| br!ghtshark |

>> This is article number three in a series of three, being,”Spam Reply Template“, “Getting some info together” and this article.

Without much further ado, herewith a template that you can use to send some demands to companies that sell your private information to spammers.

Dear Member1, Member2, Accounting Officer,

I have been receiving a number of unsolicited, spam, messages from various South African businesses over the past couple of months. I have been responding to these messages with the following communication: [Read the rest of this entry...]

>> This is article number two in a series of three, being,”Spam Reply Template“, this article and “Template to use for a company selling your details to spammers“.

Maybe you are so lucky to receive a reply from a spammer, telling you where they got your contact details from and it seems as if your details where bought from a provider. What now?

First, you need to do some homework.

You will have to get the information of the company – most probably your information is sold by a Close Corporation or (Pty) Ltd company. This you can do on the Cipro website, either from the company’s registration number (most effective, so try and get this from the spamming company), or the company’s name.  To get hold of the director/member’s details, you have to search for the company  by searching with the CC/Co’s registration number (look on the left hand side of the screen). For a R30 fee, you can get all the spam-list-selling company’s contat details, registered offices, registered members/directors (with ID numbers), etc. [Read the rest of this entry...]

>> This is article number one in a series of three, being, this article, “Getting some info together” and “Template to use for a company selling your details to spammers“.

The amount of spam from South African companies seem to be getting more and more… br!ghtshark has been starting to reply to these spam messages, using the following template (developed in conjunction with johannschwella):

Dear XXX, [The name of the person can be found via the domain name records, doing a google search or by visiting the company's website]

Thank you so much for the free spam email advertising your business “business name” (email below).

Please remove me from your ALL of you mailing lists with immediate effect (including and not limited to any or all information you have about me). I categorically state that I have never requested any emails from XXX never heard of them and have never given permission for XXX to contact me.

In this regard, I refer to the ECT Act of 2002: [Read the rest of this entry...]

I had a look into the different options of loyalty programmes for our two largest hotel chains here in SA… Protea Hotel (Twitter | Website | Loyalty Programme) and Southern Sun (Twitter | Website | Loyalty Programme), after one of my colleagues mentioned recently “I’m going to Upington and don’t really care where [the office] places me – if there was a Southern Sun maybe I would have put up a fuss but there’s no need for me to stay in the Protea over a guest house”.So, what do you think?

Which one would you choose?

I recently received this very interesting question from one of my readers in relation to my post “bit(ter)(torrent) fight to the end“. Before I post my thoughts, I thought to put it out to my readers for some comment first:

“

We have all heard the stories; the anecdotes lawyers regale their friends with at dinners of the weird characters that seem to revel in the drama of litigation: the vexatious litigant.

While most people try to avoid becoming embroiled in legal proceedings, there are some that seemingly cannot get through the day without their fix of issuing summons or launching some application. And no, this does not only happen in America or on television – even boutique firms in Cape Town get the odd enquiry from a person that wants to sue the Minister of Justice (and everybody else) for a R100 million because, ever since his father apparently shot him ten years ago on their front lawn to impress random girls walking by, everybody has conspired against him and caused him to lose his marbles. “Everybody” will inevitably also include the attorney who shall, after listening politely to his ramblings for an hour, decline the offer to represent him.

The ones that are dependant on attorneys are easy enough to stop – most attorneys simply won’t act on their behalf if it is clear that the intended legal proceedings are frivolous or vexatious. But beware the person with some legal background (usually an unfinished law degree or sometimes simply some self-taught knowledge of the court rules) that represents himself – they usually have fools for counsel.

Last year the Cape Argus reported of a Cape Town man that was apparently involved in 15 legal proceedings at the time [Read the rest of this entry...]

Towards the close of November, a legal spat has broken out between a number of South African Torrent sites and RiSA (the Recording Industry of SA – a lobbying group representing a number of South African music producers).

[Read the rest of this entry...]

Recently some Somali pirates caught the world’s attention, but another kind of pirate has also recently been hunted, although with much less drama than the Somali food pirates. Since the beginning of this month, the BSA (Business Software Alliance), has been airing advertisements on local radio stations, offering employees up to R100 000* (with the obligatory T&C asterisk of course) if they blow the whistle on their employers for using pirated or copied software.

[Read the rest of this entry...]

There is no doubt about it – generation X and Y is firmly rooted online, especially with the advent of mobile phones with internet browsing capabilities. The battle of politics has always been to get the right information to the right people, right on time.

[Read the rest of this entry...]

Up to this stage, br!ghtshark has been quiet on the Zuma front. This doesn’t mean he hasn’t been following it closely though…

Over time there have been a lot of noise in the “Zuma-case” commentary, from some arrogant uneducated peeps, to some other inciting cartoonists who caused quite an uproar, to “the-guy-sitting-next-to-me-on-the-plane-on-Friday”.

The history to the case is quite long and involved, with numerous applications all over the world…

During all of this time, a large number of commentators where very, nay extremely, negative and sometimes even downright dismissive about the impartiality and reliability of the courts’ integrity. Some these comments included that if the court doesn’t find in Zuma’s favour, there will be mass picketing (YCL’s Mashilo) or that there will be people willing to kill for Zuma (ANCYL’s Malema).

In essence, a number of Zuma’s staunch supporters went out from the premise that the judiciary cannot be trusted to give the “correct” judgment.

Finally, on Friday past, Nicholson J, handed down his judgment in Zuma’s application in having the NPA’s prosecution scrapped because of policital interference in the advancement of the prosecution. Zuma (and his supporters) were vindicated and the prosecution of Zuma was striked.

What br!ghtshark fails to understand is how these supporters of Zuma, whom were all so disbelieving of the indepedence of the judiciary, can now so easily and triumphantly claim this judgment as a “victory” to be celebrated. If the judiciary was as unreliable as Zuma’s supporters made it out to be, this same logic should be applied to the final “victorius” judgment handed down by Nicholson J and should this judgment be viewed with much circumspect, but that is probably the illogical game of politicians and their antics.