How do people like Aaron Greenspan get away with their criminal conduct for so long? Often, they will threaten and harass anyone who criticizes them and try and have their criticism pulled off the internet. That’s exactly what Aaron Greenspan has done with me, and I’m sure he’s done it with many other people who learned the truth about him too.

Recently, I reviewed Aaron Greenspan’s autobiography. Although books are copyrighted and it would be illegal to post the whole book online for free, quoting a book or sharing an excerpt for the purpose of reviewing it or examining it is fair use.

Even though Greenspan himself published the book, he didn’t like people reading what he has to say because it establishes that he’s been angry at the world and suffering from paranoid delusions since high school (or perhaps earlier). Regardless of what Greenspan may think, I have a right to talk about the criminal who has been threatening and harassing me for years. I am not his only victim. If he doesn’t like my criticism, he should have tried to talk to me like a human being instead of threatening me, attacking me, and defaming me with demonstrably false allegations.

So how did Greenspan try and have my book review pulled off the internet? The same way he’s done it every time I’ve spoken out about him in the past: He filed a Digital Millennium Copyright Act Takedown Notice, or DMCA takedown notice against me:

This is similar to the strategy Greenspan took when I started asking questions abut him he didn’t like on Twitter. He spent multiple frivolous DMCA notices to Twitter until they eventually suspended my account. He then went and claimed that I had been suspended for harassing him, when the truth was that he had sent frivolous DMCA notices to Twitter to have the account taken down wrongfully.

After Twitter Suspension

Many people assume that after Aaron Greenspan had my Twitter accounts pulled down, he left me alone. Sadly, he continued to stalk me well after that and the harassment and threats never stopped. When I set up an open source Twitter clone called Mastadon, he filed a DMCA takedown notice to have that taken down as well:

I then setup a website called the Victims of Aaron Greenspan Foundation to allow Aaron Greenspan’s victims and people researching his misconduct to publish information anonymously without having to worry about having their account taken down.

Greenspan sent a DMCA to try and have that site taken down too:

Liability for False DMCA Notices

Abusing DMCA takedown notices to silence your critics isn’t just wrong –– it’s also against the law.

Lawyers.com explains it well in this post from ten years ago:

However, some people abuse the DMCA system. Despite not having a valid claim of copyright infringement, a person who wants content taken down may send a takedown notice anyway, in order to have material they find offensive, defamatory, or otherwise objectionable removed, or simply to harass the person responsible for the account which will be affected by the DMCA notice. What many who abuse the DMCA system do not realize is that they can be sued and held civilly liable for the havoc they wreak by sending these fake notices.

Lawyers.com

Uh oh. With all the other criminal conduct he’s engaged in, the last thing Aaron Greenspan needs is more civil liability for his harassment. He’s sent at least 10 frivolous DMCA notices on me. If he was held to account for all his abuses of the law, it would likely bankrupt him.

A perfect example of this is the case of Online Policy Group v. Diebold, Incorporated. Diebold made voting machines used in US elections. Online Policy Group was critical of Diebold’s machines, and released e-mail correspondence from the company that they had obtained onto the Internet. Diebold sent DMCA takedown requests to have access to the e-mails that Online Policy Group had posted online removed.

Policy Group sued Diebold over the takedown requests, arguing that the Group had the legal right to publish the e-mails. A California court agreed with the Group and granted a request for summary judgment, after which Diebold settled with the Group to pay $125,000 for their monetary losses and legal fees.

Lawyers.com

Well, I hope Aaron’s got some savings after he lost all that money shorting Tesla. He’s gonna need every penny.

It’s insane that this kind of abuse of DMCA can go on, while the vectors for abuse are so widely understood. I’m speaking up about this issue and how it has affected me because I’m worried about Aaron Greenspan’s next victim.