More proof that Hollywood's lip-service to the ideals of "speaking up for the downtrodden" and "the little guy" and "freedom of speech" is just that -- lip service. A rich, ripe plum of evidence is the letter the William-Morris Agency sent to Dotster.com (coincidentally, the same domain service that screwed up Lileks' site last weekend, and has some hideous website that tries to replace your home page with theirs). As consequence of this, Dotster.com is taking down Boycott Hollywood. The WM folks say that the agency has received email death threats. I'm sure they have -- and I'm sure they have received such things long before the Boycott Hollywood website was up. In any case, they took the typical big bully coward path to squashing the peons by going over their heads. I hope the people who run this website take the advice of their commenters and move their domain service and web content elsewhere. Note to self: don't use Dotster.com. Bunch of weenies.
PS: I forgot to say -- when the site goes down, I took screen captures. I'll post links to that instead.
Posted by Andrea Harris at May 1, 2003 01:01 PMI was fascinated by the pointless exercise of redacting all of the contact information on the law firm's letter (I nominate the William Morris Agency). The letterhead clearly shows the firm has its own website (Google, anyone?). Information on each of the individual attorneys listed is available at the website of the State Bar of California. The firm may even have a yellow pages ad, but I wouldn't be surprised if they consider that too common for a firm with their elevated clientele. William Morris and its clients forget that it is not that easy to hide if the whole point of your existence is to be well known.
Posted by: robert Martin at May 1, 2003 at 02:32 PM