A lot of stuff has happened recently so I thought this thread was due for an update. For one, the official Kiwi Farms twitter account has been unbanned.
Also, Lolcow LLC is finally suing for defamation.
The legal fund:
Also, Lolcow LLC is finally suing for defamation.
The legal fund:
Defending the Kiwi Farms
When public figures, activists, and corporations can lie about who you are and what you do, it will snowball until you are deprived of essential liberty, including your right to even exist. Our defensive posture is no longer viable.
Support the fund, and fight back
Russell Greer
Since 2019, Russell Greer has been suing the Kiwi Farms for contributory copyright infringement, alleging that because people had shared his creative works on Google Drive, I have somehow personally encouraged it. He seems to believe that by wrapping his unrequited love letters for various celebrities in copyrightable mediums, his work will become immunized to criticism thanks to copyright law. This is not reality.
His lawsuit originates from a materially deficient and rambling complaint that has only troddled along for as long as it has thanks to pro bono representation from the Digital Justice Foundation, a morally bankrupt group of media rights scalpers taking on cases to score wins for some of the largest and most evil media companies to ever exist. The District Court appeals decision is confusing and contrary to established case law and will be appealed to the Supreme Court.
Greer's lawsuit has been an enormous waste of mine and the court's time and resources, but compromising with a deranged pro se litigant like Greer would only encourage more people to do the same. Fighting it as vigorously as possible is the only logical action.
Epik, LLC & Alejandra Caraballo
During #DropKiwiFarms, Epik (under the direction of Brian Royce) permitted us to stay with them as their registrar for over a year after leaving Cloudflare. Historically, it has been extremely rare for any domain registrar to interfere in their client's business for anything less serious than emergencies and law enforcement orders. Domain registrars, especially large ones like Epik, are perceived as neutral and professional entities.
When Epik, a year later and now under new management, put a hold on kiwifarms.net, it took significant social media pushback to compel them to allow me to transfer to a new registrar. This ended the issue and I was happy to move on and away from Epik.
However, a month later after extended silence, Epik's official Twitter account sprung to life and began replying to now month-old comments about the Kiwi Farms. In doing so, Epik made two actionable statements of defamation:
Both of these claims are false, and demonstrably so because Epik also admitted as much in public. Epik confessed they had received no law enforcement order to remove the site, and the evidence they posted of child abuse material was watermarked with dates which conclusively proves the person in it was over 19 years old when he took the photos of himself.
- Epik had put a hold on the Kiwi Farms by order of law enforcement, and then
- Epik had put a hold on the Kiwi Farms because it hosted child abuse material.
However, the damage is done, and tens of thousands of people saw and shared these messages. In particular, Harvard cyberlaw professor Alejandra Caraballo, who has been invited to speak before Congress, explicitly claimed the Kiwi Farms "hosts child sexual abuse material (CSAM)", which is a strictly legally defined term that a Harvard law professor absolutely knows the meaning of. This claim is a stronger, more serious, and distinct claim from Epik's.
These claims are false. The Kiwi Farms has never hosted any child abuse material. The speakers of these false claims are respected members of the industry and they constitute per se defamation. Allowing Epik and Alejandra to get away with these knowing, deliberate lies threatens the long-term prospects of the Kiwi Farms. Their lies will be propagated both as rumors in the industry and directly referenced into complaints sent to service providers we rely on.
NoteEpik LLC threatened on 𝕏 that they would use discovery in a lawsuit to target Kiwi Farms users. You should know that contributions to this fund go directly to an IOLTA account and all records are secured under the management of an attorney, which allows us to protect your privacy. Our attorney is bound by the rules of professional conduct as well as by the attorney work product doctrine and the attorney-client privilege, and will take maximum steps to ensure your privacy.
Liz Fong-Jones & Honeycomb
Jones is an ex-Google employee who has since joined as Field CTO of Honeycomb.io, a relatively large Silicon Valley startup. Jones enjoys considerable financial backing and support from his company, and uses his work credentials to scare providers, fund his campaign against the Kiwi Farms, and launch frivolous litigation.
In 2022, Jones launched a defamation lawsuit in Australia against Vinnie, a friend of mine. Jones alleges that Vinnie is personally liable for defamation against him because ...
Vinnie is a normal person who does not understand the kind of evil that Liz Fong-Jones is. Despite my warnings, he incorrectly assumed that the courts of Australia would see this lawsuit as the absolute trash that it is and dismiss it without him entering an appearance. A first generation Chinese immigrant, he is weirdly patriotic about Australia and firmly believed with genuine good faith the system would take care of him.
- Vinnie owns Flow Chemical Pty Ltd (Queensland), which leased IP addresses from APNIC,
- Flow leased its IPs to 1776 Solutions, LLC (my company, in Wyoming),
- 1776 Solutions, LLC leased some of those IPs to Lolcow LLC (my company, in West Virginia),
- Lolcow LLC runs the Kiwi Farms, and
- Anonymous users of the Kiwi Farms had archived and discussed Jones's "consent accident".
As a consequence, he now has a default judgment against him for more than AU$400,000, which he has to fight in court in order to avoid losing his entire life's work. Neither of us, having looked for months, have been able to find a barrister to help.
More importantly to the forum, Jones's barrister is using this default as if it were a court order and is attempting to convince ISPs that they are obligated to take the site offline. It is one of many things he has added to his arsenal to try and trick providers into thinking censorship is a foregone conclusion.
Jones has continuously personally participated in trying to deplatform the Kiwi Farms for years, beginning in 2017 with Trans LifeLine, a charity he supported whose founders were removed for embezzling more than US$350,000 of charitable funds.
Since 2022 and #DropKiwiFarms, he has ramped up his efforts. It appears Jones now bankrolls 'activists' to send emails every day, has used his Silicon Valley ties to get 20-year senior Network Engineers at T1 ISPs to act on his behalf, and abuses foreign legal systems to get default judgments. This appears to be an effort to accomplish one thing: removing incriminating information about him on the Kiwi Farms off the Internet.