Utah man sues Groklaw, Slashdot, and 200 others

A MAN IN A place called Utah which is in a country called America, has taken legal action against Slashdot, Groklaw, Pamela Jones, and a number of other individuals and organisations amounting to around 230 or so.

The case was filed in a district court in "Utah", on the 21st of June last.

The nature of the case is a federal civil rights action with a geezer called Jeffrey Vernon Merkey seeking punitive damages and costs because he alleges the defendants, whose number is legion, violated his constitutional and statutory rights.

Those seem to include his rights to associate, to practice religiously, his freedom of speech and he alleges all sorts of other really, really scary things in the docket.

Merkey says he is a computer scientist, and served in this function at Novell and other large firms. He says he's been involved in Open Source development relating to the Linux OS for around 10 years. Later in the docket he describes OSS and Linux as "socialist".

The docket alleges groklaw.com and groklaw.net are "extreme right wing" and promote "messages of hatred and violence directed against members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints ("Mormons"), and against business entities who employee (sic) are funded by, owned by, or operated by Mormons". The docket claims Groklaw also attacks "cherished beliefs or positive views of Native American Society, Culture and Spirituality".

Slashdot.org is, the docket claims: "a far right wing Internet news website that posts libelous (sic) and defamatory content and is used by Open Source Community members to anonymously post hate speech, death threats, threats to murder and promotes and advocates acts of domestic terrorism within the United States."

Funny, we thought slashdot.org was just plain dull and boring. We do apologise. Now that it's alleged it is both "right wing" and "socialist", we promise we will view it in the future in a very different light.

The entire rather interesting and always entertaining docket amounting to 62 pages, guaranteed to keep you up over the weekend, can be viewed here in PDF form. There are some appendices and even a bit of redaction, which always helps to make things even more mysterious. Plus there's two paragraphs about peyote, which we believe to be a psychedelic substance. µ