A man who posted his

By Cory Doctorow at 7:03 am Sunday, Nov 25

A man who posted his VW-dealer horror-stories to a BBS is being sued for libel by the dealer, who is also going after the operator of the BBS. Of course, launching the suit generated publicity around the world for the poster's list of complaints against the garage.

Man, that garage had rotten legal counsel: "OK, your righteously indignant customers are comparing notes on the Internet and telling everyone to avoid your shop. What you do is, you sue 'em for millions, try to shut down the BBS, get tons of negative publicity, and if you win, you go down as the shop that uses legal harassment to bankrupt its unhappy customers. If you lose, the courts will have effectively ruled that you guys are as bad as the guy said online. No! Don't just offer to fix everything you did wrong or give him his money back! Treating your customers like they matter is the top of the slippery slope to bankruptcy!"

This would be outrageous hands down if Mantis hadn't closed his original post thus: "With no other recourse, I'm seeking revenge as best I can. This is one way: telling all of you to avoid this dealership, for sales or service, like the plague."

It's that unfortunate word 'revenge' we worry about. Any greenhorn corporate PR flack or political speech writer knows that the universally-accepted substitute for 'revenge' is 'justice'. See how much better it reads with the substitution.

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