This is the exact cover letter of the
complaint that I sent to the
the State of Connecticut
Judicial
Branch Statewide Bar Council. I realized that a complaint such as this
is very austere in nature. Believe me, I did not take it lightly. I
suffered the lies and insults of Gilbert Walker for a decade. I NEVER
once spoke unkindly to or about Gilbert Walker. I never once even
defended myself against his lies. My heart and integrity are known and
verified by all who have ever known me. Gilbert lied to and threatened
our patrons, and several stopped helping our site. He threatened our
business associates with lawsuit, and we lost them all. Through letters
threatening lawsuit, he closed down our discussion board, pulled us
from the google search engine, shut down our paypal account, pulled our
guestbooks with bravenet, and contacted those entities with which we
did business to effectively end our relationships. All the while, he
slandered me to my host server, and libeled my wife and me and the
bobsboots website mercilessly. Still,
I took no action against him. The straw that finally broke the camel's
back was hurled upon me on Oct 19, 2006. Gilbert contacted our host
server and demanded that bobsboots.com be removed from the Internet or
my host would face lawsuit. It was ONLY AFTER this final attempt to
destroy me that I took the action of this complaint. My hand to God, I
have never taken any other action against Gilbert Walker. I have never
contacted any of his associates or business partners or providers as he
has lied that I have done. In fact, I have gone to extreme measures to
protect his identy. I have allowed him to remain anonymous. This
instrument would have NEVER been made public but for the fact that he
will not relent with his vicious lies and attacks against bobsboots,
myself, my wife, and our dear patrons. It is time... after a decade of
abuse... that the truth be told.
Craig Pinkerton
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To: The State of Connecticut
Judicial Branch Statewide Bar Council
287 Main St. 2nd East Hartford, CT
From: Craig Pinkerton
My name is Craig Pinkerton, and I am the owner of a website called
bobsboots.com. The website is an online museum that chronicles the
unauthorized, unreleased recordings of Bob Dylan, that have been
commercially issued on vinyl LP and compact disc. The releases are
known in the industry as "bootlegs," hence the title of my site.
I began chronicling these recordings in approximately 1979, and have
done so ever since. In the early 1990s I decided to start converting my
years of
notes into digital information so that it could be incorporated in a
website. By 1995 I began compiling the digital information online. The
website was created throughout 1997, and became operational soon after.
Even though
every page that I created carried a copyright notice, I still filed
with the US Copyright office in 2002. (Please see Exhibit C )The sole
intention of the website was, and still is, to share with the public
the massive amount of insight and information that I had accumulated
throughout my years of collecting.
The first pages that were posted online were pages describing and
chronicling vinyl LP's. Along with these pages, was a cover page
stating that in the future there would be compact discs posted to the
site as well. Around this time there was an individual that created a
page that listed live recordings of Bob Dylan. These recording are
known as "field recordings" in the industry, as they are generally
recorded live in the "field." This individual referred to his website
as "Field Recordings". These recordings could have been on cassette
tape, CD-R, or CD, as this individual was merely documenting the live
performances... not the commercial releases as I was doing.
To the contrary, this individual stated, and continues to state on his
website, that he has never owned a commercial bootleg and never will.
He has a disdain for them. This being the case, he has no first hand
knowledge of any commercial Bob Dylan bootleg release. As he began his
site, he scoured the news groups and asked individuals to contribute
information about the bootleg titles. I, on the other hand, own the
titles that I review.
This individual claimed himself to be then President William J.
Clinton. He posted a picture of the president and Bob Dylan on his
website and captioned beneath it "This is me meeting Bob Dylan." Though
the picture has now been moved from the front of his website, it can
still be found on his website in another location. This individual
referred to himself as "Monica's Dude" (as in Lewinsky) in emails and
initially on the original page of his website. He went by the name of
Bill Clinton when contacting news groups or answering emails.
This individual's true identity became known to me to be a
Connecticut admitted attorney by the name of Gilbert Walker.
Gilbert goes by the nickname Gil when corresponding with friends and
family. The remainder of this complaint will use the name Gil or
Gilbert to refer to this individual.
Soon after I started posting CD's to my website, I began getting
harassing emails and harassing posts to news groups stating lies about
me and my website. These posts were made by individuals with colorful
names such as "Anne Thrax". I have since learned that all of these
entities were, in fact, none other than Gil. (Please see Exhibit E). I
have also created an online version of this exhibit that will allow you
to follow the links. Please go to: http://www.bobsboots.com/Connecticut.html
In the decade since, I have been continually harassed and belittled by
Gil on various websites throughout the internet. I have repeatedly
contacted him via email to ask why I was being attacked. My emails were
never replied to. Instead, Gil would continue his derogatory onslaught
in public hiding behind the fanciful pseudonyms that he had created for
himself.
I have never said one negative thing to Gil, or about Gil either in
private or in public. To the contrary, I have even offered him my
website space at no charge when he had trouble with his own. I have
gone out of my way to be cordial to him, and have never spoken ill of
him. However, the same cannot be said of him. Through his various
pseudonyms he has tried to destroy me and my website. I have suffered
in silence for a decade at the hands of Gilbert Walker.
It was a reader of the RMD newsgroup that had become fed up with the
allegations being made by Thrax and others that contacted me to let me
know
that he was a friend of Gilbert Walker. He begged me to allow him to
remain anonymous for fear of reprisal. I have protected his identity,
and will continue to do so. He stated that Gil was not of a stable
frame of mind. He then proceeded to reveal to me that Gil takes on
different personas (Anne Thrax, St. Annie, Bill, etc.) to
surreptitiously
attack those that he perceives as having differing views from his own.
Once I became aware of his true identity, I contacted Gilbert Walker
and told him that I would no longer stand for his lies about me and my
website and about those patrons that visited my website. I informed him
that, were there one more post from Thrax; or any other of his
pseudonyms that was critical of me or my website, that I would tell the
news groups the true identity of those pseudonym individuals.
While he would never admit to having other identities, interestingly
enough, there was never another post to any website from Thrax et al.
This writing so far has just been to introduce you to the persona(s) of
Gilbert Walker.
Now I come to the reason of my complaint.
Even though the malicious postings subsided temporarily, Gil continued
to post
false information and lies about me and the website periodically over
the past several years. His claim has always been that I have
plagiarized him. This is interesting in light of the fact that 3/4 of
my website is devoted to vinyl albums and tutorials that do not appear
on his website. When I first began entering CD's to the website, I was
emailed set lists (this refers to a list of songs and their
corresponding date of performance that are recorded onto a particular
cd) of a few shows by various contributors to the website. I posted
those set lists never knowing that they had been (according to Gilbert)
copy and pasted from his website.
My very first encounter with Gil was when he went to public news groups
and began ranting and raving about how I stole his copyrighted
material. I tried to explain to him that A) He was speaking of a
handful of files out of thousands that I have written and published… B)
I had NO knowledge that the information had come from his website (if
in fact it did) and that C) A list of songs and dates that appear on a
cd is not a copyrightable item. It is also interesting to note that I
personally review each item that I post to my website. More often than
not, once I enter an item on my site, it somehow appears on his website
soon after. I was oblivious to this fact until patrons of both websites
started pointing it out to me. I have since visited his site, and have
found that there is very little, if any, original copyrightable
material on his site. His site does continually change, however, to
more and more look like my own. Moreover, the bulk of reviews on Gil’s
site are written by other people... not by him. To try to appease him,
however, I offered to credit him as the source of the set lists(s) that
he claimed that he had originally copied and pasted to his website from
other sources. I offered to provide a link back to his website. He
would have no further contact with me. Instead, I removed all
information that purportedly came from him (a total of about 8-10 set
lists out of the literally 1000's of files on my site).
Except for the occasional rant on various newsgroups, that has been the
end of the matter until recently.
I have had guestbooks powered by Bravenet for many years. Not long ago
Bravenet removed all of my guestbooks and my message board. I contacted
them to ask them why and was told that they had been contacted by an
attorney who had informed them of plagiarism and illegal activities on
my website. I
asked them what activities and what I could change to make them happy
in order to reinstate my account with them, and they would not allow
it. I still have no message board and no guestbooks.
Let me interject here that we do NOT participate in any illegal
activity whatsoever. We simply chronicle bootlegs, we DO NOT sell them.
Nor do we encourage people to go out and bootleg any material. In fact,
we are vehemently opposed to pirating material, and will remove any
trader from our website that is found to violate this policy. We do not
advocate buying and selling of commercial bootlegs, however. We neither
condone nor condemn, we merely document. This information was supplied
to Bravenet, but to no avail. We were never able to re-establish our
accounts.
Our means of collecting monies in order to maintain the website is
powered by paypal. I have had an account with paypal since soon after
their inception in 1998. Soon after the above incident occurred, my
paypal account was terminated. I then had no means of collecting
money from my website, or even retrieving monies that was already
in my account. I asked them why they had done this, and I was told that
they had been informed by counsel that I was conducting illegal
activities on my
website. I was told that if I removed the illegal pages, that I could
be reinstated. However, they could not tell me what the illegal pages
were. I immediately faxed them 10 pages worth of information that
explained what my website was, but they did not accept my exposition.
Included in that fax was a two page cover letter that detailed the
chain of events that led to my discovery that my store had been made
inoperable. I’ve included those pages in this package. (Please see
Exhibit F ) Next, I simply started removing many of the paypal buttons
at random from my site, and then re-contacted them. As they were never
satisfied, I finally convinced them to give me a link to the pages that
were offensive to them. They supplied the link to only one page. A page
that was "hidden" on my website (meaning it was not for public
viewing). I removed the paypal logo and was reinstated. That one page
is incorrectly identified and manipulatively maligned in the final
paragraph of (Exhibit A ) [PLEASE continue to the end of this paper
before seeing Exhibit A].
I recently installed an Amazon.com powered store, and was soon after
contacted by them to inquire about illegal activities on my website. I
had to write them an extensive email explaining what my site is and
what it is not to be able to keep the store on my website.
Soon after the above two incidents,
I was contacted by my host server, Eve Inc, whom I have been with for
the past decade. They informed me that, as was the case with my other
partnerships, they were sent an email from an attorney that had claimed
that I was illegally operating my website, and demanded that it be
removed from the internet. (Please see Exhibit A - I have also created
an online version of this exhibit that will allow you to follow the
links. Please go to: http://www.bobsboots.com/Connecticut.html)
Fortunately for me, the owner of Eve Inc, is a personal friend of mine.
Rather than removing my website, he forwarded the email to me. To my
shock, I found the culprit to be none other than Gilbert
Walker. I have written a response to his accusations for your eyes
only. (Please see Exhibit B)
I am sure that I am fully within my right to bring lawsuit against this
individual as his slander has cost me monetarily. However, I am instead appealing to you for
justice. Gilbert Walker acted as an attorney in contacting
providers that I was doing business with. As he has contacted them
using knowingly false information and accusations, I am asking, please,
that this board do a thorough investigation into his activities.
He has slandered me and various other
innocent parties for years. He has even gone so far as to make physical
threats to fans of our website. Please... this individual is out of
control. I am appealing to you for your help.
Thank you,
Craig D. Pinkerton
bobsboots.com
Note:
After this letter was delivered to the Judicial Branch Statewide Bar
Council, it was forwarded to Gilbert Walker for his response. He then
had my home address and phone number. Several days later I began
receiving
death threats at my wife's private phone via an anonymous caller that
lasted
several days. I was basically informed in the threats to lay off of Gil
Walker. This has all been documented with law enforcement. The Judicial Branch
Statewide Bar
Council informed me that some of these allegations, were they proven,
were grounds for disbarment. Gilbert replied to them and lied with
every sentence. The investigation was eventually dropped due to
"technical reasons". One of which they informed me was my statement "I am instead appealing to you for
justice" Being a lay person, I
didn't
realize that you cannot make such a request of the Council. I also
didn't realize that you are only permitted to present your case one
time. I was not allowed to fix the errors and resubmit.
Here is a link to a message that was left to my wife on her answering
machine. Of course, the caller was not stupid enough to put to tape
what he had been threatening me with over the phone. Although it could
be, I am in no way
suggesting that this is the voice of Gilbert Walker. I believe him to
be a much
smarter man than to actually phone himself.
Recording made
by perp
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