Despite gushing about how not-at-all-bothered she is about her internet critics and how, in fact, she really rather enjoyed the attention it seems that, once again, Jodie was being somewhat economical with the truth.  Just 11 days after she posted her 'ignore the haters' advice, on March 27th, I received an email from my web-hosting provider that stated

"CrystalTech Web Hosting, Inc. (CrystalTech) has received notification from an individual representing Jodie Marsh claiming that you are using copyrighted material belonging to jodiemarsh.tv on your website therealjodiemarsh.com that is hosted at CrystalTech.

Specific violations of copyrighted images listed in the complaint are listed below, but the notification also mentions that there are various additional locations where infringing images appear.

Reproducing of extracts from Jodie Marsh's web logs and photographs from the jodiemarsh.tv website."

Now, I don't know who's advising Ms Marsh but, it seems to me, that this is astonishingly misguided.  I'll come to the reasons why in a moment.  First however, let's take a look at the validity of Jodie's claim.  The pictures that she cites as coming from the jodiemarsh.tv website were actually all taken from the MySpace pages of Jodie and her friends.  The photographs are in the public domain already and viewable free of charge.  Given that I am not costing Jodie in loss of royalties, nor am I profiting myself, it's hard to see why she would demand their removal for any reason other than to stifle criticism.  Remember, these are not unflattering paparazzi shots, taken without Jodie's consent - they are her own photographs that she herself puts on her MySpace page - they are pictures that show Jodie as she wishes to be seen.  So, clearly, she must have been lying when, just a few days earlier, she wrote -

So then, let them talk! If they're more bothered by me than someone like Fred West, well then heck - I'm not complaining! I obviously have a BIG impact on some (which was always my intention anyway - I NEVER wanted to be a wall flower blending into the background!).

As for the quotes from her blog - all perfectly legal.  I am allowed to quote for the purposes of criticism or comment, providing I stay within legal limits and cite my sources, both of which I do.  After taking legal advice I have removed the pictures that came from Jodie's MySpace.  The blog quotes will however be staying.  A couple of explanatory emails to my hosting service and they were satisfied that I was within the law.  If Jodie still wants to get me closed down, the onus is on her to take me to court and prove breach of copyright which, of course, she won't be able to.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in cyberspace, the Jodie Mush site and forum were also hearing from Jodie's lawyer and, again, the charge was breach of copyright.  Despite Dawn, the owner of the Mush forum, making all the requested changes within the time allowed, her host provider got cold feet and decided to close the account anyway.  Six months of an active community, over a thousand members and 140,000 posts; getting the forum up and running elsewhere was clearly going to be a major task.

As Dawn worked to salvage what she could from the data, the Mushers quickly regrouped at a new 'refugee forum'. Unsurprisingly many of them were pretty upset at having their community attacked, particularly as the vast majority of material on the site was nothing to do with Ms Marsh.  Within hours of the original Mush site (Mush 1.0) going down, dozens of new sites and blogs had sprung up as pissed-off Mushers posted copies of Jodie's blog all over cyberspace.  By attacking the Mush community, Jodie had succeeded only in making her critics angry and more determined than ever not to be bullied into silence.

How does all this square with Jodie's professed indifference to her internet critics?  Well, like much of the tosh she spouts, it doesn't.  But her blog of April 3rd pointed to another motive: money. 

This is, at best, misguided and you have to wonder who her lawyers are and what kind of advice they're giving. First of all, as Jodie puts all this information into the public domain for free (you don't even need to register with a valid email address to read her blog and her MySpace profile, with all the photographs, is viewable by anyone) it's going to be very hard for her to prove a financial loss due to copyright breach.  Any other damage such as, say, to her reputation comes from the content of the blogs, rather than where they are located.  And, as if Jodie's claim isn't dubious enough already, she further weakens her case by publicly stating that she's only looking for a payout.  How does she think a court will react to her statement that she doesn't want the site shut down?  If you're going to sue someone for damages, you need to prove some actual damage has occurred.  So statements like "Keep going! Bring it on Mo'fo!" are not going to help your cause.  Oh, and courts also don't take kindly to people suing for purely financial gain.

Someone clearly 'had a word' with Jodie about all this because the offending statement was removed from the blog, not long after her originally posting it.  It's almost unheard of for her to edit blogs in any way; I can only think of a couple of times it has happened in the past.  Somewhere between the original posting and the later editing, the penny dropped and she realised that she'd just completely sabotaged her own legal argument.  Unfortunately for Jodie, her attempts to correct the damage came a little too late.  Several of the Mushers, realising immediately that she'd shot herself in the foot, had already grabbed screen shots of both the original and edited blogs.  For someone with the "IQ of a genius" (as she styles herself) she doesn't half do some stupid things.

Perhaps Jodie assumes that 'bitter, jealous internet freaks' don't have access to lawyers, and would be intimidated into silence merely by the threat of legal action.  What she presumably fails to realise is that some of the Mushers are lawyers and, in fact, one of them is a lawyer specialising in media law.  Oops!

As Jodie's empty threats were creating amusement in the Mush refugee camp Dawn, the owner of the Mush site, was having considerably less fun.  Mush 2.0 was finally launched after a gap of around two weeks but, sadly, much was lost.  Dawn writes

Jodie Mush was then uploaded onto a new server with a new design, sadly I could not re-instate the forum.  After spending about 12 hours working through the code it became apparent that the data had been corrupted and was therefore unusable.  At the time of its closure - 6 months to the day that the forum had been created we had over 1200 members and over 140,000 posts.  At times I wondered whether it was worth continuing, but I decided that I wasn't going to let her win and I certainly wasn't going to let the Mushers down.  Never before have I been involved in such an amazing community of people, I've laughed, cried and shared so many personal details.  Mush 2.0 is here to stay.

So, what exactly has Jodie achieved by her attack on her critics?  Some inconvenience for Dawn undoubtedly, and the loss of 6 months worth of Mush chatter.  But she's also drawn attention to the existence of the hater community and given the story of her unpopularity 'legs'.  She's hardened the resolve of the Mushers to protect Dawn and the community, and prompted the launching of dozens of new sites that were merrily breaching her copyright all over the internet.  Result!

Meanwhile Mush 2.0 continues to go from strength to strength with regular meet ups, a friendly and supportive community and a real sense of pride in what has arguably become (though she is unlikely to agree) Jodie's finest achievement.  As long as Marsh continues to insist on her right to be in the public eye, as long as she continues to thrust herself into the limelight regardless of how loudly and clearly the public ask her to go away, there will be people ready to share their thoughts about her. Perhaps her biggest tragedy is that her monstrous ego will not allow her to see the futility of trying to get the public to see the person she wishes she was, as opposed to the one she really is.