27 August 2007

Under Heavy Attack, Pedologues Shuts Down

Pedologues is a podcast that promotes pedophilia. Due to intense outrage from anti-pedophile groups including those from Perverted Justice, the podcast had to be shut down because many of those who were associated with the podcasts received death threats.

According to the Pedologues site,
I have just received word from the hosts of The Sibling Rivalry Podcast that they have been receiving harassing and threatening phone calls to their homes by someone who calls himself "Mikel Bruce" due to their having interviewed me on their show.

At this time, I believe it would be morally irresponsible for me to continue fighting this when innocent bystanders are beginning to be affected. This constant stream of blind hate, cyberstalking, and libel tactics from those at Perverted Justice against uninvolved Libsynners is, in my opinion, reprehensible. Nevermind how wrong people might consider me or what I believe in, a solid line is crossed when this form of criminal act is laid upon the rest of the public. No matter how those on the sidelines might feel about me closing shop, I think it is my personal responsibility to respond to this abhorent action duly. I am clearly dealing with people who have no scruples or honor.
Over at Independent Media Centre there is a piece called One Leader of the Pedophile Movement, Four Companies that Support Him. This piece makes the claim that there are four companies that are supporting pedophiles: Wikipedia/Wikimedia, Libsyn.org, CafePress, and Blogspot/Google. The piece even has contact details for people if they want to complain about the Pedologues podcast on Libsyn.org.

A Boywiki.org (now gone) article on Pedologues gives us an idea of how ferocious the attack on the guys at LibSyn.org was:
Perverted Justice ... urged people to harass and spam customers of Liberated Syndication which hosted Pedologues.

Thousands of unsolicited emails hammered the various unknowing podcast hosts, who then lodged complaints to Liberated Syndication's owners about the harassment. Most podcasters were apathetic, stating that although Pedologues' content might be socially offensive, as long as its participants were not advocating illegal activity, that it had a right to exist. A handful of podcasts including Stacy Harp's "Active Christian Media" left the host in protest of a pedophile podcast existing.

Rookiee was contacted by Dave Chekan, Liberated Syndication's founder, asking him what was going on. Rookiee informed Chekan of the current situation and agreed to an internal investigation and review of his podcast. Chekan agreed that what was occurring was not appropriate, and that he was not about to pull the plug on the podcast simply because of cyberbullying. Rookiee volunteered to halt production of his podcast until he manually transcribed all 30 of his episodes for Liberated Syndication's lawyers to review.

Subsequent to the Perverted Justice Opinion piece, hackers from Alt.Hackers.Malicious (AHM), who were withholding action upon Rookiee, set off to unmask Revolyob. Also, Perverted Justice threatened the Wikimedia foundation to remove Rookiee's Wikipedia user profile or face public humiliation. Rookiee's YouTube, Xanga, and other online accounts at very commonplace websites were removed.

Other podcasters were intrigued at the situation posed to them by Pedologues. The hosts of the Sibling Rivalry podcast offered to interview Rookiee on their podcast to discuss the First Amendment issue. After a less than satisfactory experience, they posted a severely truncated version of the interview in the form of four short sound bites. After posting it, the hosts began receiving threatening phone calls from Velocity from Alt.Hackers.Malicious who posed himself under the name "Mikel Bruce."

Rookiee pulled the plug on Pedologues subsequent to these harassment, citing: "it would be morally irresponsible for me to continue fighting this when innocent bystanders are beginning to be affected."

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