As we ended up saying in NTK this week (Stef scooped us), it was the RSPCA who snarfed FaxYourMP. They sort-of apologised. Well, they promised not to do it again, which is good enough, and huffed and puffed about how we should put up a legal notice. Which, of course, we won’t do. It’s not an issue of legality, it’s an issue of civility.
I don’t sue my neighbour because his mariachi music is too loud (though if you’re reading this, neighbour, it is a bit noisy), because society provides any number of more effective ways to resolve the problem. Most of all, people can stop doing bad things because they can be embarassed or ashamed. I think there’s a corporate equivalent to this which we’re only beginning to flesh out. Of course, there are some companies that will just blindly ignore such restraints, so you have to sue them. Such legal persons are practically sociopathic and should be treated as such.
Even better: the people who actually organised the campaign for the RSPCA are NTK readers. They mailed and said were really sorry, and definitely won’t do it again. They sounded genuinely a bit upset with themselves: very “how could we have been so STUPID!”. That’s good, because I’m sure it’s their job to do these things right, and they’ve learnt a useful lesson here.