Usmanov and Schillings can go fuck themselves
Posted by cabalamat on 2007-Oct-08
Who’s heard the phrase “when you’ve dug yourself into a hole, the fist thing to do is stop digging”? Not Alisher Usmanov, the Russian/Uzbek billionaire who’s been described as a “gangster and racketeer” in the European Parliament. Nor his lawyers, Schillings, who apparently specialise in attempting to gag free speech.
This time Schillings have issued a takedown notice against Indymedia:
Indymedia UK has been issued with a takedown notice [10th of September & 21st of September] from lawyers acting for Alisher Usmanov. The notice served to Indymedia charged Indymedia with publishing allegedly libellous accusations about Usmanov, one of the richest men in Russia, recently linked to a possible hostile takeover of Arsenal FC.
As Obsolete points out:
This only makes Usmanov’s charm offensive this week, involving the flying via private jet of at least 9 British journalists to his offices in Moscow, then putting them up in a five star hotel all the more shallow. He says he’s not a vindictive man and that some of Murray’s allegations are beneath his dignity to respond to, yet his lackey of legal brown-nosing sycophants are still trying to remove all mentions and republishing of Murray’s original post, while still failing to respond either to Murray’s request for them to sue him or to even explain how inaccurate his allegations are, apart from their completely untrue argument that Usmanov was pardoned by Gorbachev.
If either Schillings or Usmanov think we’re going to continue to take their attempts to silence all criticism of this deeply unpleasant man lying down, then they’ve got another thing coming.
Do Schillings and Usmanov really think they can browbeat the entire Internet into submission? Including those parts of it with more sensible libel laws than the UK?
(via Chicken Yoghurt)
