You can thank Dan Nuzzi, Esq., the Brann & Isaacson lawyer who represents MSAD 75, that you have this blog to read again, and that you will hear all about our experiences with SAD 75 and its staff.
We had planned to let this blog quietly fade away. Our children are, after all, out of SAD 75 schools. And although we still have one lawsuit for access to public information pending against the District, we started that in the fall of 2019 and don’t expect any new disputes between us and SAD 75. We were going to let that lawsuit conclude and then move on with our lives without worrying about SAD 75.
We were not going to worry about the District because we thought that the District never really worried about this blog. We thought that the District had forgotten about the blog and didn’t care what we did with it. But then we got an email from Mr. Nuzzi:
Now would be a good time to cancel the domain names that you . . . have improperly registered in violation of federal antipiracy laws. 15 U.S.C. sec. 1831. Please cancel or transfer the domain names you have registered involving Jessica Fournier, as well as the District at your earliest convenience and provide proof thereof to my attention.
Actually Seattle City Attorney
Samuel H. Piles, ca. 1910.
We didn’t use Mr. Nuzzi’s picture because he would probably sue us. But you can see his firm’s picture of him.
Credit: Seattle Municipal Archives. Licensed under CC BY 2.0.
Several questions immediately popped into my head: Why is now a “good time” to cancel our domain names? Would other times be bad times? Or would other times be just as good? What does “involving” Jessica Fournier mean? And are we really pirates?
Although we didn’t expect to ever have an answer to the first four questions, we could look at the “federal antipiracy laws” that Mr. Nuzzi had cited to see if he had gotten the law right this time (we’ll post more in the future about Mr. Nuzzi getting the law wrong) and we were, in fact, pirates. Title 15, section 1831 of the U.S. Code (the “15 U.S.C. sec. 1831” that Mr. Nuzzi had cited) is a 1976 law that sets aside money to help protect horses from mistreatment. That didn’t convince me that we had illegally registered internet domain names.
By the time I responded to Mr. Nuzzi and told him that the statute he cited had to do with horses and not domain names, Mr. Nuzzi had realized his mistake and had sent another email that said, in its entirely, “Clarification. 15 USC 8131.” Poetic, isn’t it?