Rhymes with plunder
It’s so cute how the main page features a legal disclaimer.
I am not a member of Smoke and Thunder, much less a recently active one. I never asked to join and never gave permission to use my brand in that capacity. I find it odd that a site that tells us how much gun blogs suck feels the need to lie and use a gun blog’s brand without permission. I’m also fairly certain that Glock, Ruger and The American Rifleman aren’t really members either.
Update: Oops. Inadvertently used that title from Alan who used it in email who may want to use it later. So, it has been changed.
February 22nd, 2012 at 1:02 am
He’s obviously trolling to acquire the “not yet old enough to legally buy a gun” demographic.
Jim
Sunk New Dawn
Galveston, TX
February 22nd, 2012 at 1:10 am
Wow. just wow. Smoke & Thunder, the site for people who aren’t happy just being an outright interdouche.
February 22nd, 2012 at 1:21 am
Smoke and Thunder, your understanding of copyright law is about as incompetent as we’d expect from the rest of your behavior.
If it turns out that you are residing in a jurisdiction in which I’m licensed to practice law, I’d be happy to represent any or all of the people whose rights your so brazenly, and stupidly, violated.
February 22nd, 2012 at 1:53 am
Hmmm, so Mr. Smokeandthunder has the whois blocked. That’s OK, a subpoena will open that right up.
February 22nd, 2012 at 2:54 am
SPQR… or you could go after Yelp for allowing users to post reviews about incompetent lawyers like yourself. Yelp has some major issues and slimy practices, but they went where no website had gone before and lived to tell about it… building profiles on people and businesses or just having users submit them, invite the world to criticize, praise, and socialize, give their users all the power, and become a billion dollar company overnight. Maybe you missed that one.
From Google news 15 hours ago—- People are lining up to sue sites like Yelp and Ripoff Report over their users’ misbehavior, but courts continue to slam the door in their face. A new report shows the sites’ traditional legal shield is still strong, but that some are trying to use intellectual property laws to crack it. In “2011 State of the Law Regarding Website Owner Liability for User-Generated Content,” Internet lawyer Catherine Gellis offers a helpful update of websites’ ongoing effort to fight off lawsuits created by their users. Gellis found that websites’ core legal shield (Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act) continued to gain traction as courts last year again confirmed that businesses like auctioneers and consumer review sites can’t be sued over what their users do. The legal shield, created in 1996 to ensure that the fledgling Internet economy was not brought down by lawsuits, works by ensuring websites are not responsible for obscene, defamatory or criminal acts of their users. The shield stays up as long as the sites don’t take an active part in their users’ activity—if they do, they lose their immunity and become instead content creators who can sued like anyone else. Overall, Gellis notes the shield may even be getting stronger—recent cases show sites like Yelp and Roommates.com are protected even if they curate content. While the ongoing strength of Section 512 is good news for Internet companies, the bad news is that plaintiffs are trying even harder to use intellectual property law as a backdoor around it. What this means in practice is that aggrieved individuals are gussying up libel complaints as copyright or trademark cases. Doctors and dentists, for instance, have been trying to use copyright law to force websites to take down negative reviews.
February 22nd, 2012 at 4:20 am
Hey, I want in on this too!
Smoke & Thunder, tell me how I’m a grandiose bloviating windbag who’s driving young people away from buying guns!
February 22nd, 2012 at 9:41 am
Yelp has enough money to continue to file court fees while multiple people sue them. Those add up. But that’s a lesson one has to learn. $250 to $1000 per case just to defend yourself is expensive.
But that’s neither here nor there. Instead of building a website, which you could have done with a lot of support had you approached this correctly, you’ve challenged a bunch of people who always answer the bell on challenges.
Which is why you are a troll. GunsAmerica, Brady….all will out soon enough. Funny thing about private registration is that it isn’t very private.
February 22nd, 2012 at 11:14 am
Dear Smoke & Thunder Admin: I have no blog. I am a lowly reader of, and commenter on, the blogs of others. I don’t social network, having once tried and failed to Facebook. I am a hobbyist gun owner, never having taken a tacticool course in firearm use other than that required for my concealed handgun license. Heck, I even own Glocks and Rugers, probably the uncoolest firearm brands there are, other than Rossi. Oops, I own a Rossi, too. I am even of an older generation, being >50 years old.
Having all that as a disclaimer, I have introduced half a dozen new shooters to firearms use in a safe and responsible manner, and all were teenagers. At least two now own their own firearms. One even became an NRA member. So please take your age-hate back to your social network website, it is inappropriate in the extreme. Where firearms are concerned, old guys and gals know stuff, and love passing their knowledge to younger people. Some do it by blogging (even if they aren’t that old) and some do it like me, in person, one at a time.
I accidentally went to your website following links by the bloggers in the comments here. I won’t make that mistake again.
February 22nd, 2012 at 11:34 am
“Alan… I will bring the butter, Grade A. The “gun community” is so out of touch with the younger generation it’s ridiculous.”
Excuse me, but as part of that “gun community” and the “younger generation” let me just say this. You are a fucking moron, and you and your cohorts at smoke & thunder and utterly classless.
You need us bloggers to drive traffic to your pitiful disgrace of a website, so you create fake profiles with the names, images and website links of bloggers who are far more popular and respected in the online community than you fools could ever hope to be.
These are bloggers who, by the way, don’t want to have a damn thing to do with you. If you can’t understand how going about things this way is both disgraceful and a terrible business practice then I can’t help you. You can’t fix stupid.
Newsflash asshole. Pissing off and alienating the gunblogging community will not help you grow your website.
Get back to me when you learn what the hell “fair use” means, if you or anyone else and Smoke and Thunder possess the necessary brain power to figure it out.
February 22nd, 2012 at 11:40 am
“I’m a friend to the future of gun ownership, not an adversary.”
Given your behavior in this thread and how you treated Breda I’m gonna go ahead and call bullshit.
I have no respect and very little patience for assholes like yourself. If we want to grow our ranks the folks at Smoke & Thunder are exactly the sort we DON’T need. We need folks of good character, like most of the people tearing you a new one here in comments. (many of whom I know personally)
February 22nd, 2012 at 11:49 am
Wait Wait! I want to be a grandiose bloviating windbag too!! Can I huh can I? I hang out with bloggers sometimes… 🙂
February 22nd, 2012 at 11:59 am
I’ll jump on the bandwagon with SPQR in saying that you’re going beyond fair use. Whether you bury a disclaimer in the profiles you create or not, your representation of gun bloggers that have never actually had anything to do with your site as “active members” is much more than simply creating a page where folks can talk about them. When you claim them as active members, you strongly imply (if not come right out and say) that they affirmatively went to your site, registered, and participate in whatever activities you hold. You are obviously doing this to entice more members to come to your site. This is appropriation, and it’s arguably actionable. Smoke and Thunder isn’t merely curating, it is actively creating.
February 22nd, 2012 at 2:00 pm
S&T Admin needs to get off Yelp’s nut.
February 22nd, 2012 at 4:39 pm
LMAO at the video with the electronic voice.
February 23rd, 2012 at 7:35 pm
I’m disappointed. I did not rate as a “gun blogger”. Sigh…..