Yesterday Randi Harper, Founder and CEO of the Online Abuse Prevention Initiative (OAPI), recieved a cease and desist letter from some guy in England named James Desborough; demanding Harper remove his name from her Good Game Auto Blocker registry.

Good Game Auto Blocker, an anti-harassment tool written by Harper, lists 10,000+ Twitter accounts (and counting) associated with #Gamergate. Users of Good Game Auto Blocker are spared the agita of reading abusive Tweets and the tedium of blocking each #Gamergater individually. Accounts wrongfully identified as trolls can appeal to be whitelisted. To date, sixty-five accounts have been identified as false positives.

Desborough, who was fooled into arguing with Harper's block bot @randi_ebooks when the tool was new, now believes the block list constitutes defamation against him and "thousands of others" who follow two or more #Gamergate talking heads on Twitter.

In his letter to Harper, Desborough demanded to be removed from the block list, and also that Harper write him an apology and pay damages by March 31st, or he will consider suing her in England. No, really. From his letter:



I have evidence to prove that the block list and the website associated with it contains or implies serious, untrue and highly defamatory comments towards myself and thousands of others. In doing so defamatory comments and reputational damage are being communicated to many thousands of people throughout the world, posing a serious threat to my reputation and those who work with me. Further, these comments and the language used in the code and the website do or have seemed designed to damage my reputatio, [sic] and those of thousands of others, and to divert business away from me – rather than to have any fair comment basis. ... In order to protect my interests I am considering proceedings against you in the Small Claims or High Court. These proceedings would seek remedies including but not limited to the following: ● Substantial damages;

● an injunction to restrain you from publishing the same or similar statements in the future; and

● costs. ... If the defamatory material is not permanently removed and the above undertakings are not complied with by 4.00pm GMT on 31/03/2015 I shall review the circumstances and consider proceeding to court. I draw to your attention the terms of Section 2 of the Defamation Act 1996, under which you have the right to offer to make amends, which I will consider fairly. I await your response. In the meantime I reserve my rights, in particular the right to produce this letter to the Court when it comes to consider costs under CPR 44.3. Yours faithfully James Desborough



Harper responded by stating she wouldn't be removing Desborough from the block list , and invited him to "bring it" with regards to his pending legal action. At press time, Harper was still laughing at Desborough's pseudo-legal whining.