Why does Arent Fox suck?

Ok. Ok. I know, don't poke the big bear with a sharp stick. But these guys aren't bears, they're lawyers, and as such I think can take a little honest criticism, besides, I'm entitled to my opinion, and seeing as this is an editorial, that's all this is. One guy's ranting on the internet about his opinion.

So, back to the question: Why does Arent Fox suck?

Because they write bogus C&D letters that have no legal standing, based on false pretense, and twisting the US code basically into lies.

Why? I mean I have to assume these guys are fairly intelligent, so why submit such a bullsh!t C&D? Why not ask nicely? Something along the lines of:

Dear sir, we understand you are obviously unhappy about your service at Farmers Insurance. We would like to take a moment to introduce ourselves, we are the law firm Arent Fox and we represent Farmers Insurance. They have asked us to contact you as your site troubles them. We would like to come to an amicable resolution about the status of your site. We have the following issues with your site, it portrays an overall negative image of our client and we would like you to remove it.
Yeah, I understand that the above note is overly simple, not nearly real enough, doesn't contain the requisite quotations of legalese, etc. etc. ad. nausium.

The point I was trying to make, is the old "more flys with honey than vinegar" expression counts here as anywhere in life. By starting off in an adversarial nature, and trying to put the fear of god in me, all they succeeded in doing was getting my heart rate up for about 15 minutes while I scrambled on-line to look up the US code. The more I read the more I realized that almost every single premise they used in the C&D letter was invalid. This brings me back to the "I can't believe they're idiots", which only leaves me to think that they're malicious instead. I figured they deliberately mis-quoted the US code to selectively support their position, conveniently ignoring anything that rather clearly supported my position. The more I realized that they were essentially lying to me, the more pissed off I got. The transition from nervous to scared took about 15 seconds of reading the C&D, the transition from scared to indignant and pissed off took only about a half hour of reading up on the US Code (Titles 15 and 22). The more pissed off I get the more stubborn I get. I contacted a few lawyers, and got some advice.

A gentleman in Florida, who specialized in free speech cases, while not passed the Bar in California, took me up on about 4 hours of pro-bono work and reviewed my site, and my response to the C&D letter, which resulted in his asking me about my law schooling, as the response looked well written (high praise for me). His overall opinion was that the site was not only legal, but well on the safe side of all the crap that Arent Fox threw at me. A further review by Paul Levy from Public Citizen (these guys ROCK!), convinced me that I was ready for bear.

So to bring this little rant full circle, had the lawyers for Farmers come to me in a polite and friendly way, indicating that they were the legal council for Farmers and that they were concerned about my site, I likely would have not only responded to most or all of their requests, but likely would have been more concerned about the contact.
This comic just about sums it up: Userfriendly Chum
Instead all the lawyers succeeded in doing was to solidify my decision to carry on protecting the consumers out there who have not been educated about the dangers of dealing with Farmers Insurance.

I would specifically welcome a publishable response from Arent Fox as to why such an oversight (using commercial clauses, when this was an obvious non-commercial site) could occur; though any rebuttal to my interpretation of the events and process will be happily accepted.
-Admin

FarCry - Mollio