On 4 September, 1997, The Church of Tina Chopp recieved the following random email. We responded, but nobody replied. Are we surprised?
Received: from big for cotc
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X-From_: mcobbs@ucsd.edu Thu Sep 4 20:24:27 1997
Return-Path: mcobbs@ucsd.edu
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Message-ID: <340F7B34.5E7B@ucsd.edu>
Date: Thu, 04 Sep 1997 20:23:32 -0700
From: Morena N Cobbs
Reply-To: mcobbs@ucsd.edu
X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.01C-KIT (Win95; I)
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: TinaChopp at ebeneezer.net
Subject: Freaks
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
You guys are fucking freaks and need to wake up to reality youare taking
up good breathable airspace. Thank God for hell for people like you.
UPDATE: On 29 July, 2008 (eleven years later) we got yet another email from Morena Cobbs, which is somewhat apologetic for the previous (1997!) note, but is somewhat hillarious considering that it has been eleven years since we posted the previous note... you would think that she would have found out about it before now, especially if she is as concerned about "potential spam or identity theft" as she says she is... It's also even more hillarious because of little things like the misspelling of St. Fred's email address ("mclane" is not going to get there), and other, more subtle things. We have discussed it thoroughly and we decided to leave it where it is and modify our page, rather than taking it down completely. If she can get The Web Archive to remove the page from their servers, or if she can locate the actual "person" who sent the previous note, and convince them to send another note, from their own email account, identifying who they are, with a link to this page, apologising for the hurtful things that they said about us, then we will consider replacing her name, and/or taking this page down. It's what anyone who sends us hate mail gets for leaving their email account open where anyone can send email to anyone without their knowledge.
From: morena cobbs <motorcyclegirlly@yahoo@com@
Subject: Morena N. Cobbs - Please help
To: tinachopp@ebeneezer.org, rev_deluxe@yahoo.com, mclane@halcyon.com, ugly@ebeneezer.org, holysnake@ebeneezer.org
Date: Tuesday, July 29, 2008, 1:01 AM
Dear Church of Tina Chopp,
My name Morena Cobbs is posted on your website entitled
"The Short Unpleasent Tale of Morena N. Cobbs"
linked from your page "As if the Church of Tina Chopp
Needed a Disclaimer". Can you please remove my name
from your website? My name is listed and a copy of an
offensive email that was sent from an old account. I
never sent the message, someone from my college dorm may
have been sent something from my account which happened in
the past when I lived there.
I have nothing against your church. I don't judge
anyone or take part in any religion. Please accept my
apologies for the ridiculous and offensive remarks made.
I would rather not have my name posted on the internet to
avoid any potential spam or identity theft. Also I do not
wish to be associated with any offensive remarks made
towards your church or anyone you are associated with.
Please forward this email to your web master so she/he may
remove my name from you website.
Thank you for your time with this matter.
Morena Cobbs
http://www.ebeneezer.net/disclaim/cobbs.html
UPDATE 2.0: This is getting more and more hillarious at a time when we were under the impression that everybody else had pretty much forgotten about The Church of Tina Chopp - an occurrance which causes us a bit of distress, but is absolutely fine with Tina Herself.
From: "morena cobbs" <motorcyclegirlly@yahoo@com>
Subject: Please accept my apology and remove my name from your website
To: tinachopp@ebeneezer.org, rev_deluxe@yahoo.com
Date: Thursday, October 16, 2008 3:07 PM
Dear Church of Tina Chopp,
I apologize for the hate mail that was sent from my account.
I unfortunately do not know exactly who used my account at
the time and would have no way of contacting anyone who did
since I am no longer in contact with anyone I went to school
with. It was my bad habit to leave myself signed in while
using the computers at school that lead to my name being
associated to the horrible hate email that was sent to you.
For this and for what was said please accept my sincere
apology. I had no knowledge of this email or your church &
website until I was told about your website when a family
member did a search of my name recently (this is why it took
11 years to discover this). I just found your response email
that you posted on your website. I will try and have The Web
Archieve remove the page from their servers as per your
suggestion. Thank you for your time and once again please
accept my apology and consider removing my name from your
website. I don't want to be associated with any hate email
against your church or its members. I do not wish to bother
or offend anyone.
Thank you
Morena Cobbs
She should be grateful that her name appears on the web as little as it does, although we also wonder if this is the same Morena Cobbs, and if the Morena Cobbs who appears on this page, this page, or this page is also the same person, then the fact that her name appears on our web site as well could potentially be a concern to an eminent cell biologist... We'll see if her whinging to the web archive people does any good before we do anything, though.
UPDATE 2.1: on 081027, we recieved the following emails, one right after the other:
Dear Rev Deluxe,
I am the same person you linked. Please quit posting my name
on your website. Please take this page down. I do not want
my name or my email address on your website. I don't want
this slander against me to affect my career. Anyone who types
my name in a search engine will find this website. Please
email me directly instead of posting everything on your website.
I haven't heard anything back from the web archive.
Morena Cobbs
then
Dear Rev Deluxe,
After reading the web archive web site, it seems that the owner
of the website needs to be the person to request to have the site
taken down. Please remove the archive web page as well as the
one you are now "updating". Please email me back directly. I
appreciate your help with this.
Thank you,
Morena
First of all, slander, by definition, is "a malicious, false, and defamatory statement or report", and nothing we have said on this page is malicious, false or defamatory. For a cell biologist, she certainly seems to be deficient in basic dictionary skills. Second, what we have posted on this page is our right to post, since it is a discussion between another person and us, and we reserve the right to post any part of a conversation of which we are a part, especially if it's funny enough. And this definitely qualifies. Not only that, but posting it on internet instead of replying personally means that our identity(ies) are protected, and everything is out in the open for anybody to read. Furthermore, as long as it doesn't get really absurd (as most flame-wars in which we are involved eventually become) it shouldn't damage her career that much. After all, we have nothing to do with cell biology, and as she said herself, she didn't send the original message anyway. Third, we're fairly sure that the owner of a web site doesn't have to be the one to request a pages' removal from the archive, primarily because of our interactions with The Evil Anti-Tinite Who Shall Not Be Named. Finally, as we said previously, she should be glad her name doesn't appear on internet a lot more than it does, especially if she used to be in the habit of leaving herself logged in on computers that were accessible by anyone.
Now we're forced to wonder how long this will go on...
Followup - 090110: We're not entirely sure, because there have been some other "issues" with our old host provider, but it is our impression that Morena Cobbs took another stab at getting this page removed from the intarwebs, by convincing our host provider to change the permissions on this file, so that it could not be read. Combined with the fact that our old host provider actually cancelled our account (which had nothing to do with this particular flame war) and deleted the site, when we discovered and restored the site on a new host, and discovered that the entire site worked - except for this page(!) we were somewhat perturbed. After wangling around for a little bit, renaming the file, re-uploading it and so forth, we discovered that the permissions had been set so that when you hit this particular link, you would get a 403 message (you are forbidden from viewing the file in question). After we changed the permissions back to 644, the file suddenly appeared again as if by magic. Now we would not have set the permissions so that you couldn't see the file (it's far too amusing to keep it all to ourselves), and the only other possibility that we can think of is that someone who has administrator priveledges over the file in question - which limits it to us, and agents of our former host provider - must have changed the permissions. In any event, it won't happen again, because we are now hosted at a place where the administrators have a much more highly developed sense of ethics (and a greater sense of humour). Nyaaaaa! We won, you lost! Neener neener neener!
Return to As If The Church of Tina Chopp Needed A Disclaimer.