4Chan Founder Moot Sends Cease and Desist Letter to Startup Moot.It

Re:4Chan Founder Moot Sends Cease and Desist Letter to Start... by ryanhuff on Monday November 19, 2012 @06:33PM (#4806908)

I noticed that Exhibit 1 shows a Google search of "Moot", apparently as support to the claim that the term "Moot" is commonly associated with Poole. However, this search was done from a browser logged in by Chris Poole's attorney. Given Google's attempt to provide more personalized results, I wonder how much influence the attorney's relationship has on the search results from Exhibit 1.

It may be a moot point in this case, but considering the changing search landscape, attorney's need to be more careful about how they use Google search results (and others) as evidence.

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Re:4Chan Founder Moot Sends Cease and Desist Letter to Start... by geuis on Monday November 19, 2012 @06:49PM (#4806988)

This is irrelevant. I just performed a search for the term 'moot' on Google and Bing. On both sites, I searched in Chrome, Safari, and Firefox. I also performed the searches in anonymous and non-anonymous modes in all browsers.

In every case, the wikipedia page for Chris Poole showed up within the top 5 results. His Twitter page and links to 4chan show up in the top 10 results in one order or another in all results as well.

I'm not taking sides either way, but the attorney's logged in status doesn't have any relevance in this instance.

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Re:4Chan Founder Moot Sends Cease and Desist Letter to Start... by ryanhuff on Monday November 19, 2012 @06:56PM (#4807017)

It may not in this case (as I did mention). My point was in reference to the general practice of attorney's using internet data sources that may provide personalized results. In the case of Google, the attorney's relationships and search history (researching 4chan, etc) may influence evidence submitted if not careful.

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Re:4Chan Founder Moot Sends Cease and Desist Letter to Start... by dsl on Monday November 19, 2012 @06:50PM (#4806995)

Poole is #3 for me, behind dictionary.reference.com and merriam-webster.com

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Re:4Chan Founder Moot Sends Cease and Desist Letter to Start... by olalonde on Monday November 19, 2012 @07:56PM (#4807208)

> It may be a moot point in this case

I see what you did there.

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Re:4Chan Founder Moot Sends Cease and Desist Letter to Start... by uvTwitch on Monday November 19, 2012 @06:45PM (#4806966)

second result in DuckDuckGo

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Re:4Chan Founder Moot Sends Cease and Desist Letter to Start... by ryanhuff on Monday November 19, 2012 @06:52PM (#4807004)

Interestingly, the second result on DDG for me shows a Wikipedia article, with the following in the content snippet:

"He originally started 4chan anonymously, under the pseudonym moot (always written with lower case)."

Yet, the attorney in the letter uses "MOOT", and not "moot". Does letter case matter in this kind of dispute, especially if one convention is predominately used by the plaintiff?

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