This is very sad…
When I heard of the crisis, from cyber squatters to possible
shut down by Google, I thought it to be a joke.
Now the reality has dawned on me and other bloggers inspired
by Linda Ikeji.
I started playing around the internet earlier than Linda but
her useful application of cyber time and success in blogging really redirected
by use of the world net.
Bringing her down is like cutting the source of
inspiration for a whole lot who look at her achievements and pray God to guide
their blogging activities.
Whatever that may have caused the shutdown of Africa’s number
one blog and world’s number 10, cannot be a sleep over for any serious blogger.
As I feel the pain and anger this action has brought to me,
Linda Ikeji and all LIBers, I am consoled by her determination to bounce back.
Currently, you can read her blog @ Linda Ikeji's Mobile Blog
Knowing the battles she was facing, Linda Ikeji posted an
Official State about the Shutdown by Google.
Find it below… Read through and share your thoughts.
Together we can encourage Linda… #LindaIkejiCanGetBetter
So something has been going on for the past couple of days
that I haven’t reacted to because I wanted to see it play out and see how far
these people will go. They have gone far and it’s now time to react.
The only reason this is happening to me is because I’m number
one…so I am flattered. I am currently No.10 on Alexa.com, more read than all
the other news sites in Nigeria, so I understand why I am the target. If I were
them, I’d hate me too…lol.
So here’s what’s going on. Sometime last year, some guys
decided it was time to run me out of business (duh, like you can…lol). So they
began to spam by blog. And when your blog gets a lot of spam, Google (which
hosts my site) can take your blog down. But instead of taking my blog down,
Google took my Adsense down for a few months and eventually re-instated it. So
they didn’t succeed. These same people started sending strange emails to
me…looking for different ways to have access to my blog. But I wouldn’t let
them. If they could, they would have hacked it, but they couldn’t so they
continued to look for different ways to attack my blog.
In April 2014, these guys decided to close down the blog
again. In the emails they exchanged back and forth, they said ‘plagiarism is a
good excuse to finish her’. (they forget that if they succeed in closing down
LIB because I’m on blogger…I could easily start a website). Now let me tell you
who these guys are. They are IT people, security experts who know how the
internet works. They are hackers and cyber-squatters…and only go after the
biggest internet setups.
Immediately after I shared photos of my new SUV, these guys
re-connected again and decided it was finally time to end LIB because there
were quite a few people who were mad that I bought the car and they wanted to
play on their emotions. The head of this team is a guy who goes by the name
@MrAyeDee on twitter. They decided to use the plagiarism card. He said it was
the strongest claim to make and easiest way to get support from other people.
And then the campaign started with him claiming that I took something from him
without crediting him or asking for permission. 100% false. If he owns a
website, I’ve never visited it. He started by writing all sorts to get people
to notice…and then he acted. Like I said these guys are IT experts, they know
what to do to get blogger/Google to come after you. So he and his team started
filling several reports, sending links of my blog posts and making claims to
Google. Outrageous false claims. And because Google acts first before they
contact the blog owner, they took down some posts and asked me to file a
counter claim if I felt I had a right to re-publish those articles. Now that my
blog is under Google review, these guys have started to spam it again.
They want Google to shut it down. That is their aim. Will
they succeed? I sincerely don’t know. I’m not an IT expert…I know they are
spamming and filing complaints, I don’t know what else they are doing behind
the scenes but they are relentless.
Now let me give you guys a bit who this Aye Dee guy is. He’s
anonymous on Twitter. Nobody really knows who he is but according to those
investigating him, his name is Emmanuel Efremov simply known as EE by his
friends. He’s the owner of 15Past8.com media group. Based in Manhattan. Gets
funding from some US organization. (His number – 212 9608127). He’s apparently
been stalking me for years now and have registered quite a number of my domain
names…lindaikeji.net plus 8 others.
He also owns 9jalife.com…yep, he owns a
blog. He accuses me of copyright infringement but when you go to 9jalife and
other websites he owns…98% of the things he has on there are other people’s
content. You see pot calling kettle black? Lol.
Immediately he was found out yesterday, the IT expert
immediately started to redirect lindaikeji.net to my blog. If you click
lindaikeji.net now, it will redirect you to this blog. He panicked yesterday
and quickly did it. A name he register as far back as 2011. Lol. Choi!
Not only that, he’s also a cyber squatter. Yep, he registers
100s of websites belonging to others around the world and tries to make money
off them. Guess one of his aims is to run me out of blogger so I come to him
and his team and pay thousands of dollars to get one of the several names he’s
registered. Not going to happen, boo! Hehe
Below is an article from lawyer and blogger Uduak Udouk of
Africa Music Law about this guy and his cyber-squatting criminal activities
“According to a twitter handle owned by @MrAyeDee, celebrity
blogger Linda Ikeji was accused of copyright infringement of his works. He
reported these infringing activities to Google and what resulted was a take
down of his articles/works on her site. He also claimed with the rate and way
things looked, Linda Ikeji’s site could be shut down within a week.
I get the fact that this guy was concerned about Ikeji’s
activities and got Google to do something about it. What I don’t get is his
very strong response and continued massive tweets talking about the same issue
in an almost vendetta like style towards her. This got me curious to know who
he was and what could be a motive behind all of these.
I began by looking at his twitter page and narrowed in on his
website www. 15Past8.com. The description of the services he offered through
his media group raised my curiosity. He says his media group owns “hundreds of
websites.” He also claimed some of the infringing content on Linda Ikeji came
from his site. Well one of his hundreds of websites is 9jalife.com because it
has the 15Past8.com media group stamped on it. I did a basic search on
9jalife.com to see who owns it. The name ‘Emmanuel Efremov’ came up as the
registered owner of 9jalife.com. 9jalife.com is clear it is owned by
15Past8.com media group, @MrAyeDee’s company.
For my article on Linda Ikeji, many have been saying they are
surprised she does not own her own domain. Purely out of curiosity, I looked up
Lindaikeji.com and noted it is owned by someone else, a case of cybersquatting.
I also look up Linda Ikeji.net and see the same ‘Emmanuel Efremov’ come up. Now
I am very curious. How is it that Emmanuel Efremov owner of 9jalife.com, a
subsidiary of 15Past8.com, also owns LindaIkeji.net? Am I missing something?
Needless to say, I google the name ‘Emmanuel Efremov’ and lo
and behold, there is a case by Volkswagen against an Emmanuel Efremov for
cybersquatting. Looking at the description of 15Past8.com, the registered
domain owner of 9jalife.com and Lindaikeji.net and the case by
Volkswagen
against Emmanuel Efremov, I am left feeling that the credibility of @MrAyeDee
is shot
and very weak at best. It also makes me wonder about any prior existing
relationship between him and Linda Ikeji as to the issue of domain ownership
i.e. cybersquatting. It is not uncommon for cybersquatters to ask you the
legitimate owner of a trademark to pay them to own your own website.
If you accuse someone of copyright infringement, it is a good
idea to make sure your hands are very clean and there is no connection
whatsoever with a possible bad faith attempt to hijack their domain name. I am
curious to see where all of these leads.” Uduak Udouk
Now talking about copyright infringement, Mr Aye Dee feels
that crediting source is not enough, that I have to write a written permission
to the website owner. That’s laughable at best. So if there’s a breaking news
on TMZ, I will first write to the editors and wait for the 2/3 days it will
take them to reply me…that’s if they even bother to.
I admit that I take content from other sites. Plenty of it
sef, but the question is, which website in the world doesn’t? If you go on
Bossip.com, 50% of what is there is from other sources. Daily Mail UK takes
from other sites, re-writes and give credit. UK Mirror takes from other sites.
MediaTakeOut quotes other sources. E! Online, Us Weekly, People and even CNN
take news from other sources and give credit, so why is mine an offense to the
extent that my blog deserves to be shut down? Even in Nigeria, which site
doesn’t take news from other sites? Which? That is how media runs. Perez Hilton
makes $10million a year from blogging and 50% of the content on his site is not
originally his. As long as you give credit…which I do! Except in cases where
you don’t know the original source of the story or photo. So many blogs take
content from my site, how many of them have I gone after? In fact, I’m happy
that they do so, I have nothing against it. If I take content from another site
and they approach me to take it down despite giving credit, I will take it
down. But that doesn’t happen.
I try as much as possible to get as many exclusives as I can,
but because I work from home my team is so small. I’ve been planning to employ
more hands which I will do eventually and then get a proper office. I’m kinda
glad this happened. It’s now pushing me to act and take my business more
seriously.
So Mr Aye Dee, Mr EE, Mr #bringmedown or whoever you are and
Jeremy Weate (look who is talking ..lol) and all the others talking, I am not
afraid of you! You didn’t bring me this far and you’re not enough to bring me
down. Like if you dream it, speak it, act it, hope it, envision it, see it,
pray it….YOU are not enough! You can’t bring a good woman down. You can try
boo, or please keep trying…but you see this lady, she ain’t going nowhere. You
don’t even know who you are dealing with. You don’t know what drives me and how
far I plan to go. I’ve been a hustler since I was 17, doing it on my own…on my
own terms. Plus I have the backing of God…and of course my hundreds of
thousands of readers. I repeat, YOU are not enough!
I have been blogging for close to eight years and I plan to
be around for many more years to come, so get used it. If you manage to close
down LIB, I’ll come back bigger and better. So keep trying boo!
And enjoy all
the attention you will get from this post…you’ve earned it. Kisses!
Oh by the way Mr EE, one of your friends who you were doing
the #bringlindaikejidown campaign with has turned against you and contacted me.
He’s a LIBer just like you…hehe…but decided it wasn’t fair and reached out to
me. God bless you Mr Aye Dee. I hope your hustle also pays. All the best.
To others reading this, if you want to be successful in life,
please prepare yourselves for something like this. People don’t go after
failures. You have to be really crazy to gather to plot the downfall of an
orange seller or a gate-man (with all due respect). These people go after
successes. Once you succeed in any field, they will come after you…it’s
inevitable. Ask everyone who has succeeded. It’s not whether they will try,
because they will…it’s how you respond to it that matters.
Don’t you ever, listen to me, ever let anyone defeat you. You
didn’t work so hard to get to the top for somebody who didn’t know how you
struggled to bring you down. You will be disappointing God. You don’t even know
how disappointed He will be. How dare you let them win? They will come for
you…that’s a guarantee just make sure you defeat them.
These people are not even haters..they are excuses…they are
the natural reaction to success…put in this world to take actions against
people who are climbing the ladder of success. If they see you’re about to fly,
they will try to cut your wings because when you fly, there’s no stopping you
anymore.
And that’s what they want to do…to stop you! Don’t let them distract
you. Stay focused on your dreams and keep flying.
Lastly, You know how negative voices can be so loud that you
can’t hear the positive ones? In
moments like that just quiet the noise and
listen again…listen only to the positive ones…because they are all that
matters.
May all your dreams come true! May everything you put your
hands into succeed. May your enemies show their faces so you know who they
are…but may they never win.
Thank you so much to all LIB readers for your loyalty all
these years. I keep saying you changed my life and I will always be
grateful.
Long live LIB.
Linda Ikeji
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