Backlinking Nightmare: Being Sued for a Backlink

Being sued for a Backlink.  Literally.

I just read an article on HubSpot about a website owner being sued for a backlink from her blog that she did in 2001.  It’s crazy, but true.  Now, listen to this:  a lawyer who provides anti-privacy and intellectual property protection services has sent a letter to a  lady on her own personal blog–as well as her ISP, to remove the link because it is causing financial ruins for their client.

I mean, this is ridiculous.  And again, this lady wrote a blog post in 2001 about her sunglasses.  Now, here’s the thing about it:  we know that there are cases where if somebody did a backlink and it might be irrelevant that it wouldn’t be a positive thing.  But no way will it harm the business financially or take away from their gains.  I mean this is just crazy!  Pure craziness!

Now, this blog post that she wrote was about a new pair of sunglasses that she got.  And she put a link to (a) sunglasses website.  So a website for sunglasses.  So not only is this a relevant backlink, and probably a backlink that would help their client, but it’s a proper way to do linking.  This is what we teach.

Any type of expert or internet marketing guru or just a marketer itself knows that the best types of links are the links that are relevant, incredible.  And that’s what this person did. But this attorney—and I’m not gonna mention their names–now, I did put a link at the bottom of this article that you can go check them out. But let me remind you:  I don’t want to  promote them, I don’t want to say their names.  And the reason being is ‘cuase a lot of us are probably gonna out there and do research and go to their website. And on top us going to their website, we’re gonna increase their organic traffic.

So, when you read the article from HubSpot in the link that I put here at the bottom, just keep in mind that when you go to their website, you’re ultimately helping these slimeballs with what they’re trying to accomplish and get the word out: that it’s okay to go after people for just pure craziness.

Now, again, is this an irrelevant link?  No.  Is it from a link farm? No. Is it spam link? No!

This is from somebody who took time to genuinely write and then recommend!  I mean, they’re mentioning this person.  I mean this is like a pat on the back.  But this company is trying to act like it’s somehow hurting them.  This is just stupid. There is no freakin’ way that this would harm anybody’s website.

Now, on top of this, if you think about it, if this attorney is offering “anti-privacy and intellectual property protection services,” how would a backlink violate that?  It don’t!  It isn’t!  Because it’s B…S…!  It’s more crap that people are trying to go out there and make money for nothing off of people who are working hard and putting time and effort into what they’re doing.  And in this case, it’s not even a marketer.  It’s just somebody who was talking about her sunglasses and indirectly recommending another sunglasses website.

This is the type of chaos that goes on when allowed.  Now here’s the good news:  the hosting company for the lady who had the blog responded to the attorneys with a basicly a nice “f-you.”  He told them that “we’re not telling our client to remove the link” because there’s no way that’s violating (in) any way any policy, any backlinks, any problems that they’re claiming to be any financial downward fouls.  So BS.

So, you know, hands off to the hosting company that told them, you know, “we’re not telling our client to take it off,” you know?  We can’t allow people to go out there and push us around.  That’s what happens quite a bit.

Now, one last thing I wanna leave you with is this:  Has anything like this happened in the past?  It actually has.  You see, eventhough the internet is, you know, pretty established, it’s still new.  So there’s always people like this who will try and do what they can to come after you for whatever reasons they possibly can.

In 2000, I was in the email business and I did tons of email marketing—all opt-in, of course. But there was a time where attorneys in the state of Utah would do what’s called “seeding.”  They would take their email addresses and put them in lists and go out there and sell these lists actively.  This is true.  They would take these email lists, put seeds in them.  A seed is when you put an email or numerous email addresses in there to hide, you know.  So when you’re out there selling these lists or you sell to somebody that sells it to sell it because in the email business brokering information is huge.

So you would purchase this list and people did opt-in and if you send an email to these attorneys in the state of Utah, you would get a $500 law suit.  And this happened quite a bit.  (As a )matter of fact, in the state of California, they changed the laws when it came to opt-in around the time the iCANN Spam Act came into play.

Now, what they did was you can send out opt-in emails, but you have to send emails and you can only send email to people who opt-in into your list.  So you couldn’t send an email.  So for example, if I was working with somebody and they had a service that is complementary to what I had–so for example, say, I’m a company that sells jeans and this company sells t-shirts and somebody have opted in to get updates on t-shirts and what-not, I wasn’t allowed to send any messags to their list.  Eventhough I’d be the right type of person. But in the state of California, it looked as you were sending illegally to poeople who never opted in to your list.

Well, before California became very agressive with this, Utah—the attorneys in Utah were coming after you.  I personally went through 65 different law suits. 65 of them from 3 attorneys in the state of Utah. So this is not new what we’re witnessing right here—it’s just more craziness.

Here is some slimeball attorneys that would be what we kinda look at representing murderers or people out there that are just completely doing craziness and then representing them, well here’s a different type of sleezeball attorney:  attorneys who coming after you for backlinks.  For backlinks!

When is it gonna end?

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