others) to keep information quiet about the criminal record of Alisher Usmanov. Now they are attempting to block the publication of my new book in the interests of mercenary commander Tim Spicer, one of those who has made a fortune from the Iraq War.

Unity - Murray faces more legal bullying: To appreciate the full scope of what Schillings are trying to do here, you need to read the letter that was sent to Craig and his publishers, which was marked 'Not For Publication' - Craig has it on his blog in PDF format, but to make life easier for everyone, here's the full text of the letter...

PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL
Mainstream Publishing Company (Edinburgh) Limited
7 Albany Street
Edinburgh
Scotland
EH13UG

BY POST AND FAX: XXXX XXX XXXX
OurRef: SMS/JXR/ww/A131/3
ON THE RECORD
NOT FOR PUBLICATION
08 July 2008

Dear Sirs

The Road to Samarkand - Craig Murray

We represent Lieutenant-Colonel Tim Spicer OBE, C.E.O. of Aegis Defence Services Limited ("Aegis").

We are instructed to write to you with regard to 'THE ROAD TO SAMARKAND- INTRIGUE, CORRUPTION AND DIRTY DIPLOMACY' ("the Book") written by Craig Murray and due to be published in September 2008 by you (http://www.rbooks.co.uk/search results.aspx) to be sold in England and Wales by Random House Sales Department.

We have reason to believe that the Book may contain serious, untrue and damaging defamatory allegations about our client.

Please confirm by return whether the Book is due to be published in England and Wales in September 2008 and if so, the exact date. Please also confirm whether the Book is due to be published in any other jurisdiction, setting out each jurisdiction, together with the publication date and publisher concerned in each case.

Importantly, we require you to confirm by return whether or not the Book contains any reference to our client, and if so, we require you to set out in full each and every reference to our client in its entirety to give our client the opportunity to take legal advice and to respond to any allegations in good time prior to publication.

Any widespread publication of the Book containing defamatory allegations concerning our client would be deeply damaging to our client's personal and professional reputations and would cause him profound distress and anxiety. We remind you that you would be responsible for that damage and any subsequent republication of the allegations. We also put you on notice that you will be liable for any special damage or loss suffered by our client as a result of the Book and we reserve all our client's rights in this regard.

We note from your website http://www.mainstreampublishing.com/news_current.html that Mr Murray is due to speak about the Book at a 'Mainstream author event at the Edinburgh International Book Festival' entitled 'Lived Lives' on 12th August 2008 at 4.30pm in the RBS Main Theatre, Edinburgh. We hereby put both you and Mr Murray on notice that all our client's rights are reserved in relation to any defamatory comments or publications made by you or Mr Murray in relation to that event.

Please immediately take into your possession all drafts of the Book pre-publication, all notes, emails, correspondence, memos, images and other documents relevant to the publication of this Book, and preserve them safely pending the outcome of this dispute. They will need to be disclosed in due course if litigation has to be commenced. Also, you will need to disclose the financial arrangements for the sale and licence of the Book to other publications.

In the circumstances, we require that you confirm immediately that you agree to undertake on behalf of Mainstream Publishing Company (Edinburgh) Limited not to publish any libels regarding our client in any editions of the Book or at all.

We require the above undertaking by 4pm on Friday 11h July 2008, failing which we will have no option but to advise our client with regard to making applications to the High Court for an injunction to restrain publication and/or for pre-action disclosure. You are on notice that we will seek to recover the costs of any necessary applications from you.

We await your response by return. In the meantime all our client's rights are reserved, including the right to issue proceedings against you without further notice.
Yours faithfully

SCHILLINGS
cc. Craig Murray Esq.

(Please note that simply reproducing this letter on your own blog could cause one of our bravest cash-only fighting heroes "profound distress and anxiety"...)

Schillings in shameless hypocrisy shock

Matt has it. I'm still getting over it.

Schillings and some action-packed Nazi excitement

REVEL in the sheer hypocrisy of the Mail bringing up a past connection to the Nazis!

SHIVER in anticipation as Schillings advises their client to press any and all legal advantage in a way that's sure to bring more negative publicity!

SIGH in relief when that client reveals that - unlike certain ancestors - he can be quite sensible when the pressure is on.

Anorak - Schillings Update: On Alisher Usmanov, Peter Serafinowizc And Online PR

Schillings really have to learn that that they're no good at this PR lark.

Schillings want to have you for breakfast

Source (PDF):

LexisNexis in association with Schillings present:

Reputation Management
A roundtable breakfast briefing on how to avert a public crisis and protect your company’s brand, reputation and share price
Wednesday 24 October 2007
Halsbury House, 35 Chancery Lane, London

This highly practical roundtable breakfast will give you an opportunity to:
- Understand how to utilise the laws of defamation, privacy and intellectual property to safeguard your company’s reputation
- Gain tactical advice on how to strategically deploy injunctions
- Learn how you can exploit the Reynolds defence
- Discover how to “out” anonymous attackers
- Appreciate on-line threats and how to protect against internet attacks

This LexisNexis roundtable breakfast briefing in association with Schillings will provide you with the knowledge you need to either avert a crisis before it arises or mitigate its effect. The roundtable is by invitation only and will give you the opportunity to obtain expert practical advice on handling such a crisis and compare notes with your fellow in-house counsel under Chatham House rules on how such disasters can be averted.

It seems to me that we should have a representative at that meeting... are there any volunteers?

:o)

One for the scrapbook

I'm in the Eye, me... and in a good way:



For the record, the good people at Arsenal News Review deserve credit for the initial list that led to this post.

Usmanov gags Indymedia

While Usmanov butters up journalists and maintains his 'water of a duck's back' charade, the willing flunkies at Schillings have resumed their attacks on websites vulnerable to their quasi-legal challenges:

Indymedia UK Facing Legal Censorship… again!

Justin and Septicisle have more.

Read words

Justin has a lovely piece about the Usmanov affair to date published over at the IOC website...

Index on Censorship - Britain: Bloggers unite against intimidation: It must be emphasised that this is not about bloggers claiming the right to say whatever they like with impunity and without fear of sanction. Bloggers are, rightly so, as accountable for what they write as journalists. Craig Murray is on record as saying he wants Usmanov to sue him for libel so the allegations can be put on the record. In a statement to the Guardian newspaper, a spokesman for Schillings said that they were not about to sue Murray because ‘they did not want to give him a platform to express his views’. Instead of fighting the case in the courts, Schillings tried to make the story go away completely. The allegations may be true, they may be false, but in the absence of a libel trial testing their veracity, thousands of people have formed their own conclusions.

Ouch.

Matt Wardman writes: If Mr Usmanov were employing Schillings Lawyers to generate attention for himself rather than to try and muzzle it, they would be performing very well indeed. Here are a couple of graphs from the useful Blogpulse Service, which racks how much attention is being devoted to different topics on the blogs. The first bulge is Alisher Usmanov buying part of Arsenal. The second bulge is the interest after Mr Usmanov used Schillings Lawyers to close down Craig Murray's critical website.

And what a bulge it is. Go and see the graphs, and picture how much Schillings must be hurting right now. This is a bloody train wreck for them.

Wouldn't you love to be a fly on the wall at Friday drinkies?

:o)

Schillings

Yesterday, thousands of witnesses (most of them authors of key weblogs or their readers) watched Fasthosts punk out... again. They had their chance to make good and they blew it.

Next cab off the rank: Schillings.

You'll like this one; it's short and sweet...

Schillings

----- Original Message -----
From: Clive Summerfield
To: legal@schillings.co.uk
Cc: Tim Ireland
Sent: Thursday, September 27, 2007 10:01 AM
Subject: Usamanov/Schillings/Summerfield/Murray - Request for correspondence

Dear Sirs,

This is a request for copies of all correspondence sent to Fasthosts from your organisation involving material published on the websites of Craig Murray and Tim Ireland. In case you're not aware, Fasthosts have so far failed to show me anything beyond your first letter.

We're feeling a little ignored over here, and in no mood to waste time. We've set a perfectly reasonable deadline of 6 hours, which we hope you will meet as a sign of good faith.

Please keep in mind that statements made by your representatives seeking to lay the blame with Fasthosts would carry much more weight if you were able to show that they acted in an unreasonable fashion to reasonable demands.

Clive Summerfield
[CC: Tim Ireland]

That gives them until 4pm this afternoon. Let's see what they come back with.

UPDATE (5:30pm) - Tch. That's what you get for trying to be accommodating; we got nothing back. Not a sausage.

So, basically, Schillings' case to the public is that they made perfectly reasonable demands of Fasthosts, but we're not allowed to see them.

Fine by me. The longer they stick with this line, the longer people will suspect that Schillings own an unknown but not insignificant percentage of this almighty cock-up.

They're not afraid of appearing rabid (in fact, they seem quite proud of it), but it won't do them much good to look stupid.

:o)

Summaries

I saw this excellent summary of recent events earlier that focuses admirably on Schillings:

Here's a new proposal for a case study for Schillings' prospectus:

The problem
Our client was a lardy foreign oligarch looking to take over a leading British football club. The former British Ambassador to his country had published allegations about him which he considered to be false and defamatory.

The solution
We put the frighteners on the former Ambassador's webhost to such an extent that it shut down not only his blog, but also other high profile blogs which had nothing to do with it, including that of the Conservative candidate for London mayor, and others in elected office. The allegations then spread around the internet and the mainstream media like wildfire.

I need more summaries. Impassioned or neutral, and maybe a bit in bewteen.

A useful summary could focus on Alisher Usmanov, Arsenal, Schillings, Fasthosts, the law etc.

A more useful summary would rope it all in and tell people why they need to care about this issue in general, because that's where we're headed.

(I'm trying to do the same myself, but am cutting it straight to video, which can be helpful but time-consuming. I also tend to get impossibly long-winded when I'm mired in detail as I am right now.)

I'll set a limit you can regard to be soft if you like; 10-20 word introduction paragraph, 200 words maximum.

I may dig some prizes out of the Special Cupboard if you bring me something really nice. I have treasure.

-

PROGRESS:

Blogroll: On its way

Translations: Please check in if you have or wish to make a translation of the (ahem) detailed text summary in this post.

Schillings: Later this morning.

-

Fasthosts: a timeline of excellent service

THE MAIN PLAYERS

Alisher Usmanov: Uzbek billionaire, current owner of 21% of Arsenal FC.

Schillings: Lawyers for Alisher Usmanov.

Fasthosts: UK-based provider of web hosting.

Clive Summerfield: Reseller for Fasthosts and manager of two dedicated web servers provided by them.

Craig Murray: Former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan; site [www.craigmurray.co.uk] hosted by Fasthosts via Clive Summerfield.

Tim Ireland: Non-aligned political blogger; site [www.bloggerheads.com] hosted by Fasthosts via Clive Summerfield.



SUMMARY OF EVENTS
[Please advise us via email if you intend to translate the text summary to a foreign language.]

On 02 September 2007, Craig Murray (the former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan), wrote and published an article on his weblog [http://www.craigmurray.co.uk/] about Alisher Usmanov, the Uzbek-born billionaire who had just bought a 14.58% stake in the English team Arsenal Football Club and announced his intention to increase his stake to 25%

Schillings, a London law firm claiming to specialise in 'media, entertainment, internet, new media and sports legal issues, particularly defamation law', issued a legal threat to Fasthosts demanding removal of the article within 24 hours.

This action bypassed the author of the article (Craig Murray) and the reseller for Fasthosts (Clive Summerfield) who managed two dedicated webservers, including one that hosted Craig Murray's website, and a few other personal, professional and/or political websites.

This was the first in a series of four complaints involving Craig Murray's website and the website of Tim Ireland [http://www.bloggerheads.com/]. Correspondence from Schillings was only shared with the reseller on that first occasion. From the second (minor) complaint onwards, Clive Summerfield and the clients involved had little to no idea exactly what content Schillings objected to and/or on what legal grounds they were making their complaint.

On the third complaint, relating to a post made by Tim Ireland on Bloggerheads.com that included a heavily-censored excerpt from Craig Murray's article, Clive was given a mere 15 minutes in which to remove the article in question. This deadline was met.

Upon the fourth complaint from Schillings (on 20 September 2007), which related not to any new articles written by Craig Murray, but to two older articles in his archives (one of which was almost two years old), Clive Summerfield immediately deactivated Craig Murray's website and told Fasthosts of his intention to begin a dialogue between Schillings, Murray and himself. Fasthosts were invited to take part in that dialogue.

Fasthosts responded by closing down not just Craig Murray's website, but the entire account. Both servers managed by Clive were removed from service resulting in the closure of the websites of Craig Murray, Tim Ireland, Clive Summerfield, Bob Piper (Labour Councillor for Sandwell), Boris Johnson (Conservative MP for Henley), and many other bystanders. Only two of the dozen or so websites involved published anything about Alisher Usmanov.

A backlash began amongst bloggers, starting at the website of Justin McKeating [http://www.chickyog.net/] and soon spread to the news media. It was at this time that Fasthosts issued a statement to the press saying:

"There were certain statements on one individual site which we asked were removed because they were potentially defamatory. The customer was repeatedly advised of the breach and upon failing to permanently remove the content in question their customer account was terminated, the unfortunate result being the possible downtime of other unrelated websites of which we understand boris-johnson.com was one."

In reality, Clive Summerfield had done everything within his power to meet with demands that often came without explanation or documentation. Further, the fourth and final complaint not only appears to be on very shaky ground, it could in no way be construed as a failure by Clive Summerfield to meet with previous demands.

Since then, Clive Summerfield and Tim Ireland have issued a request to Fasthosts for all relevant Schillings correspondence, a retraction and/or correction of the above statement, an apology, plus a fair offer of compensation for all parties concerned:
http://b-heads.blogspot.com/2007/09/requesting-response-from-fasthosts.html

Fasthosts did not reply to that request, and, at the time of writing, have also stopped taking questions from the press regarding this matter.

In effect, Schillings had a number of articles removed or edited with only the threat of legal action (as opposed to legal action itself).

The constant barrage of threats (of varying substance) was certainly a contributing factor to Fasthosts deciding that they were better off out of it... and it was this decision that led to the sudden and unexpected closure of the sites of Craig Murray, Tim Ireland, Clive Summerfield, Bob Piper, Boris Johnson and others.



THE TIMELINE


Thursday 06 Sep 2007 (am) - Fasthosts receive takedown request from Schillings for a recent post by Craig Murray [Craig Murray - 02 Sep 2007: Alisher Usmanov, potential Arsenal chairman is a....]. Clive Summerfield, is given 24 hours to remove the item.

Thursday 06 Sep 2007 (pm) - Post removed and covering post put up [Craig Murray - 06 Sep 2007: Usmanov redux]. Immediate request made for a copy of the relevant correspondence from Schillings, which was later shared with Clive Summerfield.

Friday 07 Sep 2007 (am) - Schillings contact Fasthosts to request removal of phrase "less than salubrious" from covering post [Craig Murray - 06 Sep 2007: Usmanov redux]. Fasthosts contact Clive Summerfield by phone, amendment made within minutes. No relevant correspondence from Schillings is disclosed beyond this simple instruction.

Wednesday 13 Sep 2007 (am) - Fasthosts receive takedown request from Schillings regarding a post at Bloggerheads (a separate website hosted under same reseller account); [Tim Ireland - 06 Sep 2007: Alisher Usmanov: how will bloggers and Arsenal fans react as the screws tighten?]. This post includes highly censored passages from Murray's article, but the exact content that offended has yet to be determined (see below). Fasthosts email Clive Summerfield, and phone at 8:45am, giving 9:00am deadline!!! Tim Ireland strips post of all content before deadline, pending details and/or legal advice (sadly, no relevant correspondence from Schillings was disclosed beyond the demand for removal). Fasthosts mention their terms and conditions of service to Clive Summerfield, who confirms that his terms are in line with theirs and that his clients will be reminded of their responsibilities.

-

Note from Tim #1: I still don't know exactly what it was about my article that Schillings objected to, because Fasthosts failed to share the relevant Schillings correspondence with Clive or myself and - with this complaint (complete with a 15 minute deadline) - even failed to give us the scant details required to avoid making the same mistake again. In my view, the article was pretty benign and, ironically, primarily discussed the effect of blogs on search engines and the dangerous territory Schillings had come barging into. Here's what I had to say at the time:

I'm not sure what Usmanov expected when he took on this high-profile investment. Judging by the pre-emptive strike on mainstream media (as outlined in the extract above), Usmanov did expect some unwanted attention, but I'm sensing a distinct lack of awareness about the way crowds behave in this country.

The post also included this screen capture, which is published here exactly as it was in the 'offending' post [Tim Ireland - 06 Sep 2007: Alisher Usmanov: how will bloggers and Arsenal fans react as the screws tighten?]. The following screen capture shows the top search result for 'alisher usmanov' on 06 Sep 2007:

Please note that this screen capture does not contain any sensitive material from Craig's recent article. A grab of the Yahoo result was also published at this time with sensitive information removed. Please also note that, while Google is responding to the recent inbound link to Craig Murray's latest article, it also chooses to display a much earlier article by Murray [Craig Murray - 30 Oct 2005: Craig Murray - Opposition leader tortured with drugs] as a potential result. To make this point clear; this search result was visible to most UK web users on 06 Sep 2007.

At some stage between the 6th and 20th of September, Google re-indexed Craig Murray's site in full. This meant that it no longer presented Murray's recent article [Craig Murray - 02 Sep 2007: Alisher Usmanov, potential Arsenal chairman is a....] in its cache; according to Google, the recent article they considered to be one of the most relevant to the query 'alisher usmanov' was gone, but the site many web users regarded to be relevant was still there. The algorithm chose to display the much earlier article by Murray [Craig Murray - 30 Oct 2005: Craig Murray - Opposition leader tortured with drugs] on its own instead.

It may have escaped Schillings attention early on, but as the lone result it could not be missed. The following is a screen capture of the top search result for 'alisher usmanov' from 20 Sep 2007:

There was no deliberate attempt by Craig Murray to publish a new article about Usmanov at this stage; Google simply chose to present an old one as a relevant search result... and not for the first time. Anybody looking at the page in question would be able to see the 30 Oct 2005 time-stamp quite clearly. If they were any doubt about the authenticity of its stated vintage, the main page of Craig Murray's weblog was actually captured and stored by the Web Archive project on the very day it was published (see URL for time stamp; 20051030 = 30 Oct 2005).

This article was later extended by 6 paragraphs, but probably almost immediately and certainly no later than 02 Sep 2006 and none of the additional content mentions Alisher Usmanov by name anyway.

The evidence clearly shows that this was a very old article by Craig Murray, and that no effort was made to republish it or even retro moderate it in a way designed to outmanoeuvre Usmanov's lawyers.

Keener minds with more expertise may want to cast an eye over this, but it was my understanding that you lose your chance to sue over libel or slander after a year; in this example, we're talking about nearly two years. Back to the timeline...

-

Thursday 20 Sep 2007 (am) - Email received from Fasthosts. They have suspended one of two servers managed by Clive Summerfield in response to a further takedown request from Schillings regarding two more of Craig Murray's articles/posts, one from June 2007 [Craig Murray - 01 Jun 2007: Russian Journalist Murders, and Gazprom], the other from Oct 2005 [Craig Murray - 30 Oct 2005: Craig Murray - Opposition leader tortured with drugs]. Neither of these articles had been mentioned in any previous correspondence that we were aware of. On the suspended server were the websites of Craig Murray and Tim Ireland. On the same server were the websites of Clive Summerfield and Bob Piper (Labour Councillor for Sandwell), who hadn't published a single word about Alisher Usmanov. The server is unsuspended following contact between Fasthosts and Clive Summerfield, who is unable to get hold of Craig Murray or anybody with editing access to the weblog; Clive instead uses his upper admin access to the now-functional server to halt Craig's site and Craig's site alone. Anyone trying to visit Craig Murray's website sees an Apache default page indicating that the server is up but that there is a problem with Craig's site.

Thursday 20 Sep 2007 (midday) - Email sent to Fasthosts by Clive Summerfield. Informs them that Craig's site is down and will remain down until the end of the day at least. Clive also states that he intends to try and get a dialog going with himself, Schillings and Craig. He asks Fasthosts if they wish to be included and makes mention of the BT/AOL case.

Thursday 20 Sep 2007 (pm) - Email from Fasthosts. States that they no longer wish to be involved and have terminated Clive's account with them. Both servers managed by Clive are now down resulting in the closure of the websites of Craig Murray, Tim Ireland, Clive Summerfield, Bob Piper, Boris Johnson (Conservative MP for Henley), and many other bystanders. At 2pm, Fasthosts inform Clive that he has 48 hours to get everything off the two servers.

Thursday 20 Sep 2007 (pm) - Clive given access to servers via "lights-out" console in order to perform backups.

-

Note from Tim #2 - For those who don't know, this is the equivalent of transferring a tanker load of water with the aid of a single teaspoon. Cheers, Fasthosts.

-

Thursday 20 Sep 2007 (pm) - Clive sends request to Fasthosts pointing out that it is impossible to download backups via "lights-out" within the 48-hour 'off the servers' deadline they have issued.

Thursday 20 Sep 2007 (pm) - Justin McKeating publishes the post that informs users of these websites of recent developments. Bloggers from the left, right, middle and basement begin to express their disapproval in notable numbers.

Friday 21 Sep 2007 (midday) - Fasthosts bring both servers back and re-enable Clive's account to allow him to backup content. At the same time they unwittingly bring up Craig's website, complete with offending posts!!! As Clive has already started backups and DNS propagation, and so stops all sites on both servers; this saves Fasthosts from the embarrassment of Craig's posts reappearing.

Friday 21 Sep 2007 (pm) - The Guardian reports:

Fasthosts Internet confirmed that Mr Johnson's site was disabled as part of a clampdown on a separate web address. "Where concerns are raised to us about a website, such as in this case, in accordance with our normal procedures, we will investigate the website content," (Fasthosts) said in a statement. "In this case, we examined a website for potentially defamatory material and communicated to the customer that they had indeed breached the terms and conditions for Fasthosts Internet hosting. The customer was repeatedly advised of the breach and upon failing to permanently remove the content in question. Their customer account was terminated, the unfortunate result being the possible downtime of other unrelated websites ... of which we understand boris-johnson.com was one." Responsibility for the content of websites lay solely with their owners and publishers, the company added. A spokesman for Mr Usmanov said he was not aware of any reason why Mr Johnson's website should have been taken down. "We only requested the removal of specific statements and postings with regard to one individual site" he said.

-

Note from Tim #3 - The person who issued the statement for Fasthosts really should take a close look at our timeline and see if he/she wants to revise it. Also... *possible* downtime? Try very real downtime; they should know... they flipped the switch. Schillings also appear to be confused about he number of sites involved, but perhaps it's because they're busy calling "Your ball!"

Meanwhile, Clive and I were in no position to counter what Fasthosts had to say, as we were at their mercy until we retrieved the data. Fasthosts' statement appeared again the next day, and Schillings again called the ball for Fasthosts (albeit in a gentle manner)...

-

Saturday 22 Sep 2007 (am) - The Times reports:

Mr Usmanov’s spokesman blamed a technical glitch by the web host. “There were certain statements on one individual site which we asked were removed because they were potentially defamatory.” Fasthosts Internet said: “The customer was repeatedly advised of the breach and upon failing to permanently remove the content in question their customer account was terminated, the unfortunate result being the possible downtime of other unrelated websites of which we understand boris-johnson.com was one.”

Saturday 22 Sep 2007 (am) - Data recovery complete.

Saturday 22 Sep 2007 (4pm) - The deadline for server closure has passed. Clive notes that both Fasthosts servers are still live.

-

Note from Tim #4 - An error, or were we getting slack for the initial delay in providing a decent transfer facility, or because of the online attention and/or press we were receiving? One can't be sure A slightly different and tight-lipped line emerges from Fasthosts from Monday onwards, but this could easily have a lot to do with them speaking with a journalist who knows a thing or two about IT...

-

Monday 24 Sep 2007 (pm) - The Register reports:

Fasthosts said Murray's account had been terminated according to industry standard practice. It refused to say why unrelated websites had been hit by the takedown...

Tuesday 25 Sep 2007 (am) - Clive informs Fasthosts that all backups are finished, and receives the following reply:

----- Original Message -----
From: Abuse Support Team [abuseteam@fasthosts.co.uk]
To: Clive Summerfield
Sent: Tue, 25 Sep 2007 12:10:00 +0100
Subject: 1408052#[snip] Your email enquiry (PLEASE DO NOT CHANGE SUBJECT)

Dear Mr Summerfield,

Account Number: [snip]
Ticket Reference Number: [snip]

As you've completed retrieval of the data you require could you now instruct as us to how you would like to proceed with your account?

Best Regards
Misuse Team
Fasthosts Internet Ltd

Tuesday 25 Sep 2007 (pm) - Clive informs Fasthosts that as all sites are moved, they can close the account.

Tuesday 25 Sep 2007 (pm) - We issue a request for a response to several issues, statements and developments that we considered unfair, unacceptable or untrue. Fasthosts are given 24 hours to respond.

Tuesday 25 Sep 2007 (pm) - The Register reports:

Fasthosts says it acted according to standard industry practice and has declined to answer Reg questions.

Wednesday 25 Sep 2007 (pm) - The deadline passes, with no response from Fasthosts.

-

Note from Tim #5 – Which, to me, seems odd, because they were awfully mouthy when they held all the cards.

-

[Fasthosts will be given a further 12 hours to respond to the above timeline and submit any corrections or clarifications they wish to make.]

Parliamentary privilege (EU edition)

Guardian - Hill-Wood: We do not want Usmanov here: Laura Tyler, of Schillings, said they did not intend to sue Murray directly because they did not want to give him a platform to express his views.

Not the most convincing line to take given the circumstances, is it?

Matt Wardman - Usmanov allegations repeated in European Parliament Debate by Tom Wise MEP: Last night Tom Wise MEP mentioned some of the Craig Murray criticisms of Alisher Usmanov in a speech in a debate at the European Parliament.

More on Schillings soon. First, we want to hear from Fasthosts.

UPDATE - Audio is available below... get your own copy to share here.

Click To Play

UPDATE (28 Sep) - Click here for details of the official transcript, which is now available online.

Requesting a response from Fasthosts

1) First things first...

Cheers to:

Craig Murray - for the moral courage that triggered this latest difficulty
Clive Summerfield - for handling this and many other technical difficulties
Justin McKeating - for handling the response to this latest difficulty
200+ other bloggers - for that response

Apologies to:

The many bystanders who were affected by a nuclear response to a pissweak threat.


2) Schillings used a combination of misdirection, intimidation and character assassination to silence and undermine Craig Murray instead of properly addressing the substance of what he had to say about their client Alisher Usmanov or challenging it through the courts. While the exact abuse(s) of power and inappropriate use(s) of media, law, and money differ, this is otherwise indistinguishable from Jack Straw's approach to the former ambassador to Uzbekistan (1, 2). It's comforting to know that Iain Dale considers this type of assault on free speech to be wrong but, in an effort to maintain the remarkable level of cross-spectrum support we've seen in recent days, I'm going to draw this observation to a close at that point and say no more.


3) Seeing the extraordinary level of support, it's hard not to collapse into a blubbering heap a'la Sally Field, but the reality of it is that this matters to bloggers because it could happen to any one of us. Nevertheless, Clive and I do have a responsibility to finally make clear exactly what has happened and attempt to see that some general good comes of this manifestation of absolute absurdity.


4) But before we proceed, I have a quick personal message for those representatives of the mainstream media who only regarded this to be newsworthy because of the collateral damage done to Boris Johnson and/or took people like Schillings and Fasthosts at their word without even bothering to speak to us:

*Thbbbt!*

Now, onwards...


To ensure we broadcast as clear a picture as possible, Clive and I need to deal with this matter by addressing the parties/issues involved in the following order:

- Fasthosts
- Schillings
- Alisher Usmanov
- UK libel law

Today, we begin with Fasthosts. A small part of their response will be vital to our subsequent response to Schillings, but if we have to proceed without their co-operation, then so be it:


Fasthosts

Shortly, Clive and I will be publishing a timeline of the events that led up the closure of the account, and the events that followed. However, we would like to offer Fasthosts 24 hours in which to deliver the following before we do so:

- All Schillings correspondence that Fasthosts have so far failed to show us, and an apology for the delay in disclosure.

- A retraction and/or correction of any false or misleading statements issued/relayed by Fasthosts to the press regarding the account closure, and an apology for same.

- A fair offer of compensation for all parties inconvenienced by that closure.

- An additional fair offer of compensation for the inconvenience and stress caused to myself, Clive Summerfield and Craig Murray and for the damage done to our reputations by the action (and inaction) of Fasthosts *and* for any false or misleading statements made regarding the account closure and this matter in general.

In the interests of transparency, we request that all of the above (with the exception of the Schillings correspondence itself) be addressed via a public statement to be published in this section of Fasthosts' website:
http://www.fasthosts.co.uk/companyinfo/PressReleases/

On that final request for compensation, a lot of detail will have to wait until the timeline is published, but for now we can say that we felt greatly restricted in what we could say on this matter at the time due the removal of our primary communication devices and the further complication of Fasthosts still being in possession of a large amount of our data (and their initial insistence that we move it with the equivalent of a bloody teaspoon). Fasthosts either sought to take advantage of this situation, or failed to fully communicate the exact nature of some aspects of this case to/via their PR department for reasons unknown. Either way, the message quickly spread in some quarters that we had repeatedly refused or failed to co-operate with Fasthosts over the relevant legal threats, and this simply isn't true.

We expect the response to be fairly widely-read by many opinion-makers in the field of personal web publishing, so it would also be in Fasthosts' interests to take this opportunity to also reassure current and future resellers and end-users by donning a a full-body cilice *and* outlining any changes or improvements they plan to make to their procedures when handling threats of legal action. Currently, the most popular line of thinking is that the safest way to handle matters is to host outside of the UK; therefore, we feel that Fasthosts have a unique opportunity here to help not only themselves, but the UK web hosting industry in general.

[UPDATE (26 Sep) - The deadline passed with no response from Fasthosts. The timeline had to be published with some gaps, and you can read all about it right here.]