We get our fair share of cease and desist letters because we write the things that nobody will say. We also use a number of sources to gather our data and posit our conclusions. We are, of course, happy to correct and update our positions when given better data (and have proven we do so on numerous occasions), but no matter how much we ask it’s amazing how little information is presented to change our positions.
Most of the cease and desists we get are some variety of a DMCA takedown, which is sort of an obscure legal tactic where the offended sends a letter to a site’s domain registrar claiming bogus copyright issues.
What is DMCA?
In 1998 the US Congress passed a law to curb online copyright infringement. This was a time when the internet was proliferating and people were pirating music (Napster, anyone?). In seeking to protect authors and artists, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) was born.
Yet as with most things Congress does, they failed to understand the consequences of their legislation.
The practical implications have become clear over the past decade as DMCA takedowns have risen in number, often in very scary ways. Here’s Ecuador’s president using DMCA takedowns to silence criticism. Here’s Bank of America censoring a journalist’s tweets on twitter. Here’s Zillow attempting to squelch a satirical architecture blog.
In effect DMCA takedowns have become the weapon of choice for parties wishing to suppress First Amendment rights. One of the recommended actions is to choose a mirrored registrar overseas, making it impossible for the offended to send a letter anywhere. There exist an entire cottage industry of domain registrars to protect the opinions and controversial facts of journalists.
Toast, on the other hand, used a more respectable cease and desist approach. However, their tone was completely off-putting, and in our opinion mimics the larger cultural ethos of the company: we are smart, you are stupid; we are the best, you are a loser; we don’t shit, but if we did you should eat it immediately because it would taste so good.
Don’t get us wrong, there were and are some great people at Toast that do not fit this mold, but many in the industry that have had interactions with senior people at Toast end with similar distaste in their mouths. For what it’s worth, the founders of Toast were most excellent people in the early days, though we have not interacted enough with them lately to know how they might have changed. It’s looking more likely that all morals were thrown aside in the chase for the almighty dollar.
Of course we replied with the below and are still waiting for a response.
Hello, and thank you for taking interest in our publication. You are correct in your statement that while we do reach out to Toast for commentary, our requests go without response; it is nice to establish dialogue, though we wish it were on more constructive terms.
As I’m sure you can appreciate, we gather our information from numerous sources, including but not limited to Toast’s investors, Toast’s customers, and vendors to Toast’s customers.
It sounds as though we may have different definitions of the word enterprise. As flexible – and sometimes ambiguous – as the English language is, it is understandable that there might exist differing interpretations. Ultimately it is up to the reader to make those judgements for themselves.
Pursuant to your broad claim that the article in question is “fictitious” and “false”, I am fully prepared to review any verifiable facts which may refute the reporting if Toast would simply forward it to me. If the reported information from our credible sources is in whole or in part verifiably incorrect, we will be prepared to distribute such corrected information to our readers. In the meantime, we must consider the information provided by our sources to be accurate.
Thank you for your time and consideration, and I look forward to ensuring that the industry is provided with accurate information.
We welcome any of Toast’s verifiable facts, and as others who have provided data to amend our writings in the past would attest, it is much more constructive to reach out using conventional means of correspondence than it is to involve costly lawyers with threatening language. Then again, reading the tone of their letter we don’t suspect their intent was to ensure accuracy so much as it was to squelch unflattering information.
Just goes to show that money cannot buy everything.
You keep “fighting the good fight” Jordan. I’ve been following your blog for along, long, time. While I may not always agree with everything you always write, you do generally speak the truth.