The best media war currently happening ain't the back-and-forth between the Weekly's drunk mick bosses and some crazy San Francisco publisher but that between two of my favorite local blogs: the stately Liberal OC and wonderfully libelous Orange Juice! Sometime after the 2006 defeat of Congressional candidate Tan Nguyen (the last time all three of the county's top political blogs–the missing piece in this conversation is OC Blog/Red County–agreed on something), the two began a back-and-forth that's gotten more and more entertaining and has finally reached end game: The Liberal OC, three of its contributors, and former Assembly candidate Ryan Gene Williams (who, at some point in the past couple of years, began going by Ryan Trabuco) have sued Orange Juice! publisher Art Pedroza in federal court for copyright infringement, conspiracy, cybersquatting, and unfair business practice.
Representing the Liberal OC folks is Irvine lawyer and Larry Agran acolyte Todd Gallinger–find his complaint at the Liberal OC (sorry, guys: I've still yet to learn how to post .pdf files on a blog, but at least you'll get some blog hits your way!), but the gist of the matter is Pedroza bought a bunch of URLs associated with the Liberal OC, some of its contributors, and businesses associated with them, and linked them to websites as varied as NAMBLA and pictures of funky 'roids (of the anal, not baseball variety)–but only after Trabuco sold artpedroza.com to Liberal OC contributor Dan Chmielewski. Read Pedroza's own thinking about the suit here.
We'll see what the feds have to say, and will enjoy every second of this spectacle because nothing's more deliciously petty than a media war (oh, for the days of Hearst and Pulitzer!). In the meanwhile, I will say that reporters at the Weekly (especially this one) have been browbeaten in the past by some for our liking of the bare-knuckles Orange Juice!–betcha it'll happen again with this post! Sorry, fellas: don't bother with the personal e-mail, and leave the comments below…
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